James Ketchell - Pushing The Limits

Full transcript: James Ketchell on London Real

8:04 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is James Ketchell, who is a serial adventurer, motivational speaker and scouting ambassador who in 2014 became the first and only person to row across the Atlantic Ocean successfully, summit Mount Everest and cycle 18,000 miles around the world. James, welcome to London Real. Thank you for having me.

8:24 What an intro that made me sound quite amazing, didn’t it? You are amazing. I’m really not, but thank you. You know, I want to get into it, ’cause I want the details about Everest. I’ve actually never had anyone on the show that’s actually summited, so I want to get into that.

8:36 I want to talk about row across the ocean, which you did solo to the Atlantic, and you’ve been attempting now with your partner with epilepsy across the Indian Ocean. We’ll talk about that, not to mention cycling around the world, but when you walked in here you have a noticeable limp because your ankle still has issues. Interesting, you pick that up. Yeah, I noticed that, and of course I read about your bio, but in 2007 you had a motorcycle accident, broke both your legs.

9:00 You were told you wouldn’t be walking for some time and maybe never been walking, so before we get into all this incredible stuff you do. I was wondering if you could take me back to like 2007, you I don’t know. Do you wake up in a hospital bed? They’re telling you this bad news and you’re thinking to myself I don’t know. My life has really changed for the worst, you know?

9:17 What was going through your head? Yeah, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. I was accelerating quite hard out of a corner. Bike was kind of leant over and I sort of almost had my knee down, sort of sliding on the floor, and I just put a little bit too much power down, and all of a sudden the rear wheel span up, so it lost traction, and the back of the bike came around on me and it threw me over the top of the handlebars. I think I was traveling at about 150 mph at the time, and it’s funny because I remember just flying through the air, looking back at the bike, and all of a sudden things just totally slowed down.

9:47 It’s just your senses are all of a sudden massively heightened and I just, I was looking back at the bike flying through the air, and I just thought, oh, this is going to hurt, and I just remember I hit the deck hard and it just knocked me clean out. Then the next thing I remember, I was at the side of the track, and I couldn’t breathe. I was heavily winded, and I had this really intense pain in my lower right leg, and a doctor came running over, and the first thing he said to me was, “Don’t look down.”

10:11 And what you do when you’re told not to do something, you look down. So my right foot, instead of pointing forwards, I actually snapped the ankle, and it was 180 degrees behind me. And just sort of looking at it, I was like, ah, yeah, that just hurt that little bit more and I was quite pleased actually, ’cause I still had a sense of humor in the face of adversity, that the doctor slid the boot off. That morning I’d put a white sock on, and I had an open fracture, so the skin had split and my white sock was now dripping red with blood, and I said to the guy, you don’t have a camera on you?

10:42 I got a phone, that would make a great picture, and he was like, stop being such a silly boy. I said, I’m sorry. Okay, next thing I know, I’m in quite a lot of pain and they start injecting morphine into me, which is this incredible drug. You just drift the way into another world, lose the ability to speak, and it was quite sort of euphoric actually. Next thing I know I wake up in hospital.

11:04 I’d snapped my ankle and I’d broken my legs, and my arm and my hand, so I’m literally apart from my left arm. I’m in like a full cast and you know you can’t do a thing. You’ve got to have a nurse. I literally had a nurse washing me, so it wasn’t all bad in some respects. And it was a real wakeup call actually.

11:20 I remember the guy who operated, or one, it was three different guys, doctors that operated on me, and one of them said, you know, look, he came in a couple of days after I was still lying in bed. I always used to think I was kind of a bit of a Superman, but I found out that I certainly wasn’t, and he said, you know, look, you’re probably going to struggle to walk properly again, let alone race your bikes. It was quite active at the time as well, and that really hit me quite hard, actually.

11:49 It put certainly put things into perspective. I mean, I was lucky, I still had legs, but I smashed them up quite badly. How old were you when this was happening? I think I was about 25. And what was 25-year-old James kind of doing with his life?

12:01 And you know, if you hadn’t had that accident, I’m guessing you wouldn’t have necessarily summited Everest and done all these other things. That’s interesting. I’ve always had this dream to try and row a boat across the Atlantic Ocean, but I don’t know why. I’ve just never had the balls to do it and just push myself outside of my comfort zone because I think the hardest part about doing anything is making that commitment, is actually saying I’m going to do this and putting yourself on the line.

12:25 I never really had the guts to do that, so I think when I was young I used to watch a program called Tintin, which is a fictional character who used to go on adventures and I always wanted to be Tintin, and I think that’s where the whole adventure thing is kind of stemmed from, but at the time I was working, and I was working as an account manager for a big American company, actually, and the money I was earning from that was paying to race motorbikes, and I was really quite happy. I also worked as a part-time gym instructor, so every weekend, or every Saturday, I’d work in a gym and usually race and ride bikes on a Sunday, and things were actually going quite well, and then one day, boom, just had that accident, but I kind of laugh and joke and say, actually, I fell into a better life.

13:09 Well, there not necessarily better, just different. And you think that may have given you the motivation to actually start doing some of the dreams that you had. Oh yeah, I remember I was lying there and the doctor said, look, you know, you are going to be lucky to walk properly again, and it’s going to take at least six months to get to the point where you can walk again. I thought I needed something to aim for. I needed a reason as to why I was going to do all my physio and make the effort, because if I don’t work towards a goal, I’ll be honest, I’m a little bit lost.

13:37 That’s just the way I am. I have to be working towards something, and I thought that is what I’m going to do. I am going to row across the Atlantic, and as soon as I got out of hospital. I started working on, in fact, the project in hospital. I had a laptop, I started making to-do list, trying to, I started trying to build a website.

13:55 The first one wasn’t very good, but someone else helped me with it in the end. And yeah, I started profiling companies. The hardest part about any expedition is getting to the start lines. I’m thinking, well, how am I going to find the money to make this happen and I started immediately, so no weeks of depression. No, you know, I was really lucky.

14:15 I didn’t really get that depressed as such. I had, there were times when I kind of felt sorry for myself, but I thought I I don’t know what it was. Something just told me this is what you have to do. Now you need to make an effort, and never ever, ever. I mean, my dad used to tell me when I was young, never ever feel sorry for yourself, because there’s always someone else out there who is not doing so well as you, or there’ll always be someone who’s doing better than you.

14:41 And just do your own thing. Never get too down when things don’t go so well Time went really quickly, actually. How many years was it until you were, you know, in the Canary Islands getting ready to row across the Atlantic solo? Oh, gee, it’s about three years. Three years, okay, yeah three years.

15:00 And how long did it take you to rehab and kind of get out of the hospital and get back Oh, I took about six months to be able to walk properly again. So it was quite a long time. I would have physio every week on my ankle, on my legs, but actually it was quite addictive, because I saw myself getting stronger as time went on, and I thought, well, if I just keep doing this one thing and doing my exercises. It seems to be working for me, and the stronger I got, I was quite a fit guy anyway, ’cause I worked in a gym and my whole life was kind of training and stuff, so I think that really helped with the recovery.

15:35 That I was, when I did have the accident, I was actually quite a fit young man, and that certainly did stand me in good stead, and actually I was going down the gym after my arm recovered the quickest. Okay. But I still had a cast on my leg, actually, and I started going down the gym just lifting really light dumbbells, just doing some exercises whilst I still had my leg in a cast, and stuff, so immediately I started to try and exercise, and because for me it was that it was doing these exercises, and trying to get to the gym and doing all the things I needed, I knew I had to do it.

16:15 It gave me that routine. It gave me that structure. And everyone’s different, but I have to have some kind of routine, some kind of structure, some kind of discipline. And actually it was going back years ago, before I even had the accident. I used to be quite a skinny, spotty little kid, teenager, most kids are, aren’t they?

16:33 And I had zero confidence. I mean, zero. And it was, I found the gym, and it was sort of lifting weights and getting fitter. I figured out how I could actually change my body to a certain degree, and it was that that gave me more confidence, and gave me the discipline and the routine and the structure, and that helped in my preparations for the expeditions actually. In the end it’s fascinating how when you have that accident and all of a sudden your options are severely limited that can actually get you excited and give you goals.

17:06 And now you say you were addicted to the rehab. I mean, that’s just, it says a lot about a mindset, because a lot of people would take something less tragic as a reason to quit on their lives, and yet you use these new constraints as a new challenge to be more successful. Well, I thought, how can I see? Most human beings are programmed to think, and it’s just only natural, I can’t really do that. I can’t do that because of XYZ.

17:29 But if you stop and think, well, actually I can’t. It doesn’t look like I can do it, but if I break this down, how can I get there? How can I make this happen? What do I need to do, in order to make that happen, or to get that, or to be the best at whatever I’m doing. There’s always a way if you figure it out, and you kind of think about it and I, all I, first of all, I needed to walk again, so that was quite important, so I, you know, highly prioritized that, and then I broke the row down into sort of different pillars.

18:00 I had the finances. I could be the fittest guy out there, but if I had no money to buy the boat, it’s useless, nothing’s going to happen. So that was a big part of my focus. It was looking at how I can pull the money together to make this row happen. And then, you know, the next kind of pillar was fitness, and then the next pillar was logistics, and technical equipment.

18:22 How do you buy an ocean rowing boat? How do you know what you’re doing? You know, when you’re out in the middle of an ocean, where are you going to get your water from? You can’t take enough to go across. So you’ve got to understand all of this equipment that you’re going to use.

18:35 You need to know how to navigate, you know, and the rowing is the easiest part of it. Any monkey can sit on a seat and pull the oars. You’ve got to be an electrician. I remember when I crossed, my watermaker broke, so I lost the ability to turn salt water into drinking water. Major problem when you’re slap bang in the middle of an ocean, and the closest people to you are 230 miles above you in the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth.

18:59 You can’t call the AA or the RAC. You’ve got to figure out how I can deal with this, so there are so many different elements of of ocean rowing that I just love. Yeah, it sounds like you’re great at breaking down big problems into little problems you have to, and solving them, and that sounds like your specialty. It’s funny, ’cause when I’ve watched interviews with you when you, before you cycled around the world, first you’re like, I’m going to cycle across America, and then you’re like, when I’m in Cy Clos America.

19:24 I’m going to do, you know, 20 miles a day, and I’m going to do it like this D D D D D D and then you’re very good at breaking, like I said, a big thing down a little thing. When most people would quit when they hear the big problem, like, no, I can’t do that, but you seem to get excited about all those details, and naturally that worked for me, because I remember I broke the Atlantic down into. I looked at it as a mountain, which is very bizarre considering I went out to Everest in the end, and I thought, if I could get to the halfway point, for me that halfway point is the summit.

19:52 All I’ve got to do is come down the other side, and I’m closer to where I want to be, as opposed to where I’ve left, and if anything goes wrong the chances are you’re going to get recovered and towed into the Caribbean anyway. So all you’ve got to do is get to that halfway point, and then, and actually, once you get to that point, the current strengthens, and it pulls you in. Okay, so I was like, if I can just get to that halfway point, I have done it because I remember when I was stood in La Gomera, which is in the Canary Islands, where I started looking out, and it was a particularly rough day.

