THE world’s greatest living explorer is unlikely to have conquered the Earth’s highest mountain or have been the first person to reach both the North Pole and South Pole by foot had he not completely flunked his A-Levels.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes who attended Sandroyd School in Tollard Royal before going to Eton says he has no idea where his taste for adventure comes from but it all started when he was left with no job and no money.

Speaking to the Journal ahead of his talk at the Salisbury Big Business Event on Tuesday, he said: “I didn’t intend to do anything other than what my father did before he was killed – he commanded, at the Battle of El Alamein and at the landings at Salerno, the lead tank regiment which was the Royal Scots Greys so that’s all I wanted to do.

“But I couldn’t go to Sandhurst because I couldn’t get A-Levels.

“As a result I couldn’t get a regular commission. I stayed in the Army for eight years, the maximum you were allowed to without a regular commission, so aged 24, I was out of a job.

“I got married and as my wife also had no money, we thought ‘what can we do?’”

With Fiennes having led soldiers on numerous expeditions while based in Germany during the Cold War, the couple hit upon the idea of using sponsorship to break world records.

“In Germany, we were waiting for the Soviets to attack which they never did so the soldiers started beating each other up instead and, as an officer, it was my job to stop them from being over-excited - I took them canoeing and ski-ing and all that for five years. My wife and I thought we could do that as a job.”

He added: “There’s various reasons [why I have pushed myself to extremes] over 45 years but it’s basically to break world records and therefore make very large sums of money for our chosen charity.”

Fiennes spent his early years in South Africa but moved back to England with his mother and sisters when he was 12.

Sent to prep school at Sandroyd, he says he loved his time there but does recall being “soundly beaten” as a result of a gang fight in the woods with bamboos.

“In South Africa, the schools had gangs but Sandroyd had no gang so I thought ‘this is all wrong, we need to put it right’. I started one called Acnuleps which is spelunca spelt backwards, the Latin for cave.

“We organised a fight with another gang called Mainwaring and after that particular Saturday afternoon, the nurse had an abnormal number of bruises, scratches and cuts to deal with. This got to the headmaster Mr Ozanne who delegated to Mr Butland. I got soundly beaten and got told there would be no more gangs so I had to desist.”

The 73-year-old who is hoping to complete the Seven Summits Challenge which involves climbing the highest mountains on all seven continents says his successes have to be worked at physically much harder than before.

Earlier this year he underwent six-hours of back surgery following an evacuation from Aconcagua in the Andes. He is set to return to South America’s highest peak next month.