Hampshire's Roger Allsopp is now more than five hours into his world record breaking swim across the Channel.

The 70 year-old Grandad of three has just passed Folkestone on his 21 mile swim from Dover to Calais.

He is on track to complete the swim in just over 15 and a half hours.

His spokesperson said: “Roger is doing really well. He's just over five hours into his swim and is on course to complete it in the target time. He is in good shape and is keeping his energy levels up by feeding every hour.”

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.