20:21 Massive waves smashing over the harbor wall and stuff, and I just thought, what the hell have I let myself in for? I thought, okay, okay, calm down, it’s not, it’s a bad day today. There’s a lot of wind and the seas are big, but tomorrow is a new day, and sure as hell, tomorrow was a really lovely calm day. And I thought the first few days were the most important, because you kind of can succumb to ceic n and the reality hits you like a train. What you’re about, what you’re trying to do.

20:51 Oh yeah, yeah, it’s see when you’re chatting with your friends in the pub, yeah, I’m about to row an ocean. It all sounds very glorious and great, and but when you’re out there on your own, ’cause no one would do this with me, so I wanted to do it with someone else, and no one would join me, so I thought I’m going to do this on my own. best decision I ever made. Why I think the reason it was probably the best decision I ever made is ’cause it made me, actually.

21:13 I was kind of a relatively confident guy beforehand, but when I really did finish that row, and I didn’t do anything special. I just kept going. I had this kind of mindset that if I’m in this massive ocean and it’s a big place, if I just keep rowing, but obviously don’t row in circles, just keep going, by default I’m going to get to land. I will run out of ocean. You have to.

21:38 I may not get where I want to be but I will get across this ocean if I do one thing. That one thing is just to keep going, and that’s all I did. And that theory, that mindset, is how I think about things, move everything I do. I think back to that mindset, ’cause that got me to Antigua, and I think, had I rowed with someone else, maybe I don’t know that I would have found out that actually, if you just keep going and you’re determined, you’ll get there in the end, I think.

22:11 And it made me realize that actually I am fairly self-sufficient. Yeah. Booster when you do and it was that, that really, and then when I got home and other things, you know, with work or whatever I was doing seemed a bit difficult. I thought, you’re nuts, you spent nearly four months rowing across the Atlantic on your own. There’s nothing you can’t do now, right?

22:32 If you go back to that concept of just keep plugging away, keep going. Sounds like a great way to deal with life. Like, if you know my long-term goal is this, I know that if I go this way I will get there. So today, let’s not get emotional about it. Let’s just focus on getting that little bit, and then that’s what we do, the next day and the next day.

22:51 Okay, and yeah, and it’s funny, because when I went out to Everest my goal, I never thought about summiting until I was actually leaving camp 4, and on the way to the summit my goal was to arrive at base camp as fresh and as healthy as I could. There’s a lot of infections, people coughing and spluttering, and people get sick out there, and then I thought, well, my next. Okay, so I did arrive at base camp healthy. Then my next goal was to get through the Khumbu Icefall, which is the most dangerous part of the climb, in one piece, right?

23:20 And then I did do that, and then it was like, okay, right, well, now I’ve got to figure out how I can get up to Camp 2, Camp 3, and the only time I thought about the summit was when I was at Camp 4. It was 11:00 at night, and we were leaving, climbing through the night to get after the summit in the morning, and come back down again. I never ever thought about the summit. Is that mental discipline, or is that just the way you think? I don’t know.

23:42 I’m not really sure if it’s mental discipline. I just know that there’s no such thing as the right way to think. It’s all very individual, and I know what works for me. And when you find out what works for you, you take that and you run with it, and you use that, right? Everyone else is, we’re all so different, aren’t we?

24:00 You said about the rowing, like anyone can row, anyone could step in a boat tomorrow and row an ocean. Most people disagree with you. They would be like, I can’t do that. And I would highly disagree with them. I would say that you could if you believe in yourself and you have that mindset, that actually, because even if you’ve never rowed in your life, it doesn’t matter.

24:17 You’ve got 3,000 miles to learn how to row, and trust me, you know when you’re rowing for 12 hours a day, you soon learn how to row. And you know what, if you’ve never rowed, then you just do an hour, then the next day you do two hours, and you just build up. Right? actually when I left the Canary Islands, I, I think for the first couple of days I wasn’t actually rowing 12 hours a day. I started off about eight or nine, and I think within the first week I was doing 12 to 13 hour days on the oars, actually rowing.

24:45 Okay, it just, it’s just easy peasy. You just got into it. The more you just get into it. You get into it. Yeah.

24:50 I want to hear all about Eis, but what’s it like what’s it like, say day 10 in the middle of the Atlantic? You’re alone, you know, you haven’t probably stood up in a long time. You’ve got some communication, maybe via email and a satellite. I don’t know if you did back in 2010, maybe. Okay.

25:06 Do you like being alone out there? Do you find it’s a time where you’re introspective and it’s peaceful, or are you thinking, I want to get home and talk to people? I loved it, and you’ve got to enjoy it. If you fight it, ’cause I’m traveling so slowly, I’m averaging like two knots, which is walking. You’d walk faster you know.

25:24 So it took a long time to get across, but you’ve got to enjoy it. You’re out there in this environment. Every day the sun comes up, the water glistens in a different way. The wildlife is something you’ve never experienced: huge, big, thin whales swimming up to the side of the boat, and I was looking eye to eye with these whales, and you can’t do that in captivity. Sharks would follow me and swim around the boat.

25:48 I’d throw food in to get them to come closer so I could film them. I used to get out and throw food at the sharks. I was, I thought it was incredible. They were actually called oceanic white tip sharks, and seven to eight foot sharks. They’re big sharks, but they were not scary at all, and I thought, well, I want to try and get some photos of these things, but they would never come close enough.

26:08 So I started throwing bits of food in to get them to come close, and they never ever would. And I had this theory that I could literally jump in and they’d swim off, and I decided not to try it in the end, but maybe some blood would have been good. You just, yeah, absolutely. And I tried to fish, and the fish were so smart they kept taking the bait off the hook. I couldn’t believe it.

26:25 So actually the trick is you need a harpoon gun. You can get them very, very easily. But I used to get out of the boat and clean the bottom of the boat, because you get growth build up on the bottom of the boat, so by keeping it clean you can gain just half a knot. So if you think that half a knot over every hour, over every day, over every week, that small marginal gain becomes massive. And when, I remember, I used to tie myself on and get out the boat, and I’d look down, and it would go dark.

26:51 It was unreal. It was so clear. It’s three miles to the bottom, so you’re never that far from land. It’s just the wrong way, and there’s this an incredible ecosystem of fish that swim underneath the boat, and they’re actually hiding from the sun, which is quite intense out in the middle of the Atlantic, and of course then you get bigger fish coming up to eat the smaller ones, and so on, and before you know it you’ve got an entire ecosystem of fish swimming around your boat.

27:14 It’s amazing, and I remember one day I was cleaning the bottom of the boat, and a fish came right up to me and bit me on the nipple. Couldn’t believe I’d been bitten on the nipple in the middle of an ocean, but it really, it wasn’t painful. It’s like being pinched. But are you ever scared for life out there? Do you ever have a realization like, I could die?

27:30 You know, I know sometimes these boats sometimes don’t know you’re there, and they’ll just come, yeah, that’s a really good point. Actually, I was almost run over by a 300-metre long tanker, and it sounds crazy. I didn’t see it coming. You’re rowing away and you’re in your own world, you listen to your iPod, and the trick is to use the time constructively. So I used to think about all the things I wanted to do when I got home, and I used to make a list and write things down, and I’d think in great detail about how I’m going to do something.

28:02 And there was one particular day I was rowing away, and it’s a silence out there on a calm day when there’s no water lapping against the boat. It’s a silence that you’ve never experienced before, and all of a sudden I heard this very loud mechanical noise out of nowhere above my iPod, which I was listening to, and I thought, what the hell is that? And I turned around and I was just greeted by this huge tanker coming straight towards me, and it hadn’t seen me, and I didn’t even realize, and I grabbed a VHF radio, which is what you used to communicate with other vessels.

28:37 And my boat was called Speedo, I got sponsored by Speedo, you know, swimming trunk people. And I said, you know, look, this is Speedo, I’m on your bow, so the front of their boat, and they were about to run me over, and I said, you know, can you see me? And I got nothing. So no one was monitoring the radio, and I thought, well, I’ve got to do something myself, and I managed to steer myself away, and it passed me to within about 50 metres, which doesn’t sound that close.

29:00 But when you’re in a boat that’s maybe, I think, five to six metres long, and they’re, you know, their vessel is 300 metres long and weighs 100,000 tons. It’s a different ball game altogether, and the wake actually almost rolled the boat over, but luckily it was never really a problem, but my heart had never leapt out my chest like that before. And that’s the most dangerous part. Okay, is the other vessels. Yeah, it’s other human beings.

29:26 Sharks, waves. I mean, you see, uh, it’s not uncommon to be caught in seas that are as high as a two or three story building, but the boat will self-right itself if it rolls over. Okay, so as long as you’re still in it, you’ll be fine. Okay, so those don’t scare you as much. Okay.

29:40 And besides, when you’re out there alone and the sea is going, you’re never thinking, I might die now? Or did you get so used to it where you’re like, you convinced yourself I wasn’t going to die? It’s amazing actually, because the human body, the human mind, can adapt to things very quickly when you don’t really have much choice, like wartime situations. Yeah, I just, you know, there I was, I was out in this ocean, and all of a sudden I started to love it.

30:08 The first few days, the reality hit me hard, but I couldn’t let the people down that had sponsored me to make this happen, and the people I was raising money for, when so many people had turned me away. These few people, a few companies, helped me make this trip happen, and I said to my parents before I got in the boat, I said, the only time I will get out of this boat is if it’s sinking. Now, thankfully it didn’t sink, and if it does sink I’ll get into the life raft and I’ll figure out how to keep going, ’cause I am not going to give up.

30:36 And I was just lucky, you know, boat never sank, never need to get into the life raft, and I just, I was able to get across. Really? Did part of you never want to get to land? Well, it’s funny you say that, because it took 110 days and four hours and four minutes to get across. 110 days.

30:51 Okay, yeah. Um, and I expected it to take maybe between 70 and 90 days, so I took 80, uh, 100 days’ worth of food thinking, oh, that would be fine, but I realized very quickly that you, a human being, is powerless in the middle of an ocean, because when the winds change and you get blown back, there’s nothing you can do. And a good description of what it’s like is imagine being on a roller coaster, and it’s really scary, and you’re getting flown all over the place, and you’re screaming, and you’re screaming, but no one will ever stop the ride.

31:23 That’s what it’s like being out in the middle of an ocean. It’s like being on a roller coaster ride, right? So you’ve got to stop, you can’t fight it, you can’t, so you go with it, and you just get used to it, and you stay calm, and don’t panic will kill you. Okay, just if you don’t panic, you start to think, well, hey, maybe this isn’t so bad. You know, after a couple of days you’ve got used to the motions.

31:43 The boat’s moving all over the place, but you don’t even realize it anymore. You just, you’ve got used to it. You found your sea legs, effectively, and it’s like, it’s not that bad. Bring it on. Okay, but you run out of food?

31:53 Yeah, I run out of food 230 miles from Antigua. Okay, and that is when I found out what it was like to be truly starving. It’s funny, actually, because I never use the word starving ever anymore, because when you experience what it’s like to be starving, it’s not very pleasant. I mean, it’s great character building, and I can look back on it now, but it was not nice at the time. What’s it like?

