Should George have been jailed with violent criminals for climbing up The Shard?
As he’s released from Pentonville, his middle-class parents call his 24-week sentence ‘wildly excessive’
GREETING a child as t hey are released from prison can elicit many emotions – relief, euphoria, anxiety, perhaps even anger. But for Hilary and Clive King-Thompson, the emergence of their son from Pentonville jail last week evoked only a sense of pride.
Indeed, as Hilary embraced 20-yearold George, she described him as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘inspiring’.
So what did George do to earn such parental praise? He scaled the outside of The Shard, the 1,017ft London skyscraper and Europe’s tallest building, without ropes or safety equipment.
George and his parents grudgingly accept that his meticulously planned ascent last July deserved to be punished but believe he should have been given a community service order rather than a 24-week jail term.
The so-called Spider Boy, who chronicles his daredevil exploits on Instagram and YouTube, has faced justified criticism for endangering the lives of others as well as his own. But his mum describes him as ‘an oldfashioned adventurer pursuing his passion’.
Hilary, 54, a property company director, says: ‘George managed to get a third of the way up The Shard before the authorities were alerted. This proves their security system isn’t good enough. What if he’d been a terrorist? Instead of throwing him in jail, the building’s owners should have talked to George about how things could be tightened up. He’s actually done them a favour.’
George suffers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and his mother adds: ‘I don’t know if it is connected to his ADHD but George is always trying to test himself.
‘It’s either running ultra-marathons, boxing or climbing. I’m all for him pushing himself to the limits, but I would rather it was something which didn’t put his life at risk.
George is adamant – and repeats in all his online videos – that no one should be tempted to copy his example. He says: ‘Of course there is a risk involved, but I go to great lengths to minimise those risks and I never undertake something without proper preparation and building myself up physically for the endurance needed.’
And it should be remembered that most, if not all, ‘urban exploration’ is illegal since it nearly always involves trespassing on private property.
HILARY and her surveyor husband Clive, 58, describe George’s jail sentence as ‘wildly excessive’, particularly when so many violent criminals are not sent to prison. The custodial sentence was for breaching a High Court injunction in place to prevent anyone scaling the building following a protest about the number of empty luxury apartments in The Shard. Criminal charges of public nuisance and trespass were dropped.
George’s parents say his age – 19 when he was jailed in October – should have meant he was put in a young offenders’ institution. Hilary added: ‘They should also have taken George’s ADHD into account before he was placed in a regime where he was locked up nearly all the time.’
Instead, the personal trainer ended up at Pentonville, a Category B adult prison in North London, where he shared a cell and a wing with drugdealers and gang members.
He was confined to his cell for 23 hours a day and says he saw stabbings, an attempted suicide and numerous acts of violence and drug abuse. A recent inspection report described the Victorian jail as ‘squalid and inhumane’.
‘It would have been far more sensible to give him a community service sentence where he could have helped other people,’ claims Hilary.
‘George is no risk to anyone. He’s a thoughtful, conscientious young man who volunteered at the Centrepoint charity to help the homeless during the eight months he was planning The Shard climb.’
Hilary became aware of her youngest son’s passion for climbing when she stumbled across YouTube footage of the then 12-year-old perched on the roof of their five-bedroom home in Oxford. The video, called Climbing The House Roof, is not for the faint-hearted, especially the segment where George, with a GoPro mini camera strapped to his head, stands on the chimney with his arms held out wide.
Hilary says: ‘I didn’t even know people climbed buildings, but when I saw videos of him jumping from one building to another or skateboarding along the arm of a crane, I thought, “I don’t want that”. But what can you do? He’s an adult.’
Hilary points out that George’s climbs require careful preparation.
‘He plans his climbs in incredible detail and spent eight months on his preparations for The Shard, making sure that if he had fallen, he’d have hit the roof of London Bridge station, rather than the pavement.’
George says he began his climb at 5.09am, because it was light but as few people as possible would have been in the area or inconvenienced.
In the event, he scampered up the building’s steel superstructure, which runs like railings between where the enormous sweeps of glass meet, in just 30 minutes. He recalls: ‘Dust made the panels slippery so there wasn’t that much traction. My feet started to slip a bit, which was quite worrying, but I just kept my composure, took a few deep breaths and carried on.’
At 6.45am, following a brief interview with the police and his acceptance of a caution, he called his mother to ask for a lift home. Many will rightly say his father is misguided and irresponsible but Clive believes George epitomises the zeal for adventure that helped to mould Britain. ‘If people didn’t take risks and there weren’t pioneers around, we wouldn’t have become the greatest nation on Earth at one stage,’ says Clive. ‘We need people like George who are prepared to take a risk, albeit a calculated one.’ George is philosophical about his time in jail: ‘It gave me a chance to reflect and to write, and I came out stronger.’ But he says climbing The Shard ‘ was 1 0 0 t i mes harder’, adding: ‘I was mentally prepared for prison. I was never scared, just hyper-aware most of the time. No one threatened me – it was about giving out respect and getting it back. Karma goes a long way in prison. Just letting someone have a small carton of milk is reciprocated when later you might need a stamp for an envelope.’
George admits he gets as much satisfaction from the intricate planning ahead of his climbs as for the ascents themselves. The Shard ‘adventure’, as he calls it, involved more than 200 scouting trips in and around the building.
‘I wore disguises, including sports kit and crutches, to analyse the building from all angles, taking photos while lying on a bench pretending to be drunk but taking note of every security patrol.’
Co n t r o v e r s i a l l y, h e c l a i ms: ‘Reaching the top was magical. Seeing how much our bodies and minds are really capable of doing when everything is firing at once – the endorphins, the adrenaline, the serotonin – to optimise your survival. That feeling is truly profound. It has to all be intuition and it has to all be second nature.
‘When you’re in the moment, it is far more beneficial to have zero fear and zero thoughts.’
He brushes aside right-minded suggestions that the police have better things to do than escort down young daredevils.
‘No one says that about people going out for a drink and having too much,’ he argues.
George has no firm plans to scale other buildings in Britain (although he probably doesn’t want to alert the authorities). But for a young man who refuses to keep his feet on the ground, base jumping and bareknuckle boxing are safer options for the time being – when his parents are out of earshot.