Blaine jumps to it

David Blaine has revealed he feared he would be shot dead by an assassin during his 44-day fast suspended in a plastic box.

The American illusionist was so worried about an attempt on his life that he tried to have the Plexiglass container made from bullet-proof glass.

But in his first interview after emerging from the box last month, he said the plan fell through because "in London they can't make anything that's bullet proof ".

Apart from taunting him with food or shouting insults, some onlookers would throw eggs - and even aim fireworks at him at night.

He said: "I would jump up because I was sure they were shooting a gun at me. I would wake up and my heart would start racing." He said the first 10 days were "horrible" but for "every one guy throwing an egg, there were hundreds of people who would wave and smile".

Blaine was speaking to CNN interviewer Larry King, who stood with him in his Plexiglass box during the interview while it was bombarded with more eggs.

The illusionist said some onlookers' behaviour nearly made him give up. As one man tried to cut his water line, the magician feared both of them might crash to the ground. "He started to swing everything and yelling, 'Go back to America, I hate you, I'll kill!' - I mean, really crazy things," said Blaine.

"I was waving and smiling, but really, I was like, 'This is it, I'm done.' At that point I realised it really got into the psyche of some people in a serious way."

Blaine, who claims only to have drunk water during his ordeal, said it was sometimes bitterly cold at night and he found it difficult to sleep for more than two hours at a time.

He faced "horrible pain" near the end. "When you're in starvation, your body is eating your own muscle tissue, your own fat and the organs, so you feel all your muscles literally like they're being chewed off."

In the last four days, he began to have serious health problems. "I started to have heart palpitations, but really it was just my heart would speed up or slow down really fast."

At one point on the last day, he said, his heart was racing. "I couldn't breathe and I actually thought I was not going to finish." He lost nearly four stone, he said.

After five days in hospital on a liquid diet he grabbed his first real food - a handful of crisps. But his real fantasy had been a bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

"I kept thinking about this bagel. So the next day my friend gave me two of them. And I ate one of them and my stomach was killing me for the next three days."

There were more problems when he sneaked out of the hospital to see the film Mystic River. He could barely walk because of swollen legs. "And my heart was really weak because it had shrunk in size."

A panic attack during the film forced him to go back to hospital.

He disobeyed doctors' orders and began to have sex with his model girlfriend, Manon von Gerkan. "I had heart monitors on at all times and they came rushing in because my heart was racing so."

Explaining his motivation for the starvation stunt, Blaine said: "I like the idea of endurance. I was obsessed with the idea of fasting and isolation." He chose the location because Tower Bridge was so beautiful, while London was a good place "to do something different for a change".

His next stunt involves jumping from a helicopter into a river. "It is called the dive of death and it would be from such a tremendous height that there's only a couple of people that have lived," he said. "When you fall from that height it's like hitting the pavement."