'Hardest geezer' Russ Cook is reunited with his girlfriend who he calls an 'absolute diamond' after running the entire length of Africa

Russel Cook's 'rock bottom' came at 3am in a Brighton nightclub when, aged 19, and already a voracious drinker and gambler who was 'overweight, miserable and angry at the world', he asked himself: 'What am I doing with my life? Something needs to change.'

On a whim, he decided to run the 12 miles home to Worthing — a journey that required 'a couple of power naps on the pavement' but gave him the confidence to agree to a half-marathon with a friend who was concerned for his wellbeing.

A full marathon followed, and an appetite for extreme and often bizarre adventure was born.

Branding himself 'The Hardest Geezer' online, Cook, now 27, ran from Istanbul to London in 2019. The following year he broke the world record for running a marathon, while pulling a 730kg car, then buried himself in a coffin for a week.

All of which looks positively sane compared with the project he finished on Sunday: running the entire length of Africa.

Traversing 9,891 miles from the tip of South Africa to the northernmost point of Tunisia, his journey spanned 16 countries, taking him through rainforests, over mountains and across the Sahara.

His journey was marked by crippling injuries, malnutrition and food poisoning that was so severe he urinated blood. He was also kidnapped and held at gunpoint before crossing the finishing line.

His flowing beard and long, red hair, uncut for nearly a year, glinted in the sun as he described his 352-day ordeal as 'an immense honour', and embraced his publicity-shy girlfriend Emily Bell.

He described her as 'an absolute diamond', and admitted that he had put her through 'the emotional wringer'.

Emily, for her part, said she had found her boyfriend's challenge 'scary, terrifying at times'. As did Cook's ever-expanding army of social media fans, who now total one million on Instagram and include Davina McCall and Joe Wicks. They awaited his updates and have helped him raise £750,000 for charity.

Cook may have begun his challenge a little-known 'recluse', but he is returning to the UK a star. Yet his achievement is not without controversy. The World Runners Association (WRA), a tiny group of long-distance runners, insist Cook is not, as he claims, the first person to run the length of Africa. According to them, that accolade goes to Danish athlete Jesper Olsen, who ran 7,949 miles from Taba in Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in 434 days in 2010.

Nonetheless, as the Guinness World Records decides whose record they will accept, it seems churlish to belittle Cook's extraordinary achievement.

So, what on earth inspired him to take on a challenge that would, at best, cause 'irreversible damage' to his body?

Human nature plays a part, he says — our sofa-bound lifestyles being at odds with our ancestral desire to fight and conquer. 'If I were living in a different time, I'd have been rolling around with a sword on a horse trying to slash people's necks, but the year is 2023 so I'll run the length of Africa instead,' he told the Wide Awake podcast last April. 'It's the rage that needs quenching.'

Yet it wasn't until he started running that Cook, who as a teenager had been 'working five different jobs, cleaning toilets and all the rest of it', learned how to harness his rage.

Having gambled until he lost 'every penny', running taught him discipline, motivation and accountability, which he transferred to other areas of his life.

He became the first person to complete a marathon on crutches and to run a marathon while stopping every mile to drink a bottle of Corona beer. Then there was the week in 2021 that he spent buried in a coffin in his flat, under £1,000 worth of mud that he'd bought.

With only water and ventilation tubes to keep him alive, he was forced to contemplate 'what was important in my life... what did I want my legacy to be?'

The answer, he concluded, was raising money for good causes. Before he set off from Cape Agulhas, Africa's southernmost point, on April 22 last year, he vowed, somewhat ominously, that, 'unless I'm dead, I'm carrying on'.

Food poisoning felled him first, just 26 days in, after reaching Namibia. To rest, he said, would 'take away from the purity of the physical challenge' and so he continued until day 45, when he passed blood in his urine and was told to take a day off by doctors.

On day 64, in Angola last June, Cook — passport number tattooed on his arm in case it was stolen — was robbed at gunpoint.

Little over a month later — in August on day 102 — separated from his support crew in the Congo, he stumbled into a rural settlement where he was told to hand over money. He said he had none, before being surrounded by 'blokes with machetes'.

After running away, he was confronted by two men on a motorbike who took him on a seven-hour ride into the jungle.

His two-day 'horror story' ended after a ransom payment. 'In my head, I thought this was it. Me, the self-proclaimed hardest geezer, about to get held in a Congo gulag before being ripped apart.'

With every month, Cook seemed to appear both scrawnier and stronger. Nonetheless, he sometimes broke under the pressure.

In Nigeria, last November, he had medical scans for 'excruciating' back pain, concluding that, in the absence of bone damage, 'the only option was to stop mincing about like a little weasel, get the strongest painkillers available and zombie-stomp the road again'.

He wore out 20 pairs of trainers and listened to a Spotify playlist lasting 93 hours and 25 minutes.

There were dull but potentially devastating administrative problems to deal with. In January, he declared his challenge was 'hanging in the balance' because he couldn't get a visa to cross the border from Mauritania to Algeria. Only after a desperate social media campaign did the UK's embassy in Algeria grant him one.

For all the crime he encountered, Cook said the vast majority of Africans he met were welcoming: 'Seeing all the kids running out to jog with us has been wonderful. But in some remote areas, being white with a big red beard and red hair, I did terrify a few kids!'

As he came to the end of his 19 million step journey, legs feeling 'they were about to fall off' his attention turned to the daiquiri awaiting him on a Tunisian beach and home comforts: 'It will be good to get into a real bed and have a long, hot soak in a bath.'

He invited his social media followers to join him for the final 29.3-mile stretch, some of whom flew out from Britain, wearing fake red beards in his honour.

At the finish line, his girlfriend declared herself 'unbelievably proud' of him.

It was, Cook said, the first time they had seen each other for 14 months, 'so I can't really put into words how much that moment meant. But it's beautiful to have a little bit of time with her'.

Few who have followed him from the start are remotely surprised he has completed it. As he put it: 'Nothing was going to stop me, even if I had to crawl over broken glass to get to the end.'