Paul Rose will be bringing a lifetime of remarkable adventures to Kent this week. Chris Price pinned down the explorer and TV presenter to find out more.

Explorer, diver, and TV presenter Paul Rose has spent his life inspecting the planet and its oceans, from the bottom of Lake Geneva to Antarctic volcanoes.

This week he will be recounting some of his adventures in his "Audience with" style show, as well as tackling the nation's lethargy.

"We should all have an exploring mind," said Paul who has presented the BBC shows Oceans, Britain's Secret Seas and Voyages of Discovery.

"It is a good mind to have. The top scientists all have explorer's minds and we need that to inspire the next generation."

And Paul is certainly curious. Over the last 40 years he has been a polar explorer, professional diver, mountaineer, NASA assistant and a yacht skipper. He has also climbed Antarctica's most active volcano, dived the world's oceans and explored the remote Mascerene Plateau in the western Indian Ocean.

Unusually for Paul, he is sitting at his desk for this interview. He has just returned from a trip to the bottom of Lake Geneva in a Russian submarine, looking at how to protect its heavily human-impacted ecosystem.

"For the first time in history I'm quite pleased to be at the desk today," said Paul, who has also just got back from a series of meetings with government about his research.

"I am not a fan of doing admin. I am always asked what would I like to do next and I always say 'exactly what I'm doing but without the desk work'."

This is Paul's 20th year running scientific expeditions in the polar regions and his 14th in Antartica. Yet despite his impressive CV, he struggled at school.

"You can be a success without qualifications," said Paul, 60. "I was useless at school. I have a metalwork O-level but I started doing science support work and look where I am now.

"What inspired me to become an explorer was the TV programmes I watched when I was 11. My ultimate hero was Mike Nelson on the series Sea Hunt, played by Lloyd Bridges. I knew nothing in life when I failed my 11-plus except that I wanted to be a diver.

"I got the opportunity to try scuba diving in 1969. It was the making of me and I still have the same sense of enquiry I had as an 11-year-old."

Paul rates swimming with a six gill shark on his series Oceans as one of his favourite dives, along with diving in the Black Hole in the Bahamas. He nearly met his end in Antartica in 1994, during his 10 year stint as base commander of the Rothera Research Station for British Antarctic Survey.

He said: "I was run over by a large iceberg and that was really life threatening. We were diving deep and when we came up we banged our heads on the ceiling. The iceberg had run over our position. We didn't know which way to go up. It turned out to be as large as a Hyde Park and it was only luck that we went the right way."

Explore! with Paul Rose comes to Tunbridge Wells' Assembly Hall Theatre on Tuesday, October 25.