Sir Patrick Stewart

Yeah.

It was a thrilling and really very emotional experience.

I was not prepared for that.

The sidewalks were deep right up to the walls of the shops and buildings and stores, people hanging out of windows on the scaffolding of building sites.

on rooftops even, the enthusiasm and excitement and the hunger for people to see the torch and to touch it and to get close to it was quite endless.

I work out anyway.

You know, I had 17 years in California, and you work out or die in California.

And I gave up running, but I really got into power walking, which is what I do at least three times a week, maybe four times a week.

But running is another issue.

I don't run anymore.

So I did go into trading.

I was running half a mile, given that I knew I only had 400 meters to go.

And I thought, if I run half a mile, I can comfortably run with a torch in my hand 400 meters.

uh... but i got off the bus i was the last one to be dropped i've got off a bus at the bottom of the hill and my four hundred meters were entirely uphill very unfair given that i would arguably one of the oldest people to carry the talk this year and and and the night no less you would have or wouldn't you the knighthood and my great age that combined with the fact that i am going to pick out of professors radio

they would have arranged it more comfortably for me.

Well, you know, if you will just bear with me for one second of silence.

I know silence is anathema on the radio, but you keep talking for, I do mean two seconds.

Because I now have in my hand the Olympic torch, which I carried on that day, and I'm just taking it out of its

beautiful canvas bag that it was given to me.

And I am holding in my hand this beautiful, I think it's brass, honeycombed, elegantly shaped torch.