Since 1999, successive Telegraph/Brain and Spine Foundation teams - normally around 50 runners each year - have raised over 800,000 pounds for the small, but perfectly-formed charity set up in 1992 by Peter Hamlyn, the consultant neuro-surgeon who saved the life of former boxer Watson.

Adepitan, who contracted polio as a child, could be seen as having had a hard life. Not a bit of it, he will tell you. Since Adepitan was cajoled into doing the London Marathon by your correspondent, he has been out on the road, putting in the hard miles, because his first marathon, unlike many of the able-bodied runners on April 22, will be in an elite race. It means he has to have a qualifying time of under 3 and a half hours, and will have to prove it with a satisfactory time in a half-marathon.

The Telegraph contacted none other than David Weir, the British wheelchair racer who has twice won the London Wheelchair Marathon, to lead our captain into the fray. The pair, who know each other as medal winners from the Paralympic Games, have teamed up. Weir, who trains in Richmond Park, was only to pleased to hand on some tips. But it was a rude awakening for Adepitan. "It is so different to sprinting up and down a 90ft indoor court," explained Adepitan. "Different chair, different techniques, and real graft." Powerful, motivated athlete that he is - Adepitan started his sporting career as a powerlifter - it hasn't taken him long to get the bug.

A racing chair is soon to arrive from Invacare, from his long-term buddy Ian Laker of GBL, who works with many of Britain's top Paralympic wheelchair sportsmen and women, and his early mornings are now spent down in the Park.

"I have had a couple of funny incidents," he explained. "I was down there a couple of weeks ago, when the winds were really high, and the chair was lifted of the ground and I ended up on the verge on the other side of the road. Then, a couple of days ago, I had a blow out, which left me stranded. Luckily, a bloke in a Land Rover picked me up and took me back to the car park."

From next week, Weir and Adepitan are going to train together. "It's very exciting because I'm getting input from an elite competitor, and it has really motivated me, just as meeting the great, generous team members we have this yea," added Adepitan. "I have so much respect for the team members, some of whom are running with tumours and cysts, and others who have lost loved ones through brain and spinal injuries and diseases."

By the time marathon day comes around on April 22, Adepitan will be back in the British consciousness "good and proper" - as he would say - with the launch tomorrow evening of 'Desperados', a 10-part drama to be screened on CBBC. It is Adepitan's acting debut, but he is on familiar ground, as 'Baggy', the coach of a junior wheelchair basketball team. At the screening, Daley Thompson and Dalton Grant, both friends of his, were in evidence. So, too, was Mark Thompson, controller of the BBC, who insisted that Desperados was "an exciting, new departure for the BBC".

Adepitan explained: "Desperados is about a junior wheelchair basketball team, but the basketball is really the glue that holds the storyline together. but there's so many other aspects to it. I think we're just flipping the disability issue on its head. My old coach, Leroy, used to say: "Disability is more of an ability". If you had a disability; if you were a certain spinal break, then it was great, because you could play in his basketball team. I mean he was literally almost in a van ready to run people over to get them to play in his team. I hope it has a real impact."