32:18 Especially when your destiny is based on your caloric output, ’cause you have to row. Yeah, of course. Now, to be honest, it was probably my fault that I ran out. I did try to ration the food. The reason I ran out of food was because I was caught in a storm for two weeks, and it pushed me back, and there’s nothing you can do about that.

32:36 You just have to keep going when the winds do eventually change, but of course that had a knock-on effect closer to Antigua. I tried to continue rowing for a couple of days, but you just can’t. You just fall apart mentally and physically. My gums were bleeding, my nails were lifting up, and my body was literally falling apart ’cause you hadn’t eaten, and I was stupidly still trying to row. Okay, you just had water.

32:57 Yeah, I just had water. I never ran out of water. I always had water on board. Enough water. Do you lose your mental capacity?

33:03 Do you start getting irrational, loopy? Yeah, you can. Mentally you can fall off the rails, and that’s not good, ’cause rowing oceans has got nothing to do with physical strength. It’s all about mentally being in the right place, enjoying it, embracing it, because, soon, I mean, years ago now, that I rowed across the Atlantic, and it’s a distant memory. It’s only like now when I talk about it, the thoughts and the certain scenarios that I found myself in come back to me.

33:32 So the trick is to just enjoy it, ’cause nothing is forever. Okay, now the starvation, so your gums start bleeding, your fingers start bleeding, what do you do? I had no choice. I used my… I was lucky.

33:43 I had a satellite phone, and I used that to call someone in Antigua who I knew was there, and they sailed out and met me and dropped some food off. Okay, and it was that that enabled me to carry on. And I thought, well, I’m lucky, because I have the facility to call someone on a phone who’s effectively coming to my rescue. But it kind of made me think at the time, there are so many people out there that are starving that don’t have that luxury of calling someone on a satellite phone to bring them their food, and really put things into perspective when I ran out of food.

34:13 Over that, that week, actually. And if you had to describe what that starvation feeling is like, how would you describe it? Stomach is, it’s sort of swells up, and you get, it’s a level of hunger that you’ve never experienced before. Um, and you just lose all motivation, you lose all strength, you lose the ability to think. And it’s massively debilitating, actually.

34:40 I remember hearing some testimonials from some of the British soldiers who were in the Bridge over the River Kwai, those kind of guys, and they were so starved when they were working on that project, and they used to say all they would do is sit around and just talk about food, like they were, I used to do as well, ’cause they said forget talking about girls, or it was just like they would just talk about food, and that’s all they could think about. It’s funny you mention that, because I was in satellite communication with my parents back at home, and when I ran out of food I was still talking to them, and we have quite a bit of banter, or whatever you want to call it, with my parents. They’re my best friends, very close, and my dad would tease me.

35:19 I would ring him up and he’d say, James, I’m just in a Chinese restaurant and the food is beautiful, and he would send me pictures, ’cause I could receive very small pictures, and he’d send me photos of the food that he was eating out with my mom in the restaurants. It’s like, not funny. Yeah, but I suppose it helped me, that got me through it, and I used to think about all the things, and I had this really bizarre craving for a BLT sandwich. Where it came from is just beyond me.

35:48 But, um, yeah, that’s a strange scenario, that you can be like, under email communication when you’re maybe out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, well, the satellite phone doubles up as a modem, so it gives you a very basic internet connection, enough to kind of communicate with people, and you’re really, are you really a phone call away from getting help? Like, in a couple days, will they be able to find you? Or, yeah, yeah, you, ’cause I can relay my position to someone who’s coming.

36:09 Someone will come get you, uh, depending on where you are. Then don’t forget I was quite close. Okay, so it only took a couple of days for a yacht to sail out, and drop, and I’d been out there for a long time as well, so that this person knew that I needed some help. Okay. I guess I would have eventually arrived, but what sort of state I would have been in, it’d be on me.

36:28 I, I go ahead. Go ahead. Oh no, I was, um anyone who rows across the Atlantic and arrives into Antigua, in a place called English Harbor, Nelson’s Dockyard, there’s a particular hotel, and anyone who manages to successfully row across gets a free meal. So I rowed in, and they say, Sir, what would you like? And I said I’d actually like a cheeseburger with some fries, and I’d like an ice-cold Coke, ’cause I’ve got no way of keeping things cold.

36:54 So just having the ice and a nice cold, refreshing drink was just like heaven. So he said, no problem, sir, and so I remember he went away, and he brought out the Coke in the ice, and it was lovely, so, so cold. And then he brought out the cheeseburger on a plate with the sort of silver thing over the top of it, and he put it in front of me, and he pulled the lid off, and there it was. I was like, wow, almost four months I’ve been dreaming of having something like this, right?

37:18 And I bit into this burger, and the burger was stone cold. They’d served me this stone cold burger after four months of rowing, kind of visualizing what it was going to be like. I was like, oh, it’s cold, but I still ate it. It actually tasted quite good even though it was cold. And then I got back to my accommodation that I was staying in, and I don’t know if any of you remember, back in 2010, in April, that was when a massive volcano erupted, and it chucked an ash cloud up into the sky, so it grounded flights all the way around the world.

37:49 So my parents weren’t even in Antigua when I arrived. Their flight was cancelled, but it happened to be Antigua Race Week, which is basically when all these rich Americans sail around the island in their yachts and race, and when the word got out that this lunatic from Britain, who’d been on his own for four months, was about to row in, and it was unbelievable, the support that I had. You know, guys were coming up to me saying, can my wife have her photo with you?

38:12 It doesn’t happen anymore for some reason, but I’ll never forget that. And that evening a guy showed me the way, you know, book me into a hotel. Never met the guy before, and he said, you know, you can stay here, and I was dreaming of having a nice hot shower, ’cause it’s the simple things you miss when you’re out in an ocean. Having a nice clean clothes smell, of a fresh t-shirt, or a shirt that’s just come out of a tumble dryer, or whatever. You know, nice food and a clean shower.

38:39 Okay. Bathroom, bathroom, yeah, bathroom, and all that kind of stuff. And so I thought, I’m going to spend an hour under this shower, right? So I get into this shower, and I turn it on, and it’s just this trickle coming out, and it’s stone cold, and I’m like, no, I’ve just had a cold cheeseburger, and now the shower that I’d been dreaming of for so long is appalling. But it was, it made me laugh, and I’ll never forget that.

39:04 I had a rower on the show about a year ago, and he had, uh, I think, you know, rowed with a partner across the Indian Ocean, and he said when he got to the destination, a bunch of people came out to the beach and greeted him. He got out and did that, and once he said hi, he said he actually went back into the boat and went inside, and wanted to be alone. I was wondering if you felt any kind of strangeness being in a social environment after that? Well, I can tell you a really funny story about that.

39:30 Actually, I arrived, and where it was, Antigua Race Week, there were parties going on, and I knew a couple of people on the island, and you know, I’d spent four months on my own, but that night I did eventually get a proper shower, and I borrowed someone’s clothes, ’cause I had no decent clothes that you could wear out. And that evening I found myself in a club with hundreds of people everywhere, and it was really quite surreal. You know, I still had the big beard, and people knew that it was me.

40:01 It just, rowed across, here, people were trying to buy me beers and stuff, and it was really surreal. Thinking, well, actually, 12 hours ago I was still on my own, just rowing in, and had been on my own for the last four months, and now I’m here, there’s people all around me. It was, it was very, very odd actually. It wasn’t, it wasn’t. I didn’t enjoy it, and it’s something that really made me laugh.

40:26 Um, the DJ, this kind of Afro-Caribbean sort of chap got on the mic and was like, hey, I just want to give a big shout out to James Ketchell, who spent four months rowing across the Atlantic. He’s in here tonight, ladies, and I’m like, oh, that was funny, and all of a sudden the guy just came out with this quote. He was like, James, your balls must be massive. Let’s hope you can get that sorted out, ladies. And I’m just thinking, oh my god, did that guy just say that?

40:52 And I’m stood there in the middle and everyone’s looking at me. It was, it was bizarre. It was crazy. Yeah, did that work out for you? It was, it was crazy time.

41:03 Let’s talk about Everest. I want to talk about, you’re, you’re a serial adventurer, and I can kind of tell by being around you, but I can tell by being around you that you, you do, you always need a mission, right? And I know next year you’re going to, um, pedal boat across the Atlantic. I want to talk about that. I know you might go on a third attempt with your partner across the Indian Ocean, your partner with epilepsy.

41:23 I want to talk about that. Um, and it sounds like a healthy way to live, to always have projects on the horizon. You know, I think a lot of people don’t do that with their lives. So I want to get to that, but I think you’re the first London Real guest that summited Everest, and we all hear about Everest. We always hear about some people that did it, and then sometimes you hear about Playboy bunnies doing it, or old people doing it, but I really want to know what is it, what is it really like, and I want to know, you know, why did you decide to do it?

41:51 Um, you know, is it, is it hard to arrange an expedition like that? I know it’s not cheap, and then this mindset that you talked about earlier, where you’re not thinking about the summit the whole time, because I’m guessing that the reason you want a summit can affect whether you live, whether you die, whether you enjoy it, whether you hate it. Um, because some people, if they just want to take a picture and tell their friends about it, it, it might change the whole thing.

42:13 So that’s a lot of questions. That’s what I do here. But tell me about Everest, so I can, what I can do is I’ll tell you what it was like for me, because I think everyone has a different experience out there. For me it was amazing, and there’s a very stereotypical image of that, rich playboys go out and climb it. I didn’t meet anyone like that.

42:31 The guys that I met out there had remortgaged their houses, had worked tirelessly for years to get to the start line, effect to you know, and it was, it was incredible. But how it actually came about, I was, it was during my preparations for the, for the Atlantic row that I met another guy who was also rowing across the Atlantic, obviously in a different boat and at slightly different time, and he, he was a five-time Everest summiter, and we just connected, became good friends. You know, I helped him work on his project, and he helped me, and he was very academic.

43:04 He was a very intelligent doctor, but you, he wasn’t really that practical, and I was quite practical with the boat, so we just kind of became good friends. And he said, James, after the row, do you fancy going out to Everest with me? And I said, well, look, I’d love to, but let’s just take one thing at a time. I’d climbed before, but not to that kind of level, and it was always in the back of my mind, you know, potentially going out to Everest, but I sort of tried to concentrate on the task in hand, getting across.

43:31 And I got across, and I remember the phone rang when I was back home. It was my friend Rob, and he said, oh, are you coming out to Everest? And my instant reaction was to say yeah. So I said, yep, I’m in. It’s just, I knew I had to do it, and he said, great, you got six months to find £330,000.

43:48 I was like, God, how am I going to raise that kind of money? Um, I don’t know, but it was then that I thought back on, I just spent four months rowing across the Atlantic and all I did was just keep going, and it got me across the Atlantic. So if I take that mindset, if I take that concept and apply it to fundraising, surely someone is going to say yes at some point. And that is when I just hit the phones almost every day. I actually took a big risk here, because I was still working when I got back from the Atlantic, and it was very difficult to work full-time and raise the funds.

44:23 So I thought, okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I sold everything I owned and I moved back in with my parents to reduce my overheads, and I decided that I was going to quit my job and go full-time. I was going to try and raise money to get out to Everest. So that’s what I did. It was a massive risk, really, but that’s what I did.

