This Is Your Life: Ranulph Fiennes

Sir Ranulph FIENNES (1944-)

THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Ranulph Fiennes, explorer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews on board the ship Benjamin Bowring, which had been the sea base of his recent three year Transglobe expedition.

Ranulph was educated in South Africa and at Eton, and following training at Mons Cadet School in Aldershot he spent nine years with the Royal Scots Greys, mainly posted to the SAS and with the Sultan's Armed Forces in Omar fighting Marxist terrorists.

A number of expeditions followed, including The White Nile Hovercraft Expedition in 1969, the Jostedals Parachute Expedition a year later and the British Headless Valley Expedition in 1971. He undertook the Transglobe Expedition between 1979 and 1982 when he and two fellow members of 21 SAS, Oliver Shepard and Charles Burton, journeyed around the world on its polar axis, using surface transport only – becoming the first explorers ever to do so.

"Oh it's Eamonn, isn't it? What are you doing on board here? You've been wanting to trick me all these years?"

programme details...

Edition No: 600
Subject No: 597
Broadcast date: Wed 20 Oct 1982
Broadcast time: 7.00-7.30pm
Recorded: Wed 15 Sep 1982
Venue: Royalty Theatre
Series: 23
Edition: 1
Code name: Vault

on the guest list...

crew members of the Transglobe expedition
Virginia - wife
Charlie Burton
Oliver Shepard
Anton Bowring
Giles Kershaw
Jackie McConnell
Susan Scott - sister
Gill Hoult - sister
Greville Napier
Peter Tooth
Audrey - mother
Gonda Betrix - cousin
Christopher Cazenove
Margaret Bright
Martin Grant-Peterkin
Peter Loyd
Hamish Macrae
letter from the Sultan of Oman
Ella Ritson
Celia Brown - sister
letter from HRH Prince Charles
Maude DeCourcy-Hamilton - aunt
Benny Mapin

production team...

Researcher: Charmaine Carter
Writers: Tom Brennand, Roy Bottomley
Directors: Paul Stewart Laing, Terry Yarwood
Producer: Malcolm Morris

names above in bold indicate subjects of This Is Your Life

related pages...

Life on Earth

an uncharted adventure

Interviews

Ranulph Fiennes briefly recalls an aspect of This Is Your Life in an exclusive interview recorded in September 2019

Screenshots of Ranulph Fiennes This Is Your Life

Ranulph Fiennes recalls his experience of This Is Your Life in his autobiography, Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know...

Three days after returning home I learned that Transglobe had accumulated debts totaling £106,000. We had no funds to pay them off. This was where Anton Bowring appeared in our hour of need to announce that he considered the expedition complete only when all debts were paid. For the next eighteen months he and Ginny worked full-time to that end, a thankless task, but they eventually even turned a modest profit through sales of T-shirts and old Transglobe gear at Camden Lock street market.

Anton and his wife Jill, the Benjamin Bowring's cook for three years, became our best friends. Ginny was godmother to their eldest daughter, Mini Ginny, who was conceived during Transglobe. They were to have three daughters, all red-haired like Jill, and collectively known as the Carrots. I meanwhile was writing the expedition book, To the Ends of the Earth, which made the Sunday Times bestseller list.

Bothie achieved fame by nipping TV host Russell Harty and I was decoyed into This Is Your Life. Family and friends assembled from all periods of my past, included Chris Cazenove and Jack McConnell, as well as the history mistress who caught me on Ginny's school roof in Eastbourne and the entire Transglobe team. Eamonn Andrews' researchers were put off the military aspects of my life when one asked my former CO in Oman whether he could regurgitate any heart-warming tale of my 'bravely saving someone's life'. The colonel replied with vehemence. 'Saving lives?! Fiennes wasn't out there to save lives. He was there to kill Communists.' Not what we would today describe as PC.

Series 23 subjects