it seems as though there's lots of
little different demons inside of me and
the more i give to them the more hungry
they get
[Music]
wow
[Music]
my name is george king and i'm an
extreme athlete
i climb some of the tallest buildings in
the world
there's no safety equipment really just
chalk and i mean sometimes it's barefoot
when it comes to surveillance is that
yeah i have to adopt different
identities and disguises so that i can
get the information i need
i've climbed the shard that's probably
the most notable one
i thought i knew it all at 19 but i was
a little kid if i knew what i knew now
process would have been a bit different
i was met by different police officers i
kind of just put my hands out to get
arrested
when you climb a building it's like
everything's in slow motion everything's
precise everything's clean every sense
is heightened to optimize your survival
every neurochemical serotonin dopamine
or endorphins are all fine at once for
one particular reason your survival and
it takes you to a place which i can't
describe but i can feel to the bone i
think that's the very feeling i feel as
though i constantly have to chase
my name is cass wiley and i've known
george for about 14 years i would say we
went to school together there was a
playground at school and i'd film him
try and do
things that he wasn't going to be doing
in the playground like jumping off the
places he should and climbing the things
he shouldn't
that's how it started
i must have been a teenager when i when
i moved on to cranes
and then things escalated from there
he became enchanted by cranes not just
climbing them but he almost became
obsessed with them as an architecture
and understanding how you can climb up
and walk along them the process of
breaking into a construction site and
climbing them
when he first climbed one i remember he
said it was one he could see from his
bedroom window
he asked me to film and i refused to
film it because at that point i was i
would suddenly realize he was taking
things too far
when he got older and even better at
climbing and he just made absolutely
clear to me that it was going to be his
life i kind of just like stopped telling
him not to do it and just went with it
oh there we go
i was on a school art trip from oxford
to london i was 13 years old i saw the
shard and instantly in that moment i
felt my destiny was somehow surrounded
by this building
dominating the skyline
is the shard standing at 310 metres tall
maybe it's because it was the tallest in
the uk and i had this ego thing where i
wanted to be number one
the planning
was around eight to twelve months
that was when i was actually living with
him for eight months in in layton in
london
i had to visit this building well over
100 times and
i didn't want to create pattern
recognition
i didn't want the security to see this
person coming every single day so i had
to switch up my identity quite a few
times
one of the ways that i do that is i
adopt different disguises
looking at our mail in the apartment
there'd be like a beard or like
a a weird pair of sunglasses like this
can't be for us you know he said oh no
mate it is it's i'm dressing up as a
whatever and you know i'm okay okay
sports kit
i'm a gym goer i've got a protein shake
in one hand and i'm run to the shard i
go up to pillar and i measure i stretch
on the pillar
see that it goes from my wrist to my
elbow okay that's all i need
he'd be lying on the floor measuring his
body on the kitchen floor putting duct
tape to kind of map out what all the
poles to go up the shard looked like
his room was like a
like a masterminds room with pictures
and things all over the shard and ways
to get in
and i'd spray some aftershave on i'd
wear the suit and i'd become this
office worker
i noticed that when people have a
cigarette they look aimlessly i don't
smoke i have a cigarette and i look in a
gaze and whilst i'm in this gaze i'm
looking at the cameras
and i pretend to be drunk on a bench in
london bridge station assessing every
single bit of movement
so for example one o'clock in the
morning
security goes from hot a to heart b note
it down 2 a.m there's an announcement
note that down 3 a.m cleaner goes from
platform 9 to platform 10 noted down and
i'd find correlations amongst the data
to find the most prime time to strike
i didn't sleep i tried to sleep i didn't
sleep the climb was set out around i
don't know
five o'clock in the morning
and i go into the london bridge station
and i'm there finally this is my moment
i'm zoning into this and that and the
senses are so heightened
what it comes down to is i take a deep
breath and i submit to the process
[Music]
and i got a video of george halfway up
the shard um at six in the morning
before work for me and i did actually
see him on like this little little
figure on the shark to see him after
eight months of him talking about it and
dreaming about it and it being like
every part of his life it was a very
surreal moment it's surreal for anyone
to see but for me particularly because i
know how much i meant to him
when i was climbing the building there
was
there's a particular moment which burns
deep to this day where i see like a
maintenance man through the window and
he looks at me and i look at him and
like i just give him a little little
wink and a nod and he weighs at me and i
wave at him and i just
it was just such a surreal moment to see
the look in his eyes of
horrible excitement and thrill and
just it was a very profound feeling and
experience
i'm on top of this building and looking
over london and all these years of
dreaming and months of planning have
finally come true i'm there living my
dream
i was met by different police officers i
kind of just put my hands out to get
arrested and they shut my hands
i trespassed um on an area which
shouldn't be trespassed by doing so i'm
in content to court
i was sentenced to six months in adult
prison
and
i ended up serving three months of that
sentence
when he went to prison he like wrote
pages of pages of these ideas and what
he wanted to climb back it was so ironic
that he went to prison to look back at
how he'd done something wrong but
actually to spend the time planning his
next missions you know he's good at just
taking on anything bad or good and just
seeing it as an interesting experience
it's all subjective to people's view on
what i do you know
adrenaline junkie thrill seeker athlete
the artist explorer you know i don't
really know what the i am
i have to adopt different identities and
disguises but at the same time what i do
the principle is raw it's real there's
nothing fake about it
it's as real as it gets
he's just an unusual guy
i think sometimes it's as simple as that
he has made me
a lot more excited about being on this
planet because of some of the ridiculous
things he's done
you