Blaine's spooky high-wire stunt

He stood on top of a 30m high pillar for 35 hours and spent 62 hours entombed in a block of ice.

David Blaine also endured the jeers of unimpressed onlookers as he spent 44 days in a plastic box suspended over the River Thames.

So, no one could blame him for taking it easy with his next stunt.

Two years on, Blaine is planning to perform a high- wire walk on Hallowe'en. It sounds death-defying but the illusionist insists his latest circus-inspired stunt is 'easy and fun'.

Perhaps it is because it will be performed-BY in Manhattan, in his native New York and not in London.

After all, bored British spectators who watched his Above The Below stunt pelted the plastic box with paint bombs, jeered and hurled insults.

They rubbed it in later by voting him the Biggest Loser Of 2003 - and not because he shed 23kg in weight.

'It's my easiest one,' Blaine said of his high-wire act, adding that the logistics were yet to be completed.

'I want it to be simplistic and availableto everybody. I was even going to call it Easy and Fun. Basically, it's been done in the circuses, based on the old high-wire acts. It's like family entertainment.'

The 32-year-old is believed to be in intensive training in Florida for the circus-style performance to be broadcast on American TV.

While some have said his tricks no longer constitute magic in the traditional sense, Blaine disagrees.

'I think magic is whatever the individual defines it to be. I say it's all magic.'