SIR Ranulph Fiennes has positive associations with Ireland. His eye surgeon, Eric Arnott, whom he regards as "the best in England", studied at TCD.
Although a fit looking 52 year old, Fiennes suffers from various ailments after more than 20 years of gruelling polar and desert expeditions - the Guinness Book of Records has dubbed him "the world's greatest living explorer" - and his eyes, in particular, have suffered.
"I have retinal sun blindness. Too much UV light and blue light gradually destroys the retina. You're all right if you wear the proper sunglasses, but it is easier to navigate on polar expeditions with sunglasses. They tend to mist up.
Fiennes also likes Ireland because he believes it is a moral country, a far more innocent territory than the one of international drug crime that he has been immersed in to research his new book, The Sett: "Ireland has more morals than the UK, probably because of its Catholicism. Religion is important to me, too. I'm Church of England, but it is the same church. We all say: `I believe in the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Catholic church', don't we? When my wife and I are staying in London we sometimes take holy communion in the nearby Catholic church if the local Church of England one is closed."
Whether it springs from religious convictions or his army background, Fiennes radiates a determined civility. It is hard to picture him doing the research for The Sett, which involved mixing with all sorts of low lifes. It was distasteful," he agrees, mentioning meetings with cocaine dealers in London whom he paid for information:
"One of them put me in my place, telling me he could make £900 in a morning, and I was only offering him £50."
The book also includes horrific descriptions of organised hear fights in Pakistan and badger baiting in England - the sort of illegal sport beloved of hardened international drug dealers, who like to get their kicks this way, and deal ruthlessly with anyone trying to interfere with their "sport" but he says he never saw any of this at first hand, nor would he have wanted to: "I would have found it pretty sickening."
Nevertheless, he could not resist the temptation to write the book, which he refuses to categorise as fact or fiction. It is listed by his publishers, Heinemann, as fiction, but Fiennes says that the only fictional elements are his own addition of dialogue and a "gripping" narrative style: "I wrote my autobiography - Living Dangerously - in 1988 and I put in invented dialogue and thoughts in that too, so if you like, you could call that fiction as well."
The autobiography, however, reads much more like a diary than the thriller style The Sett, even when it is detailing some of the more hair raising of Fiennes's escapades, such as his three year Transglobe expedition (1979-82), the first surface journey around the world's polar axis.
Even if the British press is not convinced of the factual basis of The Sett, Fiennes notes that the scope of the book is so vast, involving such a large and international cast of organisations, that the book couldn't possibly be pure fiction:
If this was a novel, you wouldn't put in so many, you'd stick to one," he explains, tut tutting sympathetically when I say that the book is difficult to get into because of this plethora of acronyms in the first 40-odd pages alone, with FBI, DEA, CENTAC, OSS, BCCI, ISI, LAPD, M15, not to mention an array of criminals, from Jamaican "Yardies" (cocaine and crack dealers) to Colombia's Medellin Cartel from Nigerian fraud gangs in the UK to the IRA negotiating to buy a new strain of deadly incendiary device, and a "glamorous" former UFF female assassin (so much for Ireland's morals).
The story was given to him by a Welshman calling himself Alex Goodman, "a mild mannered accountant": "On July 30th 1984 he woke with amnesia in Smethwick Neurological Centre. His last clear memory was of stumbling on a horrifying badger dig while walking in a local wood with his family - now all dead. He began a 10 year nightmare searching for the truth about what had happened to him: a hunt for revenge that led him into the lives of the world's most dangerous men and secretive organisations.
"The web in which Goodman had become tangled was global and my efforts to verify his story drew me into the terrifying worlds of the Korean Troons, the FBI, the drugs trade and the sickening ruins of BCCI bank. He rang me every week or two weeks with new information, which I then went to check as best I could." Fiennes believes that what Goodman told him was true, but he adds carefully: "Each reader will have to come to his or her own conclusion: fact or fiction?"
GOODMAN was nervous of being recognised, and did not want to be photographed, but on the publishers' insistence, Fiennes arranged for a secret photograph to be taken. The result a dim black and white snap of a haunted looking man - is included in the book: "I was intending to ask his permission but he hasn't turned up again since last March," says Fiennes. "I hope he approves of the way I have written his story and considers it accurate."
