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The thing is - I’m going to try and climb Mount Everest - the highest mountain on earth - to just under 20,000ft from 15 March to 1 April this year.

It’s for a really good charity - any donations in support of the effort will go straight to The Children’s Liver Disease Foundation – which is the charity I want to support.

The Children’s Liver Disease Foundation leads the field in caring for babies and children with liver disease and their families by promoting research into the causes of childhood liver disease, developing means of early diagnosis and cure, and providing new facilities and staff.

The charity is national but based in Birmingham – I used to be a Trustee.

At around 20,000 feet the air is half as thin as where you’re sitting right now.

In technical terms I’m told Very High Altitude is classed as 11,500 – 18,000 feet.

Extreme Altitude is anything above 17,000feet – so this is extreme.

It’s pretty high - about half as high as a passenger jet cruises - four times the height of Ben Nevis.

As you ascend through the atmosphere, every breath contains fewer and fewer molecules of oxygen – you must work harder to obtain oxygen, by breathing faster and deeper

That affects the body. You have got to walk so incredibly slowly. Imagine an arthritic 90-year-old walking backwards - that's probably too fast.

Plus you suffer nasty things like altitude sickness – it really messes with your digestive system and does other stuff. It’s bad.

It’s also cold - about -20C at night.