Prince Harry is due to set out on a trek to the North Pole with four disabled servicemen today. The 26-year-old, patron of the Walking with the Wounded charity — which aims to help injured soldiers rebuild their lives — will walk alongside the servicemen during the first four days of the 200-mile expedition as they aim to become the first disabled team to reach the pole unaided.
Two of the four wounded soldiers are amputees. Captain Guy Disney’s lower leg was blown off by a grenade in Afghanistan in 2009, and paratrooper Jaco van Gass had his left arm amputated at the elbow after a similar attack on operations.
The other two, Captain Martin Hewitt and Sergeant Steve Young, were also injured in Afghanistan. Hewitt has a paralysed right arm, Young a broken back.
On Wednesday Harry slept in a tent in the Arctic with Inge Solheim, who will be leading the expedition, as part of training.
“There are things that happened in that tent I never want to speak of ever again,” the prince joked. Asked what it was like to sleep in temperatures as low as -25C he said, “Is that all it was, minus 25C? It felt a lot colder than that in there. It was good.”
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He did a running jump into the sub-zero water of the Arctic Ocean and commented, “It went up my nose . . . It’s quite tight on the balls!”
In an interview with GQ magazine Harry was more serious: “This expedition will raise awareness of the debt that this country owes to those it sends off to fight — only for them to return wounded and scarred, physically and emotionally.
“The debt extends beyond immediate medical care and short-term rehabilitation. These men and women have given so much. We must recognise their sacrifice, be thankful, so far as we can ever repay them.” The team will sleep out on the ice and drag a sled weighing nearly 16 stone.
It is hoped the prince’s involvement will help the charity to raise £2m.
The truth? I’m stuck in a rut
Gillian Anderson, the former star of the cult show The X Files, has admitted that she is considering giving up acting because of the quality of the roles that she is offered. “I want my career to be more interesting; I’m slightly stuck in a cardboard box and fight hard to get out. I sometimes become frustrated and think of throwing in the towel when I’m doing a crock of shit,” the 42-year-old star said in an interview with Radio Times.
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She also claimed that network executives fought against her being cast as agent Dana Scully opposite David Duchovny — they wanted a big-breasted blonde to play the part. “That’s the only way they knew how to market television. But I’m not a bimbo, so I said take it or leave it ... No one expected The X Files to be popular,” she revealed.
Lloyd Webber: I can’t make love
Andrew Lloyd Webber revealed that his battle with prostate cancer has left him impotent. “I’m a ladies’ man who can never make love. I’m resigned to that,” the 63-year old composer quipped in an interview on ITV1. “When I had a check-up they told me I ought to have a biopsy. I’d already prepared myself for it. The main side effects, of course, are that you can’t have sex,” said Lloyd Webber, who had his prostate removed after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.
He admitted he had consulted a sex therapist who advised him to try a “penis pump”. “She said, ‘You can try Viagra and see if it works’. She then produced this contraption, a sort of pump, which, allegedly, was in some Austin Powers movie! I just said, ‘I can’t use this thing!’”