The human spider
Channel 4, 9pm
EXTREME urban free solo climbing: as The Human Spider demonstrated, it's not merely the new rock 'n' roll. It's actually way, way more rock 'n' roll than rock 'n' roll has ever been, or could hope to be.
Death-defying Frenchman Alain Robert is the world's greatest urban free solo climber. He saunters with seeming effortlessness up the vertical faces of towering skyscrapers, equipped only with climbing shoes and a bum-bag containing powdered chalk, to aid his grip. In figure-hugging gear, Alain eschews ropes. His long hair billows in the breezes that buffet him when he's 1300ft-plus above the city streets of Shanghai, Moscow, Berlin, wherever. For Alain, a new Everest is always in the process of construction. He's conquered the world's three tallest buildings: Taiwan's Taipei 101, Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers and the Sears Tower in Chicago. Alain's teenage son pronounces him "cool not like other fathers".
Alain's supportive wife of 25 years is apparently unfazed by his transformation of their marital boudoir's ceiling. Studded with rocks, it's become a horizontal all-weather artificial climbing wall, across which Alain regularly scrambles during training sessions, spending 20 minutes at a time hanging upside down.
As he climbs ever higher above teeming sidewalks - without official sanction, mostly - panicked and fearful local governments inevitably send in the cops, with sirens blaring. Admiring crowds gather spontaneously at the foot of his vertiginous conquests, cheering and screaming.
Frequently arrested following his descent to terra firma, Alain is familiar with the vagaries of police procedure. In China, he was breathlessly huckled through Shanghai airport by a bunch of uniformed cops, having incurred a five-year ban from re-entering the country. In Moscow, he wound up freed from a few hours' police custody smelling of vodka proffered by admiring cops. Mick Jagger? Street-fighting man? Pah! Phew, Alain Robert's rock 'n' roll!
Why does Alain do it? The Human Spider made a brief pretence of trying to explain, drafting in a tame sports psychologist and an admiring fellow climber. So Alain's daredevil climbing may well have something to do with staging a counter-phobia, Alain having chosen to overcome a teenage fear of heights by externalising and then controlling it.
Maybe it's a reaction to a strict, rule-bound childhood upbringing. Or it might all just be about doing what you do, because to do is to be (a dooby-dooby-doo). As Alain himself off-handedly summarised his impulses, speaking in his super-cool French accent: "I lurrve keeckeeng the hass of society doing someseeng illegal." There was also an admirable air of Gallic insouciance to the manner in which he casually announced: "There ees only two options: falleeng or reacheeng ze top. I always take ze second one."
Aged 45, Alain's wiry body is that of a 20-year-old. In contrast, his gaunt, crevassed and leathery visage has a ruminative simian cast indicating kinship to a considerably older spider monkey. Or maybe there's another explanation. With his penchant for ultra-tight red leather trousers and snakeskin jackets, dangly earrings and Native American amulets, Alain could well be the outcome of a curious genetic experiment involving Keith Richards and Iggy Pop.
Whether atop a mountainous inner-city peak that he's heroically subdued in 40 energy-sapping minutes or just taking the family dog for a walk, Alain Robert has the springy, devil-may-care stance of an outlaw gunslinger. If I ever grow up, I want to be Alain Robert.
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