5

JAILHOUSE JROCK

Ayoung woman wails and whines. Apparently she is delirious, suffering rom narcotic withdrawal symptoms, offending everyone who has the audacity to meet her glance. Sometimes, she even starts to sing. Terribly out of tune. It is incredible how a female voice can echo in such a gloomy corridor.

She shares this anteroom of the Court of Justice of San Francisco with about 50 other prisoners, chained in groups of ten, each awaiting their judgement. They are almost without exception all sturdy black men, 'outsiders' as they are sadly named on the French side of the Atlantic. Nobody speaks, and the warders have a mocking manner today which does little to steady the unhinged woman. In her orange-coloured suit, a synonym for madness and incarceration, this howling wench is the only one expressing her bitterness, her misery. The rest of us, up for sentences of less than five years, maintain the sanity to keep quiet and not to stand out. But it is fair to say that amongst this motley crew, a skinny Caucasian from France stands out quite a bit. With my hands chained behind my back I observe this unpleasantly familiar spectacle. This is the dark side of our modern societies, of our so-called liberal and civilised democracies.

I have freely exchanged my new shoes for a rotting and disintegrating pair belonging to a companion in this confinement, a Mexican cocaine dealer. Chico has worn these shoes for at least as long as he has been in jail — three long years. His shoes do not exude the fragrant aroma of the historic French town of Grasse back home, famed as the world's perfume capital, but I don't really care. Grasse can be smelt many miles downwind, and so can these decomposing shoes, but it doesn't matter because I won't be here that long. And it is not easy to see or smell my feet anyway. Because of my tiny size, the store men of the Sailor County Jail could not find a suit to fit me. It seems they have no uniforms for people of my stature — the guys in here are of a completely different demographic. I look ludicrous in this overly baggy and loose prison suit, my hands and feet hidden from daylight by unintentional bell-bottoms. If it weren't for the violent orange I would look like a Jedi knight, unlike all these tall black guys who fill the uniforms pretty well!

I peruse the scene and take in my surroundings. I am not from this world. I am an ET who wants to return home. The meaning of prison to me though is very different than it is for these guys. For me it's a brief interlude which punctuates each of my ascents. Freedom awaits me this evening, I just know it. These men however must linger in this purgatory for years at a time.

A pair of grim guards approach and seize me. It looks like it's my turn before the law. I am no longer a nameless face of the dungeons, I am to come under the scrutiny of the court and face justice. I am led up some stairs and through a set of doors to another world. Wooden panels, people in suits, supreme formality make a potent contrast to the stark surroundings of my cell. Golden sunlight pours through the courtroom windows. On his throne the magistrate briefly asks some technical questions, then the prosecutor turns to his colleagues. He seems annoyed, as if he had lost his keys. There is more muttering and rustling of papers before the magistrate addresses me.

"The law offers you the right of appeal through an interpreter but we did not foresee this requirement. You will be brought back in front of the court later."

It's deflating news. Wouldn't it be better to just guillotine me right now? I imagined that I would now be heading outside to reassure my family of my release and safety, but instead I am again thrown into a van in handcuffs. Back to square one, prison and uncertainty. And what's worse, this is the second time this has happened to me here. At this point of my life I do not speak English particularly well, at least not well enough to deal with such matters. The first time I stood before the San Francisco court, it was with neither lawyer nor interpreter. No one had told me that I had the right to a defence lawyer (or maybe they did, but it was lost in translation) and I thought I could just defend myself. Why not? I just wanted to get out of here. I casually informed the American magistrate in atrocious English that I could defend myself. He seemed most irritated by this absurd Frenchman and disagreed, sending me down until they could find an interpreter. And here we are again.

I think again of my arrival in San Francisco, of my visit to this fabulous city, and my search for graceful structures to climb. I had taken in the tourist and architectural sights, including a visit to the famous prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, within a stone's throw of the golden door which marks the entrance to the city. After eyeing multiple locations, I was torn between the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and the magnificent Transamerica Pyramid, a truly unique tapering skyscraper dominating the business district. My preparation was logical and rather well thought out. I had omitted just one small detail: the electronic surveillance, particularly fashionable in the land of the free...

