David Blaine, illusionist, man-in-perspex box and utter masochist. Spending 40 days in a box with water as your only sustenance would seem bad enough. But doing it while suspended over the Thames in London is just asking for trouble.
I mean England for god’s sake. While we may celebrate the eccentric among our own, we have absolute disdain from outsiders trying the same. So it’s been no real surprise that baiting Blane has become a national sport — indeed one of our more successful national sports.
I’m proud of my fellow countrymen’s response — girls flashing their boobs at him; boozed up blokes throwing their doner kebabs in the air and throwing them up on the ground; golf balls finally been put to a sensible use; drummers at 2am, barbecued meat and flying McDonald’s hamburgers. Who says we can’t be creative.
Frankly, he deserves it. This is nothing more than a shameless publicity stunt and Blaine was entirely misguided if he believed the British would be somehow flattered by his choice of venue. It’s more than just our innate sense of cynicism, which I discovered during my trip is thriving nicely. It’s an insult to the families of hunger-strikers throughout the world and to the millions suffering malnutrition and facing death.
Of course it would be unfair to suggest that everyone in England feels the same way about David Blaine. It’s only a minority that actually travel to Tower Bridge to fire golf balls or cut off his water supply. The majority just couldn’t give a rats ass about him.