44:43 And it’s quite funny, because I said to my boss, oh, I didn’t want to leave my job, but I said, can I have a few more months off to go out to climb Everest? And he said, are you mad? We’ve just given you six months off to row across the Atlantic, and his actual words were, on your bike, son, which I thought was quite ironic considering I did end up cycling the world. So I just thought, right, okay, I’m going to, you know, move back in with my parents and go and live at home and do this.

45:10 And every day I was picking up the telephone, making hundreds of calls, sending hundreds of emails. That’s the reality. That is what you have to do to get to the start line. You know, people see you out on Everest or rowing across an ocean, they think, whoa, this guy must be quite wealthy, he’s so lucky. But they actually don’t see the months and months of making those calls, and the rejection you get is massively demoralizing.

45:35 I mean, really demoralizing. But all of a sudden I got a lucky break. One day I was chatting to a guy who worked at Ben Sherman. They make quite good shirts, and he said, look, I can’t sponsor you, but what I can do for you is give you this spreadsheet, and there’s 300 different CEO, managing director email addresses on this spreadsheet. Why don’t you just spam every single one of them, but don’t mention I gave it to you?

45:57 And I’m like, yeah, great, and I emailed all of them, and mostly got rejections back. And it came to the last one, and it was this guy, uh, called Andrew who is the marketing director of a company called Nando’s, who make great chicken burgers. And I thought, I don’t know if I’m going to bother sending this email, because I don’t really see the connection between Nando’s and me climbing Everest. And I was so close to just not sending it, but I thought, what is it, stupid, the email is already pre-written.

46:23 I’ve literally just got to put the guy’s name in it. So I typed Andrew into the, the bit, and I sent it off, and I forgot about it, and literally half an hour later the phone rang, and it was Andrew, and his exact words were, James, I’ve just got your email, this is bloody wicked, but tell me one thing, do you actually eat Nando’s? I was like, yeah, I love it, every day I have Nando’s, which clearly I didn’t. And I said, but I can only eat lemon and herb chicken burger, which is true.

46:50 I can’t eat anything hot. I’m a bit of a girl’s blouse when it comes to kind of hot food, and he’s like, what, so you’ve rowed the Atlantic and you’re going out to Everest and you can’t eat our hot sauce? I was like, yeah, and he said, James, I love this angle, come in and I need to meet you. I’m okay, fine. So long story short, they ended up becoming my title sponsor for Everest, and I had to become Barry the Chicken.

47:11 Thankfully I didn’t have to dress up, but they tracked me up and down the mountain, and um, like, in real time, in real time, Fernand herb guy. So they used you to promote the lemon and, and they were, I didn’t really think about how they could work it, but my God, they were clever. They came up with all these slogans, chicken with altitude, and the sort of people that work in the restaurants are wearing these t-shirts, and it was unbelievable, and I thought to myself, my God, I wasn’t going to email this person.

47:41 And I started to, and other things happened that were very similar to that during the preparation for Everest, and I started to realize something, and that was, actually, the time that you can’t be bothered to do something, but you make the effort to do it. I can almost guarantee you something good will come off the back of that. Yeah, and it was, it was, things were happening for me when I couldn’t be bothered to do it, but I was making the effort, and it, it was those times where, yeah, I managed to get the funding to get out there.

48:11 I, it was very, very, very lucky. There’s this author named Steven Pressfield, and he’s got a book called The War of Art, and he’s got another book called Do the Work, and he says, um there’s this force called resistance that, you know, resists you from doing anything creative or anything ambitious, but there’s also another force that comes and actually helps you on your journey when there’s some passion. Sounds like you get both of them when you go for something, and so you get resistance, resistance, you have to power through, and then every now and then you’ll have this great moment where the world conspires to help you.

48:40 And so without Nando’s you wouldn’t have gone to Everest? I guess I would, I’d like to think I would have carried on. I mean, I did get sponsored by DHL. I was trying to think outside the box, how could I come up with these angles as to why, why is someone going to give me a load of money to go out to Everest? Why?

48:59 Well, I was climbing for a really great charity that helped young disabled children, and I came up with this kind of angle. One of them was for DHL. I wanted to try and deliver a parcel to another climber on top of Everest, to set a record as like the highest kind of delivery as such, and they were like, yeah, we love that, but then the Guinness Book of Records turned that down and said, no, you can’t do that. And I was also sponsored by an online sort of company, very similar to PayPal, actually, and I tried to set a record for the world’s highest online transaction, right, and then get us in the Guinness Book of Records.

49:37 So no, no, you can’t do that. So it was quite, I was coming up with all these different angles, but one of the things I’m most proud of, actually, was, I’ve worn glasses ever since I was six months old, and racing the motorbikes and stuff with glasses, it’s just a bit tricky, and I thought, well, when I go up on Everest I’m going to have to put these glasses on, behind, or you put goggles over the top, then you’ve got an oxygen mask, they’re all going to steam up, and I came up with this idea. I got in contact with two companies that lasered your eyes, Ultra laser, Optimax I think, and I sent them an email and said, look, this is me, this is what I’m doing, and I want you to laser my eyes for me, and I will hoist your company flag or whatever it is at the top of Everest, and it’s a great case study.

50:19 You laser a guy’s eyes and three months later he’s on top of the world. And do you know what, they ripped my arm off for it, and within 24 hours I was booked in and had my eyes lasered. It was, so I was really trying to think outside the box as to how I could come up with these angles, and yeah, I managed to get the money to get out there, and so you sold yourself into this a little bit, so you do a lot of marketing. All right, this is, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, though, just to get out there, to get the funding, to get, and when I was actually out there physically, the, so how do you prepare for Everest?

50:48 Like, and it’s in your mind. Do you read books about it? Do you learn about it? You know, um, were you ever a guy that could climb? What about the, the whole, I mean, just, yeah, I’d climbed in the pool before, but I’d only been up to just over 6,000 metres, and Everest is 8,848, so it’s just under 30,000 feet.

51:07 So when you look up at an airline flying across the sky and you see that white vapour trail, that’s almost the height of Everest. It’s a little bit higher. Um, so the cold is not too much of a problem. Um, depending on what part of the mountain you’re on, the temperatures can drop to between minus 20 or minus 40, sometimes it’s minus 40 up on the summit, Celsius. Um, yeah, yeah, okay, but um, cold, yeah, oh God, yeah.

51:32 It’s pretty cold, but actually you get a lot of confidence out of the equipment, and nowadays the equipment’s come on so much that you, it’s not, it really wasn’t that bad. I’ve felt colder walking around London. Okay. ’cause you had all the gear and the boots and stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, that makes a big difference.

51:51 And the process of doing it from start until finish, how long does it take to do an Everest? About it took me about six weeks. Okay, so you compare that to, um, you know, spending almost four months out in the Atlantic, it’s over relatively quickly, and you’re also with other people as well. Okay. And, um, well, you said it was the hardest thing you’ve ever done.

52:11 Yeah, and it’s, it’s, it’s Everest is not technically a difficult mountain to climb. To be honest, it’s actually really easy technically. It’s really more of a scramble. It’s whether you have the ability to deal with the lower levels of oxygen as you start going higher, and some people can adapt and acclimatize, and others just can’t, and they, they may be really fit individuals, but their bodies just can’t adapt, and doctors to this day still, still don’t know what gene it is that people possess that enables them to acclimatize.

52:41 Now, I was just lucky, I did acclimatize, and you know, when you get out there, it’s not a simple case of just rocking up and making your way to the summit. You’ve got to go through a series of acclimatization climbs, so you’re going up, down, up, down to the different camps, working your way up, coming back down again, so you go up and spend a few hours up there, and so you’ll go up from base camp, you’ll go up through the Khumbu Icefall and you’ll spend a night at Camp 1, and then you come back down to base camp, and then you have a few days’ rest, and then from there you go back up and bypass Camp 1 and go to Camp 2 and again spend a night there. Then I came back down, then I went back up to Camp 2, spent a night there, then went up to Camp 3, uh, and then I came back down to 2 and then back down to base camp.

53:22 And this is all a standard process that everyone knows. Everyone, even Sherpas, they won’t go, they will do acclimatization climbs. They have to, because they know that this is how your body deals with it, as you can’t go straight up. What happens over time is your body starts to produce more red blood cells that carry the oxygen around the body, and there is effectively no shortcut to the summit of Everest. You have to go through that process.

53:44 I don’t really think there would be anyone that could just arrive at base camp and make their way up to the summit without getting incredibly ill, and that also, you’re using supplementary oxygen as well, and we went on supplementary oxygen at Camp 3, which is about 7,000 metres, but it’s not like when you go scuba diving and you’ve got 100% oxygen. It’s, you’re breathing the atmospheric air that’s around you, but the oxygen is trickling in through a tube into the mask, and it, it’s topping up what you’re breathing, basically, but it makes a big, big difference. Huge difference.

54:14 What’s it like not having enough oxygen? What does it do to your brain, to your body? The best way to describe it is, imagine running a 100-metre sprint down the road and you’re really out of breath. It’s like that pretty much all the time as you go higher up, but you’re not running anywhere. You’re moving at an absolute snail’s pace, yet your heart is beating at like 180 plus beats a minute.

54:38 You’re gasping for every breath, and it takes a lot of getting used to. Um, and actually, in the beginning I found it quite intimidating, quite scary. Um, but you just, you know, kind of try and stay calm, and you do get used to it after a while. Your breathing does eventually slow down. Still, it’s very intense, and I think for me, it’s physically the hardest I’ve ever pushed myself in my entire life.

55:07 I mean, I was actually very sick coming back down. I had quite a nasty lung infection. It wasn’t really anything to do with altitude sickness, it was just I got tired and run down, and actually picked up pneumonia, and it was coming back down that I really struggled. I mean, it was thanks to my Sherpa, Doy, that got me back down, but uh, going up actually quite straightforward. It’s, and you realize, and this is again, this is all just my own experience, when I was stood on top of Everest I stood there for about 15 minutes, and it was all, it was all quite surreal.

55:38 I, I knew where I was, and I was taking in the view, but it was almost like I wasn’t there, and I, I knew I had to get back down quickly, because when you get to the top, you’re only halfway. You still got to get back down, and that is considerably harder. And I, I think I, I had this adrenaline and excitement that was rushing through my body that was driving me to the top, and it was that that got me there. And I remember we took a few dor, in fact it was the 16th of May in 2011, and it was just Doy and I, we were, there were more people that summited that day, but at the time when I was there I was one of the last guys to summit actually that day.

56:18 It was 8:30 in the morning, and it was just Doy and I, there was no one else on top of the world, so for that 15 minutes we literally were the only people up there. But I quickly sort of started to panic and realized that actually I’ve not done it. I’m in fact only halfway. I’ve still got to get back down, and as we started making our way back down I just lost the ability to breathe I literally, I was taking one step and I was out of breath, and I had to rest, and I remember Doy was going berserk, saying, look, you’ve got to get moving, because if you don’t, you’re going to run out of oxygen and you’re going to get cold, and you’re simply going to die.

56:54 There’s nothing I can do about it. That’s where most people die on the way down. Exactly. And he kept, Doy kept shouting at, this, your Sherpa. Yeah, sorry, Doy was my Sherpa.