Spring, California. The amber sun is slowly sinking in the blue sky, transforming the world's most famous suspension bridge into a massive ruby jewel. An icy breeze from the Pacific blows across the bay. Neither I nor the photographer need to be told to take advantage of this magic moment. Quietly, I pull out my slippers and clean them diligently. The soles must be spotless, immaculate. For rock climbers, preparing our slippers is a real rite, a moment of meditation used to acquire the concentration and serenity demanded by the performance. You will never see a climber hastily equipping himself before a competition, or a marksman ripping out his rifle ten seconds before the kill. For me climbing solo, without ropes, is a serious undertaking. My life depends upon my physical preparation, my technique, and my state of mind. All I need are my slippers and the bag into which I plunge my hands to coat them with magnesia powder.

I peer around the bridge, seeking my route to the distant top. My choice is logical. I must climb up a cable and join one of the two heavy suspension cables swooping off the bridge towers.

The bridge hangs from what appears to be four cables running about eight inches from one another. But actually this is a pair of parallel cables looping over the main suspension cable and returning to the bridge. I will take the cable closest to the bridge tower. This makes my task markedly harder than taking a central cable, which would take me to where the main suspension cables hang the lowest. The cable I choose rises 227 metres directly upwards towards the apex of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is stark and lonely, and worst of all terribly vertical, offering no possibility of rest. As I stare at it, the idea seems like a kind of joke. But I must focus — doubt or humour have no place, and I must remain lucid and not underestimate the difficulty.

The photographer estimates the time of escalation to be about 15 minutes. I know differently. The dimensions ofthe cable, approximately ten centimetres in diameter, will cause problems. My hands cannot enclose it as they could when climbing a rope, for example. I will have to squeeze the cable to support my entire body weight, which will mean a big expenditure of energy. Climbing like this for ten metres is no problem, but for 227... I am chancing it a bit. I know I must not hang around up there. Nor here. Okay then, let's climb this bridge!

I remove my jacket and energetically rub my hands with the magnesia. I breathe freely, dunk my hands in a little more powder, and then seize the cable for the first time. It is stiff, very stiff. The paint makes it slippery and perturbs me a little. But I immediately take off. At first, a series of button-like rivets allow me to speed up the cable. Then, the bolts run out and the vertical cable becomes smooth — this is where it gets serious. The wind pierces my clothes, icy and powerful. I decide to climb the cable like a rope, by taking it in both hands to pull up my arms, then bringing up my feet and hoping to use them in a similar motion. Almost immediately I realise this technique is too physical and asks for too much energy. I muse at my naïvety, my misconception that this huge bridge would constitute an appetiser before the main course of the Transamerica Pyramid. I remind myself once again that in climbing, optimism is not always your best friend. But I carry on. This technique is the only safe way to make the main suspension cable and I cannot waste time or energy on hesitation.

Although physically demanding, in a short time I have already covered a lot of ground. I am in a trance. I imagine I am on a cliff as I close my fingers around the sides of the cable while delicately placing my feet upon the cold steel. The ceaseless movement of cars below indicates no one has noticed me yet. It is the golden end of the afternoon and half of the city is returning home to Oakland, whilst the other half drives in the opposite direction. Few of San Francisco's inhabitants pay any attention to the magic of the bridge at this time of day. But do Parisians smile every morning at the sunrise over the Eiffel Tower? I am aware of the beauty around me though I cannot afford the luxury of dwelling upon it. I keep pulling myself up, higher and higher into thin air.

Ten more minutes pass. I look upwards. The cables seem to disappear in the dense blue of the sky. Wow! What a sight. I keep squeezing with my fingers and pulling my entire body with my arms. But by now I am crawling up this thick cable pitifully slowly, and using huge reserves of energy. Paralysis starts to creep into my arms just before the middle of the ascent. I know such a development can cause everything to unravel very quickly and that I cannot continue like this. On a rope, we use our feet to grasp, and that allows us to use our thighs to grip and climb. A painted cable of steel makes this impossible. I have no grip, and my legs are as much use to me for locomotion as legs are to a fly. In fact, I start to feel like a tiny fly struggling in the middle of this huge cobweb. The wind strengthens more and more, whistling through the structure of the bridge. A return ticket? Forget it! It is already too late to stop the ascent. Fatigued and increasingly disconcerted, I take a look at where I am. I am in the middle of nowhere. Worse still, I know my physical limits. Merde — this is not good at all. This really is a bit of a problem...

