“Adventure should be 80 percent ‘I think this is manageable,’ but it’s good to have that last 20 percent where you’re right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.”

That for me was a great liberator to realize that the show isn’t about me running around, jumping off stuff and flexing muscles, it’s about inspiring people. That makes me really happy.

I find skydiving really hard. I broke my back while skydiving when I was in the military, and for 18 months all my nightmares were about falling.

I started to get so many letters from unlikely people; a single mum going, “I watch your show, I’m not into survival, but I hold down four jobs and I get it when you say it’s about persistence and putting a positive attitude into things during difficult times.”

I loved climbing because of the freedom, and having time and space. I remember coming off Everest for the last time, thinking of Dad and wishing that he could have seen what I saw. He would have loved it.

Juice Plus+ is great stuff that I have used through all of my expeditions. What I like about it is that the research behind it is so strong.

My favorite moments? Where it’s all going swimmingly, the sun’s out and I’ve got a fire going and a nice snake on the barbecue.

I miss him still today: his long, whiskery eyebrows, his huge hands and hugs, his warmth, his prayers, his stories, but above all his shining example of how to live and how to die.

What I’ve learned over the years is that the path less traveled always makes for a more interesting journey. If you simply do what everyone else is doing, how can you ever expect to excel and create something wonderful and unique in your life?

The only difference between ‘try’ and ‘triumph’ is varying degrees of ‘umph’

Scouts should be progressive and should be adapting. If you’re gay or not it’s irrelevant, Scouting values respect.

Exercise helps my back. If I don’t exercise, that’s when it starts to hurt. The pain is a good motivator to run and exercise.

“But, we’re also going to learn to look after each other, who to work together and who to understand and manage that risk.” That’s what it’s about, you don’t empower kids if you don’t expose them to risk.

My faith isn’t very churchy, it’s a pretty personal, intimate thing and has been a huge source of strength in moments of life and death.

I learnt another valuable lesson that night: listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind.

That feeling when you’re so cold you’d give anything to be warm – I’ve had it before, literally huddled around a candle flame on an ice sheet.

I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.