57:02 Yeah, he, I think he had 10 summits to his name at this point. So I mean, I owe him so much. Just an amazing, and actually, the Sherpas are the real heroes out on Everest. No one. There’s a very, very few people on this planet could go out to Everest and climb themselves and be self-sufficient without Sherpas.

57:20 Very, very handful of people might be able to, and those guys are really the guys that make everything happen. Without them nothing could happen up there. Okay, anyway, so I’m sort of heading back down, and Doy keeps shouting at me, do you want to be like that Japanese guy? I’m thinking, what the hell are you talking about? And as I get further down, um, this is coming back down to Camp 4, so we’re still high up above 8,000 meters, in what’s known as the death zone, so you’re not acclimatizing, you’re slowly dying.

57:46 And you can only survive, maybe, sort of, everyone’s different, but maybe 24 to 48 hours if you’re up there. If you’re up there for longer than that, you’re going to deteriorate rapidly, and at some point you will die fairly quickly. So the idea is to get back down as quickly as possible, but as safely as possible, and Doy kept saying, you do you want to be like that Japanese guy? And I just didn’t understand what he was saying, but as I got further down I saw these sort of oxygen, what I thought were oxygen cylinders, because every now and then you see a few empty ones.

58:15 Everest is not a rubbish dump that people make out. It didn’t appear so in from my kind of perspective, and then all of a sudden I got closer, and I realized it wasn’t, it was in fact this guy that Doy had been referring to, this Japanese guy. And what had actually happened, he was climbing a few days before me, and he unfortunately had a heart attack and died instantly. And then, at the time his team couldn’t bring his body back down. And it’s again a complete myth that there’s dead bodies everywhere up on Everest, because the locals don’t like leaving bodies on Everest, it’s a bad omen, so they try to bring them down if they can.

58:52 And I remember, you know, unless you’re a doctor you don’t see dead bodies in your everyday life, really, do you? And I got closer to this guy, and I didn’t spot him on the way up because he was slightly off the trail. But now it was light, ’cause you climb through the night on the way up, and you’re just using a head torch to illuminate the area in front of you. And I got quite close to him. I sort of walked past him, and I remember he was lying flat with his arms outstretched straight.

59:15 Um, his eyes were shut. It just looked like he was asleep, to be honest, and he looked quite calm, but he was frozen solid like a rock. I could see just in his hair and the way he was frozen in place, and I just thought, gosh, this poor chap’s never going to see his family again, and they’re never going to see him again. And I think, certainly for me, it was the biggest kick up the ass you’ll ever get, because what happens is you’re so tired and you’re so fatigued that you, with all good intentions, you sit down to have a rest.

59:48 You mean, I’d say to Doy, you know, I’m just taking five minutes. And if it wasn’t for Doy, who was still there saying, no, no, don’t stop, get a move on, get, and he was whacking me, punching me in the arm, saying, come on, come on, if it wasn’t for him I would have simply fallen asleep and never woken up again. And that’s what’s happened. I was literally falling asleep standing up. I was so tired and fatigued, and that is probably a level of fatigue that I will never, I wouldn’t have thought I would ever experience that again.

1:00:17 I did manage to get back down. It took 5 days to get back to base camp, thanks to Doy. Was that a long time? Because that’s quite, yeah, that’s quite a long time. Okay.

1:00:27 So it’s very dangerous. Like you’re saying, the physical climate itself, um, doesn’t, isn’t necessarily, but the technicalities behind it are easy. Okay, easy. If you brought Everest down to sea level you could just drug up it, right? But it’s because of the death zone and all those dangers, and you don’t know what’s happening to you.

1:00:44 And so like you said, you’re just like, I’ll sit down and rest, but then you’ll die. That’s the problem, and you’re not used to your body reacting in a strange way. So you’re like, I don’t know, this is weird. And the thing is, one minute you can be fine, and literally 10 minutes later you can be dead. So it’s things change up there very, very quickly.

1:01:02 Now, luckily I managed to get back down. Um, I, um, I, I, I flew back home to Heathrow actually, and I remember this. I still couldn’t breathe. I was having great difficulty, and I was pushing my trolley through the airport, and I had my bags on it, and I was really out of breath just pushing this trolley, and my parents had come to the airport to meet me, and I remember it clearly. It was, um, it was Terminal 5, flew in on a British Airways flight at Heathrow, and they was stood there, and I waved to my mom as I saw her in the distance, and she looked up at me and her face just dropped, and she said, James, you look like a druggie.

1:01:39 What the hell’s wrong? I said, it’s, it’s great to see you. Um, but, uh, I’d lost so much weight. I was so gaunt in the face, and I was quite badly burnt, and the sun’s quite powerful out there as well. I looked terrible, and I couldn’t even push this trolley through the airport, so I remember, um, my mom was like, I think we better go to the doctors, and I was like, yeah, that’s probably a good idea.

1:02:02 So I went to the doctors the same day that I got back, and the doctor said to me, look, just, he listened to my chest. He said, go straight to the hospital right now, go right now to the hospital. I was like, okay, so my parents drove me up to the hospital, and the guy x-rayed my chest, said the doctor, and they put this x-ray up on a whiteboard in front of me, and he said, ah, Mr Ketchell, no wonder you can’t breathe. You’ve got a severe lung infection.

1:02:25 See all these spots on your lungs? This is a big problem. I said, well, all right, you give me some at Le it was at least I knew what was going on, ’cause at the time I didn’t know what was going on. I was strong and powerful going up, but then coming back down I just, I was in a right mess, and people who were around me were saying, what’s wrong, why are you so slow? We don’t understand, and I couldn’t even answer the question myself, because I didn’t know what was wrong.

1:02:50 It was playing on my mind, so when I got back and found out that I actually had quite a nasty lung infection, it was confirmation that, hah, that’s why I was so slow, because I had pneumonia. So at least I now know. Did it, was it daunting to know that you were actually probably a lot more danger than you, than you knew? It was probably a good thing that I didn’t really know, but I remember I said to the guy, oh, just give me some antibiotics and I’ll go home, and he was like, well, no, no, you need to stay in hospital.

1:03:15 I said, oh, right. So the day that I got back from Everest was the day that I then spent seven days in hospital, and it was really only then that I realized I’d just climbed the world’s highest mountain. Um, doctors who didn’t have anything to do with me were coming in saying, excuse me, I just want to shake your hand. I understand you got back from Everest. I’m like, oh, that’s very kind of you, thanks, and it was at that point I thought, wow, yeah, I suppose I have just climbed the world’s highest mountain.

1:03:41 How did that change you? Everest uh, I think it changed me in a way. I tell you one thing, it really, really taught me never judge a book by its cover, ’cause when I was out there there’s lots of different people from all around the world that will go out and try and climb Everest for whatever reason. Everyone’s got their own reason, and I saw people that I thought you haven’t got a hope in hell of getting up there. They’re on supplementary oxygen at base camp and they’re coughing and spluttering, they can’t walk more than 10 steps without stopping, and I’m thinking, no way, actually they all did that one thing and they, um, somehow managed to keep going and blew me down.

1:04:20 The people who I didn’t think would get to the top did, and the guys who were particularly strong, you know, boasting about how many marathons they’d run and been doing x amount of gym work every week, they got sick and had to go home, and the one thing I liked about Everest I was climbing with a guy, quite a successful businessman, very wealthy guy, but Everest is a real leveler. Doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, it’s all the same once you get up there. And a guy who’s spent, you know, the last year who hasn’t got a penny to his name, trying to raise the sponsorship, get sponsored by Nando’s and somehow managed to make it happen.

1:04:58 He is, that guy is no different to the next guy who could be a multi-millionaire. That’s one thing I quite like about expeditions in general. It’s a real leveler. I certainly learned that on Everest, is you don’t ever write anyone off and never judge a book by its cover. Good lesson.

1:05:13 Your, uh, ankle, did it bother you up there? Well, thankfully the ankle was never a problem, because I had large boots on, which provide really good support, so I never had a problem. So it’s just really, really lucky. You mentioned your parents earlier. If I asked your parents why does James do what he does, what would they tell me?

1:05:31 Because I’m an absolute lunatic is probably what they’d say. I don’t know, they might say that, but then if I ask them again, what would they tell me? I, I’d like to think that they would probably say the reason I do what I do is because I like doing it and it makes me happy. And I say this to everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, every human being is good at something or a number of things, and I just, by pure luck, happen to find out that I’ve got this knack for surviving and somehow coming back and telling stories, and that’s what I love.

1:06:01 And so when you find out what you love, you take that and you run with it. And I’m not doing anything special at all. I’m just lucky enough that I found something I love and I’m trying to figure out how I can do more of it, and, you know, try and inspire other people to pursue whatever it is that they want to do. You certainly don’t have to be an adventurer. The world would be a ludicrous place if everyone was like me.

1:06:22 But, um, and from there you’ve gone cycled around the world, 18,000 miles. Yeah, I was lying in hospital actually, literally when I got back from Everest, and, uh, I, that’s where you have all your epiphanies. Yeah, do you like the hospital? I, I spent quite a bit of time in hospital for some reason. Maybe you’re trying to get back.

1:06:39 You have your greatest brainstorms in the hospital. I do. Yeah. I, I, I was lying in bed and I thought to myself with pneumonia, yeah, I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be good to cycle around the world? And I I got out of hospital, and I went through that same process that I did for the Atlantic, and now, admittedly, it was still difficult, but it came just a little bit easier, because, you had the credibility.

1:07:02 I stood on top of the world. I rowed across the Atlantic, and it was tough, but I managed to make it happen, and I got the money to go around the world. And to cycle around the world, you’ve got to cover a minimum of 18,000 miles to say that you have cycled the world, and you need to travel in either an east or a westerly direction, and, um, is this a Guinness requirement? Yeah, and cross the Equator twice. Okay, so, but to be honest, no one really cares how many miles you’ve cycled.

1:07:28 It is what it is, but I wanted to sort of conform to that and say, well, I have actually cycled the world, but I didn’t want to be, because loads of people have cycled around the world, but I didn’t want to be just another British lunatic sort of fulfilling my own dreams. And I do a lot of work with young people. Um, I sort of fell into speaking quite a few years ago. I’ve somehow got this knack to be able to, uh, connect with young people, probably because I’m a bit young myself in the head, perhaps.

1:07:54 I don’t know. You’re good at connecting with people. I mean, I’ve had people in that chair that, like, on paper have done greater things, but if they can’t connect and, uh, and inspire people, then it doesn’t matter. And yet you, you, you, you do, you notice this, very kind, you do this. I just chat about stuff that I love.

1:08:11 That’s all I do, but you found that you can talk to children as well. Yeah, I’ve got this ability to be able to connect with people, um, and I just love doing it. I sort of fell into speaking quite a few years ago, and when I got back from Everest it really, really kind of picked up, and I had some really good footage that I shot on the summit and going through the ice, for across all the ladders and stuff. Those ladders look scary over these crevices. Are you just one step away from dying there?

1:08:35 Well, yeah, I mean, if you was to fall off, you, good night Vienna. You’ve got a big problem, but I mean, they’re so deep they probably don’t even have a bottom. You just look down and it goes dark, but you get a lot of confidence after a while. You just look where you want to go, just one step at a time, and don’t look down. It’s not that difficult.

