As Paddy McGuinness sets off across the UK on his “brutal” 300-mile endurance cycle for Children in Need, he’s absolutely determined he’s going to reach that finish line.
Having trained with six-time Olympic champ Sir Chris Hoy and armed himself to the hilt with a kids’ bike, padded shorts and anti-chafing cream, he’s pretty sure that nothing will stop him. But, just in case he comes a cropper on his Raleigh Chopper, the TV presenter has got a few back-up plans. “I don’t think they need a spare Chopper – it’s probably a spare Paddy,” he jokes. “They’ve got one cryogenically frozen they’ll defrost halfway through if I collapse.” Then he has a better idea, involving his former Top Gear sidekick Freddie. “Actually if I collapse they’ll have to drag Flintoff out or something like that. He’s fit as a fiddle, so they can get him on.”
This year’s Radio 2 challenge is three times as long as Vernon Kay’s ultra, ultra, marathon last year, which raised an astonishing £6million for the BBC charity. It all got very emotional for fellow Boltonian Vernon, and Paddy doesn’t mind admitting he’s likely to go the same way. “Trust me, I’m in tears every day when I’m training on that bike,” he tells the Mirror. “I think genuinely, as you get older, you just become more emotional. I get weepy in the training on my own, I don’t need anyone to add to that. It won’t take much set me off.”
The route across Wales, England and Scotland will take him from the start line in Wrexham through six counties to the finish in Glasgow on Friday morning. He hopes that perhaps some of his famous pals might turn out in support. “Who knows?” he says. “That’s the beauty. The more the merrier. It all helps.”
The 51-year-old reveals that the first day of training a few weeks ago was nothing short of a disaster. “I got on that Chopper, genuinely, I went up a hill and I literally couldn’t turn the pedals, it was that difficult. I thought to myself ‘I’m not going to be able to do this’. And the hills in the lakes and in Scotland are so brutal.”
Luckily, he got a bit of help from a man who knows what he’s talking about. “The only person who’s given me any advice is Chris Hoy. So he’s been invaluable. He’s taken me out this week to put me through my paces and I’m telling you, if you go out with him, you know you’ve been on a bike ride.”
Having committed to the challenge thanks to the persuasive skills of Radio 2 boss Helen Thomas, Paddy – who has a Sunday show on the station – says he’s stuck rigidly to his training regime. Despite finding it long and lonely, which will be captured in the behind-the-scenes documentary Paddy: The Ride of My Life on 19 November , he has at least begun to feel a bit fitter.
And people coming out of their houses to wish him well has also spurred him on. “It’s really amazed me. I’m like, ‘how did they even know I was coming up the road?’ Well, I know how they know – they’ve heard me wheezing from 200 yards away.”
Unfortunately for him, a Chopper comes with only three gears – and one of his isn’t working. “Everything about that bike is not designed for a challenge like this at all,’ he chuckles. “When you are sat on it as an adult, you’re almost holding yourself in a press-up position and because you’re hunched over, your triceps are burning as well. I’ll be on that bike for nine or 10 hours a day. It’s not pleasant.”
The daft antics he got up to on Top Gear have perhaps helped him to prepare, but the comic reckons this one takes the biscuit. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Physically, it’s brutal, but mentally it’s challenging as well because when you’re on that bike and you’re on your own and your legs are burning and you’re knackered and your back’s aching, you’ve just got to think, ‘I’ve got to keep going here’.”
He’s been thrilled that his own kids with ex-wife Christine – 11-year old twins Leo and Penelope and seven-year-old daughter Felicity – are interested in what he’s up to without him having to push it. “My eldest daughter come running down the stairs last week, really excited. She had the telly on, and she’d paused it on a YouTube of me on the Chopper. It really touched me because I don’t talk about my job to the kids really, at all, ever. I could tell she was really proud and she was smiling. I went, ‘Oh yeah, Daddy’s doing a challenge.’
Already people have started thrusting cash at him. “I was on stage in Milton Keynes last night and I finished the show and a guy run down to the front and handed me 880 quid. I’m taking the applause, and I’m thinking, ‘what’s going on here?’ I thought it were a tip he was giving me for doing a good show! And he’s shouting, ‘I want to give you this for Children in Need.’”
He feels bad for not even getting the chap’s name. “If anyone knows him, say thanks very much for that because it was a bit of a whirlwind as it happened. Then I walked out the stage door and two lovely women were there, and gave me 50 quid. I was like, ‘this is amazing’.”
The TV star, who has previously hosted both Comic Relief and Sport Relief, says he wants to raise whatever he can for the cause. “I’m just grateful that anyone gives anything. I always think, ‘God, this is some country we live in. Even when it’s a bit grim, everyone just seems to get behind it. And every nickel makes a muckle, you know what I mean?”
As he sets off this morning, he will have a mental picture in his mind of the finish line. “I don’t think you can go into something like this with any seeds of doubt,” he says. “I’ll probably welcome a puncture because it’ll give me a breather, but I just want to get it done.”
Being from the northwest, he says he’s not too bothered by the weather, but it’s a different story with the terrain. “The worst thing is the big steep hills that are unrelenting and unforgiving and feel like they’re never going to end.”
And when it’s all over, what will he do? “Hopefully auction off the bike and make a few extra quid.”
* BBC Children In Need, Friday, BBC1, 7pm. To donate to Paddy’s Ultra Endurance Cycle Challenge go to www.bbc.co.uk/paddy
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