Ranulph Fiennes

So you get there with the guy that you say his name was...

Mark Pollock Mark yeah so here's a coincidence with that one as well when I got there or before we went Ranul Fiennes ended up doing the same marathon so Ranul Fiennes who I bought the book because he was mentioning it he ended up being there And his snowshoes, I had two sets of snowshoes going over and Ranulph Fiennes' snowshoes snapped during the race.

So I gave him a lend of my snowshoes.

And yeah, he went on to finish.

So yeah, I got some jobs for the BBC as a sort of camera tech down in the basement for an Apple series.

And then I did some stuff for a National Geographic shoot with a legend called Ranulph Fiennes.

I don't know if you know The Explorer.

Yeah, amazing.

But we, I've just got to this, there was an exciting stage with Ranulph.

I said, "Just train Ranulph Fiennes.

End of, end of book one.

This is brilliant, but actually, oh, I can feel winter's coming." It was one of those moments, and I was ill.

And it's actually weirdly kind of sort of relevant now.

So the first gig I got given was to photograph Sir Ranulph Fiennes at his home.

And it was photographing him and he had certain objects that were important to his life.

And it was winter and it would involve me shooting with portable studio flashes and lighting.

We've got detailed coverage live now at theaustralian.com.au. It's the intriguing search for one of the world's greatest living explorers, not in the brutal Antarctic or the wilds of Africa, but in the UK's aged care system.

Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, more commonly known as Sir Ranulph Fiennes, is cousin to the actors Joseph and Ralph Fiennes.

And according to his friends, he's been secreted away in care homes under fake names for months, unable to make contact with the world outside.

Now, after a highly publicized scandal that went as high as the King, Fiennes is reportedly living back at his rural property in Shropshire.

Today, Europe correspondent Jacquelin Magnay unpacks this captivating drama.

My name is Ranulph Fiennes, and the Guinness Book of Records has described me as the world's greatest living explorer.

Some of his achievements include being the first person to visit both the North Pole and the South Pole by land, as well as being the first person to cross Antarctica on foot unsupported.

Some of my expeditions over 40 years have taken me to the most remote and lethal parts of this world.

There wasn't that kind of content out there.

You know, I'd read books about Ranulph Fiennes or Joe Simpson and, you know, all these amazing, strong, heroic men doing kind of really cool things.

And so when I look back, I think, God, I wish there was kind of role models that I could have read about or watched when I was a 10, 11, 13, whatever, 40-year-old, which I am now.

And I suppose that's the background to why I wanted to work with Rainey.

Either gallows humor or a man genuinely at ease, and either way, the palace says his treatment has moved into a precautionary phase.

We also learned more tenderly that Charles quietly tried to reach his old friend, the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, whose well-being friends have been worried about only to be rebuffed.

A small, sad episode that nonetheless showed an instinct toward kindness.

And his stepson, Tom Parker Bowles, revealed that the king does all the voices when he reads Harry Potter to the grandchildren, which is a lovely thing to set against a week of so much coldness, remembered and alleged.

I'm Luke Jones.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has a strong claim to be our greatest living explorer.

I did the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent, and we lost all our body weight.

We cannibalised our muscle.

Like, you know, I never thought that that might be the last time that I saw him.

So it's hard to talk about, really.

Earlier this week, it was reported that Ranulph Fiennes was believed to have returned home to Shropshire, and Cheshire Police stated that there was, quote, no immediate safeguarding concerns.

But where has he been up until now? Why has it been so difficult for some of those closest to him to locate him? And why have so many of them been unable to speak with him still? The story today, the Ranulph Fiennes mystery.

[upbeat music] Sky News, the full story first.

[upbeat music] At 65, Sir Ranulph Fiennes looked down on the world from the summit of Everest.

At 82, his friends and family say they're struggling to see him, and this is why.

[upbeat music] I'm Adele Robinson, a correspondent for Sky News, and I wanted to give you a recommendation for when you finish this podcast.

You can find The Com on the Sky News app, website, and YouTube channel.

[upbeat music] Climbing Everest at 65, I think most of us would want a fairly substantial fuss made about that.

For Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Ran to his friends, it was just another day, another entry on an already extraordinary CV.

A former SAS soldier, Fiennes led the first expedition around the world by land and sea through both poles.