The thousands of protesters who descended on London this week used various tactics to attract the focus of one of the most global media spotlights of recent times. There were the men who arrived in an armoured vehicle, the stretcher-bearers who carried a giant dead canary, the man in a beanie hat who was also Russell Brand, and the chap whose hand-written placard read, simply, "Down with this sort of thing".
But one man rose above the swarm of demonstrators on Thursday to deliver a message that, thanks to his audacious ability would be heard louder and longer than his ground-bound counterparts.
Alain Robert, the French climber and self-styled "spider-man" took just 30 minutes to scale the north face of the Lloyd's building in the City, pausing at the ninth floor to unfurl a banner highlighting the threat of climate change. The morning after, Robert is typically modest about his efforts. "It's an easy building to climb and not that tall," he says of the 90m edifice known as the "inside-out" building. "It was fun. I saw some people on the inside when I was going up; they were happy snapping some pictures."
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Those who watched Robert's climb close-up will have seen the veins rippling under his distinctive mullet and the sinewy muscles in his wiry arms but they will not have seen a drop of sweat. For a man who has scaled some of the tallest buildings with only climbing shoes and a bag of chalk for grip, Thursday's feat was little more than a promenade au parc.
Robert, 46, was a gifted rock-climber before he swapped granite for glass and steel. After cutting his teeth as a young boy on the rock-faces around Valence, his hometown in the south of France, he took on bigger challenges. He dispensed with the safety devices employed by most climbers – harnesses, ropes, pitons – preferring the frisson and freedom of solo ascents including, in 1993, one of the world's hardest, a record-breaking climb in Provence's Verdon Gorge.
Robert has never put a foot wrong on a building, but in 1982, he fell 15m while rappelling from a cliff, breaking both forearms, his elbow, pelvis, and nose. He fell into a coma for five days and emerged with epilepsy and vertigo caused by a damaged inner ear. Doctors declared him "60 per cent disabled" and said Robert would never climb. He defied the doctors, too.
In 1994, having reached the height of his sport, Robert seized on the opportunity to do something different. He flew to Chicago with a climbing film maker who wanted to swap cliffs for skyscrapers. "It would have made more sense to cycle up Mount Everest," Robert writes in his autobiography, With Bare Hands. "In the shadow of Chicago's cityscape, it occurred to me that I had probably agreed to one of the most stupid proposals that had ever been made." Nerves soon vanished as Robert inched his way up the 42-storey Citigroup Centre, using ledges, window frames and sheer strength to scale the unforgiving structure. He wrote: "The city of Chicago had just opened a door to a whole new universe, a range of mountains of steel and glass."
Since then, Robert has conquered more than 85 buildings, including the Canary Wharf tower, both Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taiwan's Taipei 101 and the Four Seasons Palace in Hong Kong, when he almost fell after a woman inside screamed and fainted at the sight of a human spider 60 storeys high.
The attentions of the law have helped create Robert's image. "We are living in a world where everything is based on security," he says. "There are a lot of rules and sometimes doing the forbidden can be nice." Robert happily lives up to his superhero status, a cross between Spider-man and Robin Hood (who he says he admires). He has worn Spider-man suits on more than one occasion and his email address includes the word "spiderman". He is a showman who often pauses to wave at rapt crowds, and ends his climbs by looking down and raising his fists in triumph. This has led to comparisons to Philippe Petit, the man whose tightrope walk between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Centre was retold in last year's Oscar-winning documentary, Man on Wire. "In that very French sort of way, he has turned something extreme into an art form," says British climber Leo Houlding. Robert dismisses as "bullshit" the suggestion that he and Petite share what he calls a "French craziness gene".
But Robert cannot deny that his willingness to publicise himself and, more recently, causes from climate change to Aids awareness, sets him aparty. "He's well respected as a climber," Mr Houlding says. "He has soloed routes as hard as anyone else and those skyscrapers are not easy, but it's a different kind of respect. There are those who see arrogance in what he does but I'm not one of them; he's inspirational."
As Robert waits to hear whether he will be required to return to Britain for a court appearance, he is eyeing his next target, the 818m Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building. Not bad for a man with vertigo. "When I was young, I was so afraid of heights so getting to the top and looking down is like a reward," he says. "I won't say I'm dominating a height but at least I am capable of dominating my fear."
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