1:08:51 I’ve got some really good footage actually. I’ll send it to you. I saw footage, and some of that stuff on YouTube, it’s really good. The cycling, when you did it, well, when you got back from Everest you get a lot of street cred, and then people want to hear you. Does that help a lot?

1:09:06 Oh, that helped a lot. And then the cycling, what made your cycle different? Because you said you didn’t want, um, I had this goal, and that was to speak in a school in every country. So I passed through 20 different countries, and I spoke in a school in every country. I spoke to over 10,000 young people as I went around the world, just encouraging them to pursue their own goals and their dreams, because you know, young people get told you can’t do this, you can’t do that.

1:09:31 But actually there’s nothing you can’t do if you want something enough and you’re prepared to do that one thing, and that’s just stay focused and keep going. And I remember one of the doctors actually said to me, you know, you’re in a bad way, you’re probably not going to be able to do this kind of stuff anymore, or do the things that you want to do. And it’s funny looking back on that now, because actually I guess I’ve been quite lucky. But if you want something enough, there is always a way to figure out how to get it.

1:09:59 Always, always just break the problem down into pieces. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and if this kind of might sound a bit harsh, I don’t mean it to, but if you’re not getting what you want or where you’re going, it’s very easy to say, oh, it’s not working out, this hasn’t happened for me, this person didn’t do this for me, or, but actually, if you think, okay, well, what did I do today that is going to have an impact on me achieving what I want to achieve? And if you honestly can put your head on your pillow at night when you go to bed and say, God, I did all that I could today, I guarantee you you’ll make happen whatever you want to make happen.

1:10:36 It’s when you start finding excuses, and a, this didn’t happen because this person didn’t do this for me, or, you know, and if it’s, it’s kind of like this kind of protocol of just, all, never ever give up, always keep moving, doing something towards what you want to achieve, and you’ll get there in the end, and that it’s so simple, but it never failed. And I’ve been quite fortunate in my quest for sponsorship over the last few years. I’ve met quite a few very successful people, and I noticed something about all of them, and that is they’re not actually necessarily that smart.

1:11:16 They’re no smarter than the average person on the street. There’s one thing that they do, and they do more, and that is they’re just more proactive. If you are more proactive, then the next person, you are going to get more results. You are going to get more. It’s as simple as that.

1:11:32 You know, I say to I have, I, I support quite a lot of young adventurers who are trying. I’m helping out some guys at the moment who are trying to go to Antarctica, um, in 2018, and I sort of say to the guys, you know, look, I know most of the time that you don’t really get anywhere with all this kind of sponsorship stuff, but you have to go through the 95% rejection to find the 5% that would say yeah, I love what you’re doing, I’ll take a punt on you. I, I’ll support you, and it’s like, if, if something’s not happening, do more, do more, and it, it it’s really simple, it, it will work out in the end.

1:12:08 So yeah, I, I do quite a lot with, um, young people, and I managed to, yeah, I managed to speak to quite a few young people when I went around the world, and I also spoke at some Scout groups as well. I’m an ambassador for the Scouts, right? So you’ve got Bear Grylls, who’s the chief Scout. Yeah, Bear gave you a shout out. He’s a super nice guy, and I sit underneath him as an ambassador, and basically that means I go around to different Scout groups and just hang out with them and chat and tell them stories, and you know, try and, uh, share some of my fun and some of my adventures that I’ve had with these guys, and help them to achieve whatever fun and whatever adventures they want to kind of go on as well.

1:12:41 And it’s funny actually, because when I got back from the world, well, it was before I cycled around the world that I was speaking in a Scout group, and that’s when I met Ash, the guy that I recently tried to run across the Indian Ocean with. Yes. And he said to me, James, I, I want to row across the Indian Ocean, and I said, I think that’s brilliant, go for it and he said, I want to do it with you. And I said, well, okay, I’m about to cycle around the world, but actually let’s maybe pick this up when I get back.

1:13:08 And I say this to people: actions speak louder than words. Anyone can talk a good game. Anyone can, but Ash, instead of going off and saying, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, he just quietly went off. He started building a website. He started working out ways of how we could try and reach out to potential sponsors to make it happen.

1:13:25 I thought, gee, man, this guy, this guy is displaying the qualities of someone that really wants something. And then when I found out about his background, um, he had had epilepsy ever since he was a young boy, and he had Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a type of cancer. The poor guy almost died. It was his third round of chemo that saved him, and I thought, wow, this guy really wants this, and he’s got a hell of a story. And that, and, um, yeah, that’s how the, uh, the Indian, and that’s what speaks to you is the actions.

1:13:57 When you see people taking action, then that motivates you to, to get, you meet you must meet a lot of people that propose a lot of ideas to you, and hundreds, so you just wait to see action. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, they fished you too out of the ocean a couple months ago. Um, the tankers came to your aid, right? One of these boats actually came and picked you up, which I didn’t know they even bother doing that.

1:14:21 No, they have to. So what happens if you get, if you need to be rescued in an ocean? It’s the law that the closest vessel will come to your R. They’re not allowed to say no, we can’t be bothered, we’re on a tight schedule, just leave them there. It doesn’t work like that.

1:14:35 They have to come and pick us up. Okay, I yeah, so you’re on this rowboat with a guy with epilepsy, um, you’re trained to deal with his epileptic seizures to a certain extent, um, but now you’re out there, you’re, you’re hitting some heavy waves, your boat’s getting tossed a few times. What, what happened? Yeah, so we were out there, we were, was about five days into our second attempt. Our first attempt we had to come back.

1:14:58 We had a couple of issues with our steering system on the boat, so we lost the ability to steer the boat, which is quite important, so we, we got towed back in, and we, we sorted all that out, and on the second attempt we were sort of a week in, so we were a good few hundred miles off the coast, and we were making good progress. Um, and then the next thing we knew, the weather started to, the wind started to change, so instead of blowing us across the Indian Ocean it started blowing us back to Australia, so we deployed something called a par anchor. It’s like a big parachute.

1:15:25 It sits in the water, and it stops you getting blown back, or it minimizes the loss. It slows down your loss of ground when you’re getting blown back, but all of a sudden the seas started to build. Now, I’ve been in big seas before, but Ash hadn’t, and he was dealing with it very well actually, and all of a sudden they started getting a lot bigger, so I got on the satellite phone. We had a weather router, a guy out in the US who was doing all our forecasting for us, and he was really good actually, and he said, look, James, actually the last couple of days some low pressure systems have come together and they’ve formed quite a nasty storm, and it’s going to get a lot worse.

1:16:04 You’re experiencing the first part of it. So I’m thinking, great. So, you know, we, it’s, it’s a bit like what I described earlier, you know, you’re getting chucked around all over the place, and there’s nothing much you can do about it. You just got to ride it out. So you’re inside the cabin and you close the door, ’cause there’s a hatch, but in it’s so hot still, so it’s like a baking, like a sauna corner, but you can’t open the hatch door, ’cause a wave will come in and just flood everything out.

1:16:29 So it’s quite an unpleasant environment at times. You have to close it for hours on end. Yeah, you do have a vent to get some air in, but it’s not that effective. Um, and it’s the, it’s the seas start building big time, and it’s the sound. It’s like when you hear a large wave that’s as high as a two or three story building coming toward you.

1:16:50 It’s like a train going past you. You can feel the vibration and the sound. Bang, it just hits the boat hard, and it’s the sound and the force and the ferociousness that these these waves hit the boat, and the first time it rolled, it happened quite quickly. You know, Ash and I are lying next to each other. It’s quite tight there, there’s not much room to move around.

1:17:12 Um, and it’s like, um, it went dark very quickly, and then it happened in like a second, so the boat went over, and it just came up, so the boat’s designed to come back up anyway, so we both, like, gosh, you know, we just rolled. You know, are you okay? And we’re like, yeah, yeah, we’re both fine. And then, all of a sudden, about half an hour later, I heard this huge roar, and you know that the boat is going to get hit hard. So the wave is crashing, for that roar, it’s already crashing on itself as it’s coming toward you.

1:17:42 Yeah, so I used to think that waves would only break at the beach. Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s not the case. Waves break like they do at the beach in the middle of an ocean, and they actually break. Um, yeah, it’s quite frightening.

1:17:54 And anyway, so this wave hit the boat hard. I’ve never been hit harder, and I’ve been in some pretty rough situations, and it literally threw the boat up in the air and rolled us over, but as it rolled us over it threw Ash up, who was lying next to me, and as he was up in the air the boat came around violently, and he hit his head on an instrument panel, which is up towards my sort of right-hand side, and it was almost a bit like that motorbike accident I had years ago. All of a sudden things just went in slow motion, and I just saw him bang, and it was the impact, and it was the thud, the thud, the sound.

1:18:32 I’ll never forget, it was horrible, and then he actually fell on top of me and was completely unconscious, and I looked at him expecting to see sort of blood just everywhere. Now, thankfully there was no blood, but he was, he was, Sparco, he was completely out, so I thought, what the hell am I going to do here? You know, he did eventually come around and was showing signs of concussion, so really at that point the row’s over. It’s about safety, because that’s scary to watch.

1:19:01 You could have some, he’s got a partner at home, he’s got three kids, um, and it was my responsibility. I’m the guy with the experience. It was my responsibility to get us across and look after him, so that’s what I had to prioritize, and I remember I activated an EPIRB, which is an emergency positioning indicating radio beacon, and actually that goes back to Falmouth in the UK, so well, wherever you are in the world, Falmouth Coast Guard will initially coordinate it when you let off your emergency beacon, and of course they got in contact with Australia search and rescue, um, and they have all of our details on file when we register our EPIRB, so our satellite phone number next to the K details, everything.

1:19:41 So the sat phone rang, and it was Australian search and rescue. They said, look, we’ve got your position, you know what’s going on, so I explain what happened. They said, okay, fine, you’re too far out for a helicopter to pick you up. Um, so I’m on the sat phone chatting to them while the boat is still being smashed to pieces, not to pieces, but we’re getting hit hard, and I’m just thinking, God, I hope it doesn’t roll again. And he said, okay, look, we’ve, we can’t send a helicopter out to you, you, you, but we’re almost 300 miles offshore, so it’s too far out, but what we’re going to do is divert a tank, a commercial vessel, which is a tanker, crude oil tanker, called the Dubai Charm, and they will be with you in two hours.

1:20:19 I was okay, fine, and it was the longest two hours of my life. I kept looking at my watch thinking that must be at least half an hour, and it was like five minutes. I’m like, God, and you’re still getting hit with waves. Still getting hit by the waves. Is he, is he still unconscious, or Ash is conscious at this point?

1:20:35 So he’s awake. Um, no, no seizures, though. He’s no, no, no, thankfully he didn’t have a seizure on the boat. And, um, eventually our VHF radio goes, so that means that the Dubai Charm is close enough to communicate on a VHF radio, because that works on line of sight, and it was the captain saying, look, we, we have your position on the radar, but, but we don’t have a visual of you. We can’t see you.

