The Boy Who Climbed The Shard

my name's george king i'm 19 years old i would say i'm an extreme athlete ever since i can remember always so inquisitive about fear constantly trying to find ways to push my mind and push my body i don't know why i do it and i don't know really why i find the shark i just don't want something to go wrong can security access this roof i'll get the press there it's not safe when i was 13 i was on a school art trip i remember looking outside the window from my coach bus i saw the shard and i was like i'm gonna climb that i'd never seen anything like it it felt like something had been placed in the present from the future six years later i decided i'd see if it is doable i remember going there getting off the tube looking about seeing a pillar there seeing four security guards there but as i got closer i started to realize if i do this with speed if i attack this with with precision i could well get to the point of climb before the security get me that really started the adventure of the shard probably did over 200 recces in the space of a year and that got me down a route of wearing different disguises to avoid pattern recognition right so office worker this disguise will be used and i'm going inside the office bit of the shot walk around a bit be on the phone right because if you're on the phone no one's really going to stop you speaking to whoever you're speaking to his business right so i'm i'm walking around no i'm speaking on the phone i'm just mumbling i ain't saying anything i'm just mumbling once i feel like i've got everything put the imaginary phone call down into my pocket waterloo east and i'm out of there i came almost i don't want to say psychotically obsessed but it was just it was such a level obsession that if i was doing anything which wasn't related to the shard i would feel that i'm underselling myself i've been an insomniac my whole life i don't sleep i also have adhd but i've never seen my disorders as a negative thing i've seen it always as a strength [Music] there were three main friends who were really into it and really shared the vision i don't know if i didn't get sorry so if you get here why are you going all the way around here i'm doing the climb no matter what it's no point sort of bringing up the concern that i could die because it's kind of i'm gonna do this no matter what have you thought about using a rope in one hand i i don't want anything to do with ropes and what i hate to say and i don't want to be an advocate in being more dangerous but the whole point of this is that topless like climbing like a spider it was this big secret i had which the shard didn't know about my family didn't know about my other friends didn't know about that was gonna become true i knew he was gonna do something last summer but i didn't know what it was and i almost wanted him to just get on and do it if he's doing a climb he said to me do you want to know and i said no [Music] i was ready when i was no longer having nightmares of it because that told me my subconscious was ready and if my subconscious was ready for it then i was mentally ready to do the challenge i remember leaving my house in oxford with this smile on my face like it's really happening i got to a hotel where i'm staying for the night just opposite where the shard is i'm so fired up the shard security are going to wake up to the biggest security breach of its time the police are going to wake up to a potential threat the media is going to wake up to a breaking story and i'm gonna finally know if i live or die but in that moment i suddenly thought have i done enough planning is this gonna work am i completely out of my depth here i'm looking outside the window i'm seeing the shard and how imposing it is and i'm thinking is have i done enough i came out on my hotel room at around five o'clock walking down the hallway and i remember getting into the hotel elevator and looking in the mirror it didn't look like there was something human there walking to london bridge station and every sense was just heightened the city was just waking up and i was trying to sneak in and that was part of the plan actually almost to try and get the security when they're not as alert as they should be [Music] my entry point was london bridge station i went in with a friend dropped onto the railway my friend gave me a leg up pulled myself up onto a ledge of london bridge station roof and i sprinted to the corner of the shard as soon as i do that i'll trigger sensor so everything needs to be really fast i needed to get away from the bottom of the shard as quickly as possible otherwise the security could nab me so i used a suction cup to get away from them as fast as possible once i was safely away from them i began my climb from there now the majority of the shard excluding the bottom of the top had little holes i can work myself up so i just needed to sustain my muscular endurance so that when i got to the hard bit of the climb i would have the potential to do that [Applause] despite it being a new experience i felt like i've been there before because i visualized this climb for so long it felt oddly familiar as i'm climbing up i'm going through the different levels the offices the restaurant the bar until i reached a maintenance man he waved at me i waved at him the look on his face and his eyes when he saw me was just like pure shock when you're doing something where your life is literally in your fingertips everything fires at once your endorphins your dopamine your serotonin all to optimize your survival in that single moment and you enter a state where you cannot think about any other things that's where i feel actually most relaxed when i'm climbing a building and my life's in danger the climb went from relatively straightforward to quite difficult when i reached the viewing deck there were no longer pieces of a ladder which i could put my feet into it was just a smooth panel my hands were getting sort of this black sort of smear on them my feet began to start slipping so i thought the only way i could continue is through momentum to gain traction so it came as a fight to survive [Music] 20 meters below the tip i just had to get into the building if i continued i would have died for me that was not a failure because i couldn't have planned for going above the viewing deck and i'm a man of a plan and that's what gave me the satisfaction that i had completed this challenge [Music] when i eventually came in the building i put my hands out to get arrested and get cuffed and they put their hands out to shake my hand the feeling i felt afterwards was just out of this world i was just glowing with joy the shark line was seen on the news because some people had filmed it on their phones it was number one trending on twitter no one knew here it was it was just some guy had climbed the shard so i thought i might as well just tell people it was me he said hi mum i said george why are you ringing me and he said because i just climbed the shard and i was like oh bloody hell george i can't believe you've done you've done that but i'm so proud of you and i'm so pleased you're safe and that was my reaction and then i felt completely numb i think there was an element of shock do i really have to have a son who climbs things it's dangerous to do it one side of them is really happy that i'm alive and just kind of proud of me that i've achieved something big and then the other side is you know don't do that again that's like just so dangerous i would love it if you just said no that's it i'm not doing any of this yeah i know that so much you know what i always wish it was like that but it's just it's just built inside of me i just don't want something to go wrong when the police didn't arrest me and i was riding such a such a high you know getting connected to a manager meeting different people sponsors tv that i kind of the thought of going to prison kind of became quite distant in my mind until i got a email from the shard lawyers stating that i will have to go to court i had the first hearing 10 30 went on for about two hours coming back at 2pm to hear the final verdict but it's 50 50 going prison or simply getting a fine um so we're just waiting on the result about 40 minutes now 35 minutes you know what i got cocky you know i achieved my dream i'd done a few things in the press i'd done it you know i wasn't gonna go to prison [Music] they committed me to prison for six months [Music] during the course of my sentence i saw someone slip both their wrists and then my neighbor gets stabbed you have to adapt to survive i remember the door opening for my release our plans to shock the world again i only expected to see my family and then i saw cameras and like a whole crowd of people i'm brian and i'm managing the french spider-man alan robert he said that he shed what i believed in and he would like to work with me as my manager and i'll get the press there so that we cover the whole event i really felt on top of the world at that particular moment but i just felt like i needed to do something which is the opposite of incarceration to feel true freedom again [Music] [Music] myself for so long in prison i dreamt of being free again every single day and then soon as i did just a small climb i suddenly fell back to normal i feel like the whole shard project taught me that i am committed to do these things that i do have the ability to adapt to a situation and that that is my path [Music] reborn mate reborn i haven't done that for a while i forgot how much i miss it [Music] he's such an advocate for people with adhd he has literally used it as a superpower he just does his own thing there's no one like him you want to get your deathbed knowing that you gave me your best shot and that you have no regrets whatsoever [Music] you

Channel: Channel 4 Entertainment

Views: 1,640,925

Keywords: Channel 4, All 4, Urban Exploration, Parkour, London, Shard, Architecture, george king, the boy who climbed the shard, agbar tower

Id: RS8IxCKnTHM

Length: 13min 31sec (811 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 28 2020