The Friday Matinee

if it's Friday then it must be time for the Friday Matinee our weekly excuse to kick back and while away the idle hours of Friday afternoon and countdown the time to getting out on the hills again.

This week's matinee is a bit different though, with Sir Edmund HIllary dying today at the age of 88, we thought it would be fitting to find a few clips to pay tribute to a man who not only climbed the world's highest mountain, but used the high profile that gave him for the greater good and, in particular, to help the Sherpas living at the base of Everest.

This is how the BBC reported Hillary's death complete with footage from the 1953 expedition.

And this, we think is a French version of the expediton film 'the Conquest of Everest' which followed the successful 1953 team from Kathmandu to the highest place on earth. See too some amazing stock footage from 1953.

Here's the man himself interviewed for the Academcy of Achievement, even in this short clip there's an essential modesty and decency that comes across.

And a photographic tribute to HIllary, apparently uploaded by a Sherpa.

Finally a view from the summit of Everest, something that Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary were the first people ever to see.

There are plenty more tributes to a great man on You Tube, just search for 'Edmund Hillary'.