I start to panic as I now know I will not make the summit, let alone have the strength to secure myself at the top or descend from it. Sometimes, when comfortably seated in the leather of an armchair watching the television news, I wonder why the victims of a fire, for example, did not fight harder when their lives depended on it. The answer is simple. When the muscles cannot take any more, the will to survive just cannot help. I know this better than anybody, but I also know that my training allows me to be effective in spite of a massive concentration of lactic acid in my muscles. I left the ground more than 20 strenuous minutes ago. It is as plain as the nose on my mangled face that the difficulty of the challenge is far greater than my estimations, but I try to remain composed. I must act fast if I am to get out of this situation.

I decide to use another technique, less physical but more unpredictable. The crux of a solo ascent lies in the management of the unknown, in the capacity of the climber to remain quiet, lucid and capable of making the best choices. By switching to a method known by climbers as a 'Dulfer' movement (after its creator Hans Dülfer), I reduce the time of escalation but also my safety margin. This technique is meant to be used to climb corners and carries a significant risk of slippage. But my forearms are burning and will soon fail — I have no choice.

My attention turns to my feet. I place them on the two parallel cables, in the narrow grooves between the strands. I take the other cables in each hand. My arms work perpendicularly against the cables while my feet push against the other two, and I resume my progress. I use different muscles in my arms, giving a chance for the lactic acid in my forearms to move elsewhere. With the slippery paint and buffeting wind, the game becomes even harder. My limbs are working within a very small square. If my foot slips, the tension created by the opposition of the lower and upper limbs will collapse... and me with them. It's a serious — and, in all honesty, desperate — measure. I am now utterly exposed to the hazards of moisture. A speck of rain would end everything. But the sky is clear, the blue on one side giving way to gold on the other.

A helicopter approaches, then hovers above the bridge near this tiny figure of a human being scaling a cable. The beating of its blades mixes with the rush of the wind, as if the pilot wanted to remain discreet and not disturb me. Below, three highway lanes have been closed by the police. They have arrived in force and a muffled symphony of distant sirens rides on the wind. The firemen are also there, and so it seems are a bunch of journalists in TV vans. It's quite unnecessary, all this fuss. Hey! Why not call the CIA and the FBI? Swat teams? Perhaps you should scramble a squadron of F-16 fighters to launch a barrage of missiles, or maybe launch a warhead from a nuclear submarine in the bay? This American melodrama does not impress me any more, after my visits to New York and Chicago. I am simply confused as to why every time I escalate a structure it terrifies the local authorities so much. And how did they know about it? Unknown to me, one of the bridge's 15 surveillance cameras betrayed me. I had honestly thought I could climb the Golden Gate discreetly on my own, get a few snaps, then perhaps get arrested rather quietly. It is clear that I have underestimated this escalation on more than one front.

I am well behind my anticipated schedule and, as if to remind me, the light is gently fading. I keep fighting my way to the top of these endless cables. It's tough going. Powerful squalls shake the bridge, giving me the unpleasant sensation that an invisible giant is shaking my cable in an attempt to dislodge me. Great!

Apart from the odd seagull that shoots by, I am very isolated up here. My arms and legs are trembling as the exertion starts to take its toll. But the main suspension cable is now within range. I can see where my vertical cable joins the main cable, just before its meeting point with one of the bridge towers. It is approaching sunset and just below the apex of the tower I can distinguish the two boys in beige sent to arrest me. But my current problem remains climbing, nothing more than climbing. The rest is purely administrative formality, paperwork, shit.

