HE'S off! Hampshire's Roger Allsopp has now set off in his bid to become the world's oldest person to swim the English Channel.

At the age of 70 the grandfather of three dove off the coast of Dover at 7.30am this morning with the aim of reaching Calais in around 15 hours.

His spokesperson said: "Roger was in great spirits this morning and was really looking forward to getting going."

Roger's world record attempt has been hampered for the past week due to bad weather but conditions were declared safe this morning and Roger, a retired surgeon, began his challenge.

If he is successful it will be the second time he had clinched the title, setting off on exactly the same day - August 30 - in 2006, which his team believes is a good omen.

Roger hopes to raise £100,000 towards a new £750,000 spectrometer to help further cancer research at the University of Southampton.