The Great Showman

‘TRUST Tony Blair. No, silly, we don’t mean trust Tony Blair. But trust Tony Blair.

‘Did they like it?’ ‘Not a lot’

David Blaine spends 44 days without food in a Perspex box suspended above the River Thames and emerges weeping and barely able to walk to find himself upstaged by the Prime Minister.

Blaine may be an illusionist, an entertainer and a show-off par excellence, but he has got nothing on our beloved leader.

Blaine, as the Telegraph notes, may have lost four stone during his self-imposed fast and endured a barrage of eggs, golf balls and flying cheeseburgers, but Tony has tachycardia.

And in the game of medical Top Trumps, we all know that an irregular heart beat always wins against a spot of weight loss and disorientation.

Blaine can at least content himself with the fact that a crowd of 10,000 turned up to watch his exit from the box at 9.50pm last night.

And he will be considerably richer for having achieved his aim, with Sky TV and Channel 4 paying up to £1m for the rights to broadcast the stunt.

But he should wonder what kind of weirdos and losers he attracts.

The Telegraph watches him throw his few belongings to the crowd before he left his box – like his cashmere blanket which was caught by Aylin Orman.

“It will be my lucky charm,” she said. “It is part of David.”

Exactly what part of David she thinks it is we don’t know – perhaps he has spent the last month and a half constructing a blanket from his chest hair.

But at least it’s more savoury than Juanita Headle’s memento – a very grimy Wet Wipe.

“I am going to get it framed and put it on my wall,” she said.

It should fit in nicely next to the pair of Paul Daniels’ soiled underpants.’

Posted: 20th, October 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink