Ray Gillon

Ray Gillon speaks an incredible 18 languages. To be precise, he only speaks eight fluently. His grasp on the other 10 he cannot say fluently, but this is still a great achievement.
Say something to him in Portuguese, Thai, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Bulgarian or Mandarin and he will banter back.

In the UK, where there has been a growing anxiety over the failure to learn additional languages, Gillon might seem to be a bit of an anomaly. More and more children have been giving up languages since the last government made learning foreign languages optional in England from the age of 14.