Yes, he’s at it again. After being burried alive for 7 days, then caged in a block of ice for almost 3 days, standing on a 100ft high pillar for 35 hours, caged (again) in a perspex box next to the Thames for 44 days before finally submerging himself in a tank of water for over a week, the eccentric illusionist and ‘endurance artist’ (I have a feeling he is the only one calling himself that) has decided that what he really wanted to do was try and set a new record – this time for holding his breath underwater.

He performed the stunt on the Oprah Winfrey show, after a good deal of training including sleeping in a hypoxic tent (basically the opposite of an oxygen chamber) and then breathing pure oxygen for 23 minutes before the stunt. In the end he managed to set a staggering time of 17 minutes 4.4 seconds – yes, thats right, almost 20 minutes without breathing whatsoever.

It makes you wonder how many more of these stunts he can actually perform before his body just gives up, or maybe it points to his seemingly super-human abilities of endurance. Part of me even half expects him to give up doing these stunts just out of boredom rather than anything else: he must spent a good portion of his life sat or stood still in some form of tank or box in front of a crowd of people – hardly the most exciting activity on the face of the planet!

Either way, I think its safe to say “don’t try this at home” and to wonder what he will be doing next – rumour has it he will be trying to break the record for sleep deprivation (currently standing at 11.5 days by British man Tony Wright, set in May 2007). Again, its another potentially life-threatening stunt (mentally at any rate), so I guess he probably will do it.

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