The last section is upon me, but it will be the toughest yet. A dozen metres from the top I see a bracket between the two cables which gives me something to hold onto, but cancelling out that advantage, I see that the cable I am climbing is pressed against the main suspension cable as it wraps around the main one and heads down again. This only gives me half the cable to hold onto! I am obliged to press my fingertips like crab claws around the front of the cable, as I am unable to place a hand behind it, or use the full length of my fingers and palm. Already exhausted, the challenge is immense. It is the ultimate fight and I am using my last reserves.

Revolving lights swirl more than 200 metres beneath me, and the cable below is lost in the gently faded light. The traffic jam unnecessarily created by the police is simply gigantic, endless. With my right hand I put everything I have into hauling myself up by the tips of my fingers and throwing a leg over the main cable. I tremble and splutter but make it. I pause upon the bracket, millimetres from safety but millimetres from the edge. One last effort to get around this pipeline-like obstacle...

I pull myself over and find myself on top of the main cable and in view of the summit, shattered but delighted. I never thought I would have to go through so much to reach this point. I haul myself to my feet and regain my breath, allowing my muscles to recuperate. The suspension cable has two thin wires running either side at hand height, obviously for maintenance workers, which would enable the cops to approach me if they were game — but they are staying put. They wait for me a little higher, on a balcony used for inspections and maintenance. I follow the cable a few metres above them and mount the uppermost part of the bridge tower to reach the true apex of the Golden Gate. I climb to the little lookout post equipped with a red aircraft warning beacon, and raise my hands in triumph to give the guys in the helicopter some nice footage. The view over the bay is stunning. Serenely I take out a camera with a wide-angle lens and immortalise this magic moment. Such a sunset deserves it.

The two cops get impatient behind their railings. I tuck my camera away in the bottom of a pocket, hoping to be able to give it discreetly to the photographer below. Then I head towards the cops along the top of the main cable. The closer I get, the more impressive they appear. In fact, they are enormous. I smile and launch a shy "Hi!" just to show I am not hostile, that it was all simply a little joke. Before handcuffing me they ask if I planned to commit suicide. To me the question is a little strange. I answer in my fractured English.

"Come on, guys, I have just arrived at the summit after 45 minutes of intense effort, without the chance to take a rest! Better ask d'Abbeville why he didn't take the plane across the Atlantic, or why Marie-Jo Perec didn't ride a motorbike to break the 400 metres world record!"

They seem to think my answer is equally weird. Maybe they have never heard these French names. I would later learn that the beautiful Golden Gate has the sad distinction of seeing the highest number of suicides in the country.

I am cuffed, and the cops push me towards the pillar in the bridge tower which houses the lift. When the lift reaches the bottom I realise we are not actually at ground level. I need to climb a dozen metres down a ladder. But the cops refuse to uncuff me. This pointless stance makes no sense — how am I supposed to get down a ladder like this? But the cops simply don't care about my situation, and for me the American dream dies this day. What are they thinking about at this moment? Are they dreaming of the number of hamburgers they are going to eat this evening? I hate them, these thoughtless imbeciles who are happy to leave me to struggle down this ladder alone in this way.

I am beginning to have some regrets about my climb. No, I don't regret climbing the bridge for a minute — it was fantastic! What I am beginning to regret is that I climbed up the Sausalito side of the bridge. There are two bridge towers, one falling under the jurisdiction of San Francisco and the other falling under Sausalito. The photographer thought the images would be better if I had climbed up the Sausalito side, and so that is what I did. Unfortunately in Sausalito the cops seem to have less to do, making them tougher on me. Little details like this can make all the difference when it comes to being busted. The San Francisco cops have more important things to worry about than their colleagues on the other side of the bay. But still, the Sausalito cops are happy to make me wait. It is crazy how long you can wait in a police station. Sometimes it feels like the only right you have is to sit and wait in silence.

