I have to say as a man who feels a bit cocky about himself for being able to run 7 miles and only get a bit tired I have an enormous amount of admiration for Ranulph Fiennes. In the last seven days he has run seven marathons in seven different countries. The jet lag would have killed most people. Add to that the fact that he has recently had a heart attack and heart surgery and he's 59 and you certainly have to take your hat off to him. And if you don't have a hat, you have to go out and buy a hat and then put the hat on, so that you can than take the hat off. To him.
It's not as if his achievement has gone unnoted in the media, but I don't think it has had the attention it deserves. This is an incredible and almost superhuman feat (also achieved by his friend Dr Michael Stroud - though he was such a pussy he had to walk for a bit during the fifth race. What a quitter!).
It seems a mixed up world when David Blaine, a healthy man, gets all that attention and money for doing nothing but sitting in a box (possibly) and making himself ill, when this Fiennes, so recently ill, gets off his arse, travels the world and does something that most people couldn't do even half a time. But he does it seven times over. Surely he should be made king of the world or something. At least just for a couple of days. It's unbelievable.
Similarly Derren Brown pretends that he might shoot himself in the head (though clearly there was very little chance of this happening) and is celebrated or at least splashed all over the papers and Fiennes does something that seems genuinely life threatening even for a man who hasn't recently had a heart attack, and does he get the same kind of attention. Not that he was ignored. But I don't think he got as much publicity. And he has actually done something real.
Well it's a strange world.
I notice that P Diddy also ran the marathon in New York. Just one marathon, but let's not start turning it into a competition. That's one more marathon than me (so far) and one more than most of you. He finished one hour and ten minutes ahead of Fiennes. Fiennes remember who had run six marathons and had six long flights in between in the days preceeding this race (not to knock P Diddy here, just to remind you what an amazing thing that the insane explorer has done).
P Diddy was sponsored by his Hollywood chums and raised two million dollars (which puts my own £800 running total into some kind of perspective). If Jennifer Lopez is reading this diary (I know you're obsessed with me Jenny. But it's never going to happen. I've been fooled by the rocks that you've got and think you're a bit stuck up, wherever you originated. Did you get the rocks just to fool us into thinking that you were something that you weren't? Because if you didn't want to appear that way, surely it is better not to have the rocks. It was your choice to get them), then do remember you can sponsor me at the link above (just sell one of those rocks. You will still have enough rocks left to fool us, I promise).
But enough of Sean Coombs and Jennifer Lopez. Because today my hat (with its price sticker still on it) is doffed for Sir Ranulph Feinnes. In Britain his kind are a (literal) dying breed. This even beats the time that he walked to the North Pole in just his slippers and underpants.
What a fucking nutcase.
But he's our fucking nutcase.