1:20:57 And, and that’s understandable, ’cause we had a small little white boat, and the waves, you know, six or seven metres high, so, and they’re crashing as well, so they have what you call these sort of whitecaps, so it all looks the same. Our boat would just blend into it. It’d never be able to see us, so I went outside and let off a flare, and straight away said, right, I’ve got you. I mean, I looked at this tanker coming straight towards us and thought, how can you not see us?

1:21:18 You’re about to run us over, but it wasn’t until I got onto the tanker and had that same view myself, moving, lighting flares off and stuff. Yeah, so I let the flare off anyway. So they said, right, we’ve got you, so what we’re going to do is bring the tanker up behind you to shield you from the oncoming wind and the waves, and bring you up against the side of us. We’ll tie a line onto your boat, and you can then come up and I’m thinking, right, okay, in theory this sounds fine, but we’re on a five-metre boat, and in fact they were, I think it was a 280 metres long tanker, very similar to the one that almost ran me down in the Atlantic, and it’s like 40 to 50 foot to climb up onto the deck.

1:21:55 So, and Ash had damaged his shoulder, so he was unable to climb, so I’m thinking, I just don’t know how the hell, and I could see Ash was really anxious at this point, thinking, how are we going to physically get, they’re so close, but we may not even be able to get on board. So what happened is there’s only about 20 crew on board this, this tanker, and they’re all up on the deck, so they’re throwing ropes at us to try and, so I can attach the line and pull the boat in, but the ropes have weights on the end of them, so that they can throw them further, and instead of throwing them over the boat so we can sort of catch the rope, they were throwing them at the boat. So these, these sort of ropes are like projectile missiles flying past us, hitting the side of the boat, and I’m thinking, it’s going to take our heads off in a minute.

1:22:40 So I, I got on the VHF radio, I said, look, throw the ropes over us. So they threw them over, and we, I managed to tie. Ash at this point was still lying in the cabin. I was out on deck now, which was quite rough, so we got the rope tied on that, pulled the boat up against the side of the tanker. But the problem that we had, the tanker was so heavy and so massive that it literally just stayed still in the water, but we’re still going up and we’re rising and dropping six or seven metres with the seas, and they sort of thrown all these, this netting down for some reason, which got caught up in the boat and got caught on the gates, which is where the oars sit.

1:23:14 Now what was happening as we were rising up and down, the netting was catching on that and was trying to roll the boat over. So I’m saying to the guys, lift this netting up, so they, but they were looking down. I could see what was happening, so they pulled the netting up and then they lowered. I said, you know, you think you might die here? I’m well, if we had gone overboard, that would have been it.

1:23:34 I don’t think they would have been able to recover us, ’cause they wouldn’t have come off the boat. No, no, no. You had life vest on, but who cares in those way? Yeah, totally irrelevant. Um, so Ash was unable to really do anything, and I, how are we going to get Ash up?

1:23:49 So I shouted up to them, look, have you got a harness? And thankfully they did, so they lowered a harness down, and Ash came out of the cabin and he got into the harness, and the harness was attached to a rope, but what was happening is, where they’d thrown other ropes down, the line, or the rope that was attached to Ash’s harness, was getting caught up in all the other ropes, so we’re going up and down, and the ropes are getting tangled, and I, and you know, Ash is connected to it at this point, and I could see that Ash was going to get pulled off the boat and caught up in a mess of ropes, and the guys looking down could see the same thing as well. That would have been a disaster.

1:24:24 So Ash had to jump off the back of our boat into the water, connected to the harness, to get free of all this mess of ropes, and, as you can imagine, he was quite reluctant to just jump off the back of the boat, but he did. And then I remember, there must have, he’s quite a small, petite guy anyway, and there must have been sort of five or six guys on the end of this, this rope, and they just hauled him up. It was like watching a rag doll just fly up, and so I was like, at that point I knew Ash was safe, like, okay, he’s safe.

1:24:51 And then I sort of turned to my left, and, and, and, and the boat that I was on had just come up to the crest on the top of a wave, and I saw this sort of rope ladder dangling in front of me, and without even thinking, like when you’re driving a car, you swerve if something comes out in front of you, I just grabbed this rope ladder, and, and jumped onto it, and, and as I jumped onto it, the boat that I was on, our rowboat, just dropped away from below me, and I’m sort of clinging to the side of this rope ladder on this tanker, looking down, looking back at the boat, thinking, how did this happen? How, my, my arms are throbbing, they’re painful, they’re pumped where I’m holding so tight, and again it came back to that kind of accident. It all just went slow motion, and I’m thinking, right, okay, and I thought back to all the years I spent in the gym when I was a young teenager, curling weights and squatting, and I just thought, don’t fail me now, and I just went back to that theory.

1:25:45 I, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other, and I thought, if I keep taking one step, I will get to the top, and the guys were looking down at me. Um, but I was not attached to a line or anything, so if I’d fallen off, that would have been it. That’s it. So I remember, I, I managed it, it took a couple of minutes, but I managed to get up on, on, on the boat, and as I got close enough, the guy sort of pulled me in, and I saw Ash standing there. I was like, God, thank God he’s okay, and I, I remember hugging him, and he was like, yeah, I’m okay.

1:26:14 I’m like, okay, fine. So I said to the guys, look, take us to the captain immediately, ’cause I need to thank this guy, ’cause the skill that his guys, and he had, that they were able to position this colossal thing right next to us, and the way he coordinated things, I mean, there were, they’re professionals. It was unbelievable, so we needed to thank him, so we went up to the deck, or the bridge actually, at the top of the boat, where they’re controlling everything from.

1:26:41 And the guy opened the door, and it was this thick fog of smoke, like a smoke screen. I thought, what the hell? And I’m greeted by this Indian crew, most wonderful people you’ve ever met, and they all stood there, there were cigarettes. Like, wow, that was crazy, wasn’t it? Do you want a beer?

1:26:58 The first thing they said to us was, do you want a beer and a cigarette? And I’m like, I’ll have a beer, and it was so bizarre. We’d literally just been rescued, and five minutes later we’re drinking a beer up on the bridge. I’ll never ever forget that. Ever.

1:27:13 Yeah, yeah. I had no idea that, like, a guy’s in a tanker boat would rally, you know, that much, because if they hadn’t done a few of those steps, you guys might not have made it. Probably wouldn’t have made it. I, I think it was probably the closest I’ve been in a few very hairy situations, where I thought, this is not good, but that certainly ranks up there, one of the highest. But, uh, yeah, you know, we escaped with the story to tell.

1:27:40 And it’s funny, because I was quite worried when I got back. I thought, oh, gee, you know, we failed. We haven’t managed to get to Mauritius, which is really disappointing, and I was worried what people would say, you know, but the reaction we got was the complete opposite to what I thought we were going to have. You know, the profile of the project went up tenfold. We raised a fair bit for charity in there.

1:28:04 The whole awareness side for the, for young epilepsy just went out massively, and we had media coverage all around the world. It was Global News, and, um, actually, it was, we escaped with a story to tell, and it’s funny, isn’t it, how people are kind of more interested in things that don’t necessarily go to plan? That you had, we arrived in Mauritius and said, well, yeah, we made it, but you know, we rowed a long way and we’re quite tired. Fancy something to eat?

1:28:33 But that’s about it. Yeah, it wouldn’t really have got the attention that it got, but I couldn’t believe that this was Global News going around the world, and when I got back into the UK, um, yeah, it was unbelievable. That’s fascinating. Are you going to go for a third attempt? Well, Ash, Ash will not.

1:28:49 He’s, he can’t, he can’t get the time away from his family, which I totally understand, so they pulled the plug on that, but I think Ash is doing really well actually. He’s, he’s doing quite a lot of speaking about, and he’s using his experiences to, to visit schools and, uh, chat to other people and raise awareness about epilepsy, which is one of our key objectives, and he’s doing a really good job of that, but he probably won’t be going out there again. Okay, so no, no plans for that.

1:29:14 Yeah, I will think about doing it. So what’s the craziest adventure that you are thinking in the back of your mind? Like, I’m going to do the Mars mission, or like you know, I know you have some plans next, next year, for, you know, pedaling, doing a pedal boat across the Atlantic, for, uh, for rowing around the UK. But like, is there something in the back of your mind where you’re like, I’m going to do something completely nuts? Do you know what, things, yeah, there are lots of things that I’d love to do.

1:29:43 Um, but I, it’s funny how doors of opportunity just naturally open when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone. Years ago I set out to row across the Atlantic. I didn’t really set out to climb Everest, cycle the world and become the only person that’s done that, although it’s only a combination of three, it’s not that big a deal really, and then I end up rowing across the Indian Ocean. It just happened, and I find that when these doors open, when you take them, it’s quite amazing where it leads you.

1:30:18 So I will probably continue doing this, certainly for the next few years. I’ve got some interesting projects on the go that you said I’ll tell you about, but in terms of is there anything I’d really like to do? I’d love, I actually have a little bit of a, a dream, and that is, I love, I love flying. I love aircraft, and I’d love to set up my own foundation where I take young people who would ordinarily not get the opportunity, or perhaps they’re disabled, or things are difficult for them.

1:30:47 I’d love to take them flying. Um, it’s just, it’s a little, it’s not really a big adventure, but it’s just a little goal of mine. I want to set my own sort of academy up, where I take young people flying, ’cause I love being up high and surveying and looking out over the landscape. There’s something about that that I find relaxing, and I just love it. Let me ask you about that comfort zone thing you said, because I mean, you’re all about getting out of your comfort zone.

1:31:11 People talk about it a lot. We talk a lot about it on this show, um, but you know, it gets a lot of lip service too, and some people can get out of their comfort zone every now and then, but then of course the great thing about the comfort zone is it swallows you back up, right? And, uh, soon as you get into your out-of-your-comfort-zone, you don’t want to be there. You want to go back into your, and even the most um, ambitious and crazy people in the world, we all tend to still want to go back to that comfort zone, because, by definition, right?

1:31:35 So how do you, what do you tell people when you know you try to suggest ways to get out of the zone? How do you get it out of it yourself? You know, what are your thoughts on that? So, I think, and I’ll say this certainly to people that ask me very similar questions to that, and that is everything is temporary, so when you are out of your comfort zone don’t stress, because it might be in the next hour, it might be tomorrow, or it might be the next week. You will be back in your safety zone, or right.

1:32:02 Like those first few days of the Atlantic, you’re massively out of your comfort zone, and it’s like, oh God. And I’m saying this to the guy that I’m taking across the Atlantic in the pedalo. I was saying this to him the other day. You will be out of your comfort zone to begin with, but don’t panic, don’t stress, because very soon you’ll get used to it, and you’ll be back in your kind of comfort zone, and that is, you know, you’ve, you, you also, you, you find out who you really are, what you’re really made of when you’re outside of your comfort zone.

1:32:34 And I quite like that, in a bizarre way. It’s where the fun is, right? Yeah, absolutely. Can I ask you a few questions about your own personal success? Everyone that sits here, I try to just kind of get into their head, and I wondered if there’s something that you changed up about your daily routine or your mindset that you noticed over the years that had a big change in kind of the output of the things you were able to accomplish?

1:32:57 Maybe it’s something daily, like I said, or maybe it’s just a mindset, or the way that you self-talk. Is there anything that you remember back to the rest of the show. What’s coming for you next year? Uh, just, you know, if you can quickly tell me about the pedal thing or the also the rowing around the UK? Both sound pretty fascinating.

