Now, he’s just swum the last remaining one.

“It’s extremely painful – excruciatingly so – and your first reaction is that you can barely breathe, followed by a burning over your whole body and especially in your hands and feet.” Soft spoken and articulate, Lewis Gordon Pugh is describing over the phone from Norway what it’s like to swim in chilly Arctic waters - where temperatures were minus 1.8 degrees Celsius when he recently took the plunge and became the first person to swim 1 km at the Geographic North Pole in nothing but a swimming costume, cap and goggles.