Team in charge of penguins and post office have 'coolest job on Earth'

As a professional "tent master", whose work involves building big tops at music festivals, George Clarke has never run a post office - and certainly never counted penguins for a living. But these and other idiosyncratic tasks will become part of his daily routine when Clarke joins a small team of new recruits to "the coolest jobs on Earth", staffing the world's most southerly museum and post office in Antarctica.

- Esther Addley

The team of five have been recruited by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, a conservation charity that cares for historic British bases on the continent. Next month they will travel to a former research station on the football pitch-sized Goudier Island, off the Antarctic peninsula below South America.

There, for five months of freezing temperatures and near-constant daylight, they will live alongside the resident gentoo penguins while carrying out conservation repairs, monitoring wildlife and greeting cruise ship visitors.

Bristol-based Clarke, 34, applied earlier this year after reading an article in the Guardian. "I thought it'd be something new, something exciting - and that I had nothing to lose. So I just thought, why not give it a go?