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Once I was chased by the king of all scorpions. I have the most notorious animal stories.

I felt like a hunted animal, followed constantly, waiting to be killed.

The scary thing is that in my lifetime, 95 per cent of the world's rhinos have been killed.

When I was 15, I went on a cricket tour of Zimbabwe with my school. My defining memory of it was stroking a semi-tame lioness at a game reserve. I grew up on a farm, so I felt I had an affinity with animals, and when it put a paw out, I thought I'd connected with it. But its claws came out and nicked my leg. Then I did the most stupid thing: I ran.

I've fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.

At school, I'd refuse to take part in biology lessons when animals were being dissected. One time, the teacher announced that we would be gassing worms. So I ran around the room, gathered up all the worms and set them free in the fields. I just loved animals and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.

What can I tell you about things like Circus of Horrors except that I get killed by the bear?

My parents used to take me to the pet department and tell me it was a zoo.

I spent a lot of my life - 20 years of it - in war, training army trackers and commanding a tracker unit, and then in the Game Department, tracking lions and elephants and poachers. So I've spent literally thousands of hours tracking people or animals, and training others to do it.