Maximum Fiennes

I find it difficult to remember, in retrospect, why I thought it would impress Ranulph Fiennes – a man who has crossed the Antarctic unaided and who sawed the ends off his own, frostbitten fingers – if I arrived to interview him on a bicycle. I could have gone by cab and been waiting calmly in the foyer of the Lanesborough Hotel by 8 a.m. Instead, I pitch up at 8.15 with black particles of diesel exhaust stuck to my puce face.

‘Sorry I’m late, I came by bicycle,’ I explain to a tall, middle-aged man with a fine-boned, urgent-looking face like a pencil sketch. Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, Bt, OBE stares at me with a polite but total lack of interest.

As we sit across the breakfast table from each other, previous articles about him suddenly make sense. ‘Not an easy interview,’ said the Guardian last year. ‘Strangely passionless,’ said Scotland on Sunday.