Fiennes admits that he did find himself drawn off on different tangents: Goodman's story touches briefly on the Broadwater Farm riots. During my investigations, I met two people involved in the riots and became fascinated with what happened." Broadwater Farm, a slum estate in Tottenham terrorised by predominantly Jamaican gangs, erupted one night in October 1985. Hundreds of aggressive youths set fire to an Asian supermarket and ambushed the five firemen and 10 policemen (unit 502) who tried to stop the fire and rescue the elderly people who lived above the burning supermarket. One of the policemen was murdered in the process; others received serious injuries.
Fiennes's praise for unit 502's "unsung valour" reflects his lifelong devotion to the heroic team effort. His most cherished ambition was to command his father's old regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, but, although he went to Eton, he didn't get his A Levels, and so didn't qualify for Sandhurst: "If you couldn't get to Sandhurst, you couldn't get beyond captain."
He served with the regiment on short service commissions. He joined the SAS in 1966, but was expelled for a prank involving the bombing of an American film set. He then became a mercenary in the Sultan of Oman's army. Two years later he decided to lead expeditions "on a purely commercial basis".
After 26 years of expeditions, during which time only one in three succeeded, Fiennes is still strongly motivated in what he does by the need to "honour my father's memory" (his father died in the second World War, four months before Fiennes was born). When the going gets particularly rough during an expedition, Fiennes summons the image of his father to boost his morale: "I like my father to be involved in what I'm doing." Fiennes has written 12 books, lectures extensively and does advertising for Clark's shoes ("for the last three years I've been promoting their sandals too, which are really incredible, if you can forget the usual sandal wearing image"). All of the funds raised go towards expeditions, which also need the backing of sponsors. It is an expensive business and, faced with heavy losses as a Lloyd's Name, Fiennes needs money.
This need meant that he was very straightforward with Alex Goodman about the proceeds of The Sett, stressing that all monies to be made by the book would have to accrue to him. This didn't put Goodman off: "Money, surprisingly, was not his rationale." On their last meeting, Fiennes felt sorry for the man: "I found myself wanting to part from him with some gesture of my sympathy." The "gesture", however, was not an offer of some of the proceeds of the book. Fiennes had just been shooting an advertisement for Clark's, and he gave Goodman the free pair of shoes he had received for doing so.
FIENNES is obviously not the sort of person to waver en route to realising his goals. He readily admits that he never thought of using his expeditions to raise money for charity until Prince Charles suggested it to him in 1984. Since then Fiennes has raised more than £4 million for research into MS (a cause suggested by Prince Charles, who has since nominated breast cancer research for Fiennes's next expedition).
The Prince has been a patron of Fiennes's expeditions since 1974, when Fiennes approached him for support: "He comes to look at the kit before we go off on an expedition and says things like: Why haven't you got any sledge runners, you had them 10 years ago. It can be embarrassing - he's been known to spot something we've forgotten."
Fiennes is enthusiastic about the Prince: "He would make the perfect king. He is the opposite of how he is portrayed in the tabloid media, which misrepresents him as an irresolute talker to flowers. He is actually very sharp and decisive."
Fiennes, who once auditioned for the part of James Bond, has been married to his wife Virginia for 25 years, and tells me proudly that in 1987 she was the first woman to be awarded the Polar Medal. Although in Living Dangerous he details the rows which marked their early married life, he feels "a physical pain" from missing her when they are apart. He wishes she would still join him on expeditions but in 1986, "she fell in love with an Aberdeen Angus cow". She has been working ever since with a herd of organic pedigree Aberdeen Angus cattle on their 75 acre farm in Exmoor. The BSE scare, which does not apply to their "untainted" herd, has had a devastating effect on demand for their beef.
He is concerned for Virginia's safety at the moment, because of threats he has received since he wrote The Sett: "The main people involved in the story are the equivalent of the Kray brothers. I have had phone calls to my home warning me to watch out. There were even attempts to put a legal injunction on the book. We had to get help from the police." He has made security arrangements for Virginia while he is promoting the book.
Meanwhile, he is planning two more expeditions to add to his already impressive list of achievements, which include the Pentland South Pole Expedition he undertook with Dr Mike Stroud. This was the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic Continent and the longest unsupported polar journey in history. Irritated by Dr Stroud's insistence on taking blood samples in deep freeze temperatures to further Stroud's research into how the body responds to extreme duress, Fiennes far prefers desert expeditions. He made seven unsuccessful attempts before he eventually found the lost city of Ubar in Oman.
Meanwhile he is already planning an intriguing new expedition, which will involve driving amphibious Land Rovers across the Bering Strait. Eat your heart out 007, this is the real thing.
