There was a period when I did four or five terrible films. My agent said: “Don’t do them.” But it was my month’s rent for a day’s work. One time, my green room was a lorry. It started snowing and it was just me and a plastic chair in the back of an open lorry. It was pretty grim.

When I was young, selling maps to stars’ homes in Hollywood, somebody flashed their wiener at me. It was traumatising.

When I was about 18, I worked on the chicken counter in a large supermarket, and every morning I had to pierce 64 birds on to industrial skewers to load up the rotisserie. That was very grim.

I have been pretty terrible in quite a lot of terrible things.

I was a huge daydreamer and imagined myself as a successful general leading his troops into battle.

Everest the hard way in 1975: leading the expedition that succeeded where so many people had tried and failed. That was the most complex mountaineering challenge I ever faced. I spent hours at night in a little tent thinking about what the next problem would be and how to solve it.

Resourceful, resilient and compassionate.

When I was climbing I was absolutely happy. I can use a climbing wall, but that’s not the same as real climbing.

Compassion, resourcefulness and resilience form a rounded good person. So that’s what I’d like to leave my children and grandchildren.

Whenever things seem absolutely terrible, to see that you’re alive and that’s all that matters.