1:33:40 What’s on, what’s on your plate? So, in, well, actually, um, in two weeks’ time I’m heading out to the Amazon in Brazil, just to do a series of online films with a guy that I know, um, just, just for fun really, but it should be really good. So that’s, I’ve got that going on in a couple of weeks, but, um, I’m crossing the Atlantic in a pedalo, which sounds crazy, ’cause when you think of pedal, like in Hyde Park on the C, yeah, and you, that’s the kind of thing you think of, with a slide on it, that you’d see on the beach, but this is this is quite an advanced bit of kit.

1:34:09 It’s basically an ocean rowing boat that’s been converted to have a recumbent and cycling position. So you sit and cycle. It’s very comfortable actually, and that drives a propshaft with a propeller on the end, and that is what propels us through the water. More efficient than rowing. It’s a little bit different, sometimes, it is, sometimes it isn’t.

1:34:27 Um, so yeah, a guy got in contact with me, really nice guy actually, uh, who, who wanted to do it. It’s not really my project, and he said, look, I really want to do this, but I can’t do it on my own, I want you to do it with me, and I said, I met the guy, because if, if you’re going to spend, you know, a fair amount of time with someone in very close proximity, you need to know that you like that person, you think they’re a good person. And I met this guy, and he was a great guy, very enthusiastic.

1:34:56 Yeah, slightly older. I think he’s just approaching 60, but there’s no age limit or barrier to pursuing whatever your own dreams. Just because you’re slightly older doesn’t mean that you’re over the hill at all. In fact, do you talk out there on the water, or you just zip? Yeah, no, we’ll talk.

1:35:12 We’ll listen to, I try to learn Spanish but I’m terrible, um, but I’ll keep trying, okay? On my audio books. So yeah, so we’re, we’re departing uh, um, actually, Gran Canaria, which is in the Canary Islands, anyway, and we’re, Ro, not, Ro, G, to get used to it. We’re pedaling to Antigua, so it should be really good. Okay, that’s exciting.

1:35:32 So but it’s really about the guy that I’m taking having a good experience and enjoying it and getting us both across safely, and I, I think we will do and we’re again, we’re, we’re raising funds and awareness for a fantastic charity that helps young disabled, terminally ill children. So all that is really important to me. So that’s, and around the UK, is that something, the UK, is my own personal journey. Yeah, that’s quite a tough one. So summer 2016, I’m looking at trying to row solo, so on my own, and non-stop, uh, and unsupported around Great Britain.

1:36:06 So I’ll start underneath Tower Bridge, I’ll come out and work my way clockwise, uh, around Great Britain, and it’s just over 1,700 miles. So it’s quite a long way. People don’t think of it as, like, it’s almost 2,000 miles, so it’s two-thirds of the Atlantic journey. Exactly. And the thing is, you’re constantly battling the current, winds, and the tides.

1:36:26 So yeah, and you can’t, you don’t go into port at night. You, you actually, you’re rowing so close to the coast that you drop an anchor, and it sort of secures the boat, and then you pull it up and you carry on again. Um, ’cause where you’re rowing solo you can’t just let it drift, otherwise, yeah, you could get smashed up onto rocks or run down by a ferry or something. So it’s much more dangerous than it’s, um, it’s just different. And no, no, no, no one has ever managed to successfully row solo around Great Britain as of yet.

1:36:54 I’m not doing it for that reason. I’m doing it because I love ocean rowing and I love being out there. But, um, yeah, so watch this space. Next, next, I expect nothing less from you. Next, uh, year is looking pretty interesting, and actually, in 2017 I’m then off to India to cycle around India for a charity.

1:37:10 Uh, so there’s quite a lot on. You do planning ahead a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. All right, James, I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end. I’m going to ask you. Yeah, sure.

1:37:20 If you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old James and give that young man a bit of advice, what would you tell him? I like that question. Uh, I would tell James, he’s 20 years old, that I, I would say to him everything works out in the end. And if it hasn’t worked out yet, that’s generally because it’s not the end. If you behave with integrity and you’re a good person and you treat other people in a way that you would like to be treated, things will generally always work out for you, and find out what it is that you love.

1:37:59 That’s very important, or at least try, and then once you’ve figured out what you love, just take that and run with it, because everyone has the capability to be whoever they want to be. Everyone does if they want it enough. Powerful. That’s what I’d probably say to James, who’s 20 years old. Yeah, no, that’s very powerful.

1:38:19 Best advice you’ve ever received about anything, whether it’s adventure things, or something your dad told you. Just the best advice you’ve ever received in your life? Uh, best advice I’ve ever received: don’t expect to always be happy. You have to work at being happy. There’s no human beings out there that wander around happy 24/7, and you have to work at that.

1:38:47 Um, and also, don’t ever, ever feel sorry for yourself, because there’s always someone else out there that is having a much tougher time than you or I or whatever. So, and also, it’s probably, this advice came after the accident, and that is treat every day like it’s your last day, because to a certain extent, because time goes so quick. I remember when I was 18 years old, and now I’m 33. Boom, time’s just gone like that. So try and maximize every day, and do as much as you can, because, um, you only live once, don’t you?

1:39:24 And just, you know, what I think, yeah, my, the best advice that I’ve sort of ever received is just make sure you’re happy. Just do what you love, and do it properly and work hard, and everything will always work out in the end. Generally to the 20-year-old that’s out there listening that wants to be like James, you know, who wants to get the sponsors and go on the boat trips and the bike rides around the world, you know what piece of advice do you give them?

1:39:51 My advice to those people that want to do this kind of thing is actually taking that first step is the hardest part. But don’t be disheartened when people say you can’t do this, you can’t do that. You can, and once you’ve committed to taking that first step, it gets so much easier. Quite often I’m asked, you know, well, how do you figure this stuff out? How do you, how do you who do you speak to if you don’t know?

1:40:15 You’ve never been on a big expedition before, you don’t know what you’re doing? Well, actually, there are loads of people out there that will help you, and people who do what I do tend to be fairly friendly. I’d like to think I’m fairly friendly, and I would, I would always go out of my way to help other people. So if anyone didn’t really know where to start and they wanted to do XYZ, or whatever, and they thought James might know, you get in contact with me, and I’ll, I quite often receive emails from people I’ve never met asking how can I do this, what do you think about this?

1:40:45 And I always get back to everyone. So don’t, don’t, don’t think that there’s anything you can’t do, because if you want it enough, there’s you can make anything happen. So make the first step. It’s the first step you take, that first step, and you that’s it, you will make it happen. You know, James, there’s a famous TED Talk by a guy named Simon Sinek, and he talks about the concept of the why, uh, why people do things, and, and people say that, you know, people don’t buy the iPhone because of what it is, but they buy it because of why people make it.

1:41:18 You know, why are the folks at Apple so passionate about bringing us this device that changes our lives, and you know, I was expecting to have an interesting conversation today about Everest and about boating across the ocean and cycling, um, but that’s all I thought we’d talk about. But once we understand why you do what you do, it’s very infectious, because you have an amazing passion about you, and when you describe kind of the reasons you’re doing these things, and the determinations, you know, it wasn’t what I expected, because a lot of these adventures seem to be just pushed, you know? No, you haven’t, but a lot of these adventures, you either expect to be maybe that’s not true, or are these kind of cavalier, I’m going to conquer the world and own these things, but yet it feels like you’re doing this for a different reason, and I can see why people kind of get inspired by you, because it’s the why.

1:42:02 It’s like the why you’re doing it, and when you get in this motorcycle accident, that, like I said, I noticed still affects you today when you walk a little bit. Does, yeah. You know, you use that as not only a chance to explore an alternative, but like this motivation to go even at it harder and faster, and um, just these different things that you end up doing. Um, he’s very inspiring. That’s very kind.

1:42:24 Thank you. So, uh, I appreciate that, and there’s so many sound bites here today that I know people listening and people watching are just going to be like, oh yeah, that does apply to my life, and sometimes I do feel sorry for myself, and sometimes, you know, I still do too. Yeah, and sometimes I don’t do what I say I’m going to do, and these kind of things, and so it’s nice to be reminded um, but in a way that we can like relate to. So, uh, it’s been a pleasant surprise for me.

1:42:49 No, brilliant. I really enjoy being here, and um, yeah, if anyone wants to follow me across the Atlantic, they can, on Twitter. Yeah, so you’re in touch on Twitter, you tweet from the Atlantic. Okay, that’s incredible, and uh, you answer emails I guess, to the close ones, things like that. Okay.

1:43:05 Books coming out soon, new website com B, coming out in December, and I’ve got a new website being launched in December. Okay, so yeah, just check out James Ketchell, and what’s the book called? Uh, Ultimate Triathlon. There’s a reason for that. I don’t have got time to explain it, but yeah, Ultimate Triathlon.

1:43:21 Ultimate Triathlon. Okay, all right. Is a, well, you have to buy the book to find out. Yeah, see, the book has got all the really interesting stories in that. I’d love to tell you now, but I can’t, because you say, James, you can’t say that on the show.

1:43:35 I’d go get in trouble. So why are they bad stories, or, ah, just interesting stories? Interesting stories. That was a good hook. That was a good hook.

1:43:42 All right, make sure you do an audio book for that, because all my, all of our people like to listen, ’cause some are listening to this. So, um, our tagline on London Real is, it’s about the journey, and a bunch of times in I was just thinking you’re about the journey. You’re out there in the middle of the ocean, and you’re embracing it for what it is. You know, you’re thinking about halfway to the ocean is all you have to get. I don’t know, it seems like your whole life is about embracing the journey.

1:44:04 So yeah, and the people as well, right? You know, the people that I met as I cycling around the world was just incredible. It’s, yeah, I’ll never forget that, right? Including the Americans, right? Yeah, the Americans are great.

1:44:16 Every single country I passed through was incredible, right? Everyone was so good to me. Yeah, I think we all forget sometimes. We all watch the news, and the news and the, the politicians, it’s not like they do it in a conspiratorial way, but the dialogue is, uh, we hate these people and these people hate us. But whenever you get to a local level, humans are humans and they want to help each other.

1:44:37 Human beings are amazing. 99.99% of human beings are amazing. For sure, there might be, there’s always going to be a few people out there that are not so good, but that’s such small numbers compared to everyone that’s out there. Yeah, and you’ve seen this firsthand, so, first-hand. Yeah, many, uh, I’ll be looking forward I’ll be following you on Twitter on your journeys.

1:44:57 Um, thanks so much, James. I really appreciate it. All the best to you. Stay safe out there. Okay, been a, a good day.

1:45:10 Thank you. Okay, thanks. and now I introduce you to my mentor, the $50 billion man Mr Dan Peña. Um, good morning. They all say the same thing.

1:45:34 I wish you, I could have, I f***ing should have. I have never meditated one f***ing second because you f***ing all want everybody to love you. I don’t want anybody to love me I don’t want anybody to even f***ing like me. The bad news is, today is that this isn’t going to be a lot of fun. This is a time to get uncomfortable.

1:46:14 Just f***ing do it. The more you hear it, the more resonates, and so that’s so much input and so much value I can get. That’s priceless