Sir Ranulph Fiennes - get a hobby

[OneDay]

I see that once again Sir Ranulph Fiennes has got frostbite and has to give up another of his ludicrous adventures. Am I the only one that finds putting other people's lives at risk to rescue him irresponsible and costly??

[Deleted]

If he wants a real challenge he should try and eliminate the top coil hot spot on my mini did

[meeee]

Yep I have to agree his silly adventures always seem a wate of time and money.

[lenny59]

If he was finding a cure for Cancer then I would willingly go and rescue him.......

Somehow I think he is not . . .

[blackdog]

but he is raising money for charity

[farzooks]

It's not like he's even 'exploring' unknown ground. It's all been done before.
His time was truly in the mid to late 19th Century, when parts of the world were unknown the the Western /Europeans, although the locals seemed to know all about the places, so one could argue they weren't unknown at all.

[Bluefish]

I disagree, he is a truly awesome bloke, and a proper explorer, he should have known better than to take his gloves off in minus 30 or whatever though.

[kibbster]

We need humans like him tbh.
In this risk averse society someone who says I'm going to do something awesome even though it's dangerous because it's fun is pretty cool in my eyes.

[Blownupdolly]

Although i admire anyone with a pioneering spirit, i do not think it is fair for a middle aged/older man with serious heart problems to wander off doing this sort of thing regardless of who they are. He was advised not to. Because of his ego he has forced people into a dangerous situation to go rescue him and cost a lot of money, and for it to be for something he should damn well know better about ie frostbite is even worse.
Should not have been there in the first place.

[farzooks]

Mar 3, 2013 19:08:47 GMT kibbster said:

We need humans like him tbh.
In this risk averse society someone who says I'm going to do something awesome even though it's dangerous because it's fun is pretty cool in my eyes.

Some people jump out of planes; I ride motorcycles.
If you want to take risks to feed your ego, then do ones which don't jeopardise the lives of others.
<looking askance at mountain climbers>

[Blownupdolly]

He was being interviewed on the news again last night and it turns out he is diabetic too!! FFS! I am diabetic. He shouldnt have been anywhere near a place like that with the circulatory issues in a diabetics body. No blinking wonder he got frost bite. Stupid stupid man.

[kibbster]

Mar 5, 2013 16:33:46 GMT Blownupdolly said:

He was being interviewed on the news again last night and it turns out he is diabetic too!! FFS! I am diabetic. He shouldnt have been anywhere near a place like that with the circulatory issues in a diabetics body. No blinking wonder he got frost bite. Stupid stupid man.

I got the idea he didn't know he was diabetic.

[Jen]

I think I'm going to have to side with Kibbster on this one. It would be a very sad, boring world if there were no people prepared to take risks and do inspirational things. Just because they go wrong occasionally (for whatever reason) is not good grounds to stop doing it all together. I don't know much about this particular situation though.

[vereybowring]

I do admire Sir Ranulph, but not for the reasons most latch onto.
Yes he does suffer from "heroic idiocy" as I would call it and attempts things at times that are just plain daft. He is extremely tough and has force of will to get him through things where most wouldn't try in the first place. These are not what I admire him for at all.
One of his best friends is a doctor Mike Stroud, indeed the doctor has come up with some of the outlandish expeditions that have been done and has even gone along on some of them.
Yes it is the pair of them that have advanced knowledge of what happens to human biology at the extremes of nature. The results have helped us work out a fair bit about how our bodies work.
This is what I admire, not the expeditions, the charity work (although he has done quite a bit of that).

As was said humanity need people like him who are willing and capable of finding the limits of humanity.

But yes, now he is older he just needs to control his itch to fight extremes and write some more books or find something new to do.

[Blownupdolly]

Mar 5, 2013 17:36:23 GMT kibbster said:

Mar 5, 2013 16:33:46 GMT Blownupdolly said:

He was being interviewed on the news again last night and it turns out he is diabetic too!! FFS! I am diabetic. He shouldnt have been anywhere near a place like that with the circulatory issues in a diabetics body. No blinking wonder he got frost bite. Stupid stupid man.

I got the idea he didn't know he was diabetic.

I thought the opposite. The way the woman worded it to him was as if hew already knew and was questioning why he did it.
As i said earlier in the thread i do admire pioneering brave people, but seriously, a man of 60 with serious heart problems and diabetes?? Utter madness.