Fortunately I am allowed to make a phone call. I decide to call my wife in France, to assure her and my three children that all is well, but then I am told I cannot make calls outside the United States. I have the right to make this fucking phone call but these cops just don't care. And then I am hungry. I burned up quite a few calories this afternoon, more than these languid cops do in a week. After more than two hours of interrogation they still do not feel like giving me something to eat. I am getting mad, made to sit on my chair, about to faint. A huge woman is interrogating me in a rude and patronising way. She seems to revel in being obnoxious, as if this was her patriotic duty. It's a terrible thing when people like her are put in this position. One often wonders if they choose the most hideous people for these roles when they interview potential police officers, so that we might be insulted into submission. This dreadful woman has an issue with my nationality and is disdainful of foreigners. She keeps telling me how proud she is to be an American. What does this have to do with me climbing the Golden Gate Bridge? This is not an interrogation or an interview — I have had plenty of those around the world from police officers doing their jobs properly, even if they weren't especially good fun to be around. This is just a massive fat bitch in a chair being a massive fat bitch in a chair, offending me with her small-mindedness, her racism and her blubber. I have had two hours of this bullshit. After several more scathing comments designed to insult me while playing up her own nationality I launch a verbal salvo.

"The real Americans are the Native Americans, the Indians!"

She does not seem to appreciate this statement at all. I have given her the excuse to do her best to piss me off, and she takes advantage of it to keep me until she begins to feel tired, which turns out to be around midnight. When she is no longer amused by this boring game, she goes home to her hamburgers, her spare ribs and her waffles. Home to her jumbo hot dogs, her soda pop, her French fries (sorry, her Freedom fries!), her nachos, her pizzas, her Cheetos and her fucking twinkies. Home to her great big fridge, bigger no doubt than some of the buildings I have climbed. Me? I am sent down for a complete body search and a miserable police cell. And I'm still hungry.

After the second adjournment of my lawsuit, I find myself emptied out of the police van and returned to prison. It looks like I will be here more than just a night. The initial interest sparked by the French Spiderman, which usually sees my case resolved quickly, has evaporated and I am now lost in the system. I am an ordinary prisoner like everyone else, and as they say here, that 'sucks'.

I am back in Sausalito jail which is brand new and actually, as a facility, probably the nicest jail I have ever stayed in. My cell isn't bad at all. In this increasingly familiar room, Chico the Mexican coke dealer seems particularly surprised by my return. His first glance turns to his decaying shoes that I am wearing. His reaction makes me smile yet also worries me. Do we regress to being animals so quickly when we are held in captivity? My climbing shoes look good on him and his old ones would only look good in a landfill. And they really ought to be buried as they emit the foulest fumes. The bacteria count must be off the scale, they truly are a pomander of putrescence. When he understands that I don't care about getting my shoes back, he begins to tell me about himself as if the value of my gift required a kind of commitment. Chico is 25 years old. He believed in the American dream. But he has no regrets, because in Mexico he would have had virtually nothing and he accepts his fate as par for the course. His voice is calm, almost warm. His girlfriend is also 'doing a cruise' in prison, not far from here. The expression makes me smile. Him too, although he knows that this cruise will send him back to Mexico. But for Chico it doesn't matter, he already has his plans mapped out: he and his girlfriend will have a child and return to the USA. I ask him what he will do. Apparently, since they will cross the border without papers, he will most likely have to sell drugs again. His eyes drift to the concrete ceiling as he talks of the house they will share together and his hopes for his unborn child.

Recreation hour ends this discussion of dreams. Hundreds of prisoners invade the yard like a plague of rodents. Some shout, others play fighting games. Some start doing press-ups, muscles swelling, sweat pearling on shaved craniums. This is the first time I have been here for recreation and I observe the scene. Like everyone else here I need to let off steam so I start a series of press-ups too. I do a hundred in a row. The black dudes look at me, surprised. What do they think I am? With my busted nose and my hands covered with nicks and scratches, do I look like a street fighter? Or with my long hair and leathered face, maybe I look like a crack dealer from a seedy ghetto? I guess we always need to catalogue people. I have experienced this since my first solo, when I was categorised and treated as a madman. It's all too easy. Everyone sees a madman in someone they don't understand. But by taking a different approach to life I have met extraordinary people in the prisons of the world. And there is a certain solidarity between outcasts. A sort of respect which does not express itself in a handshake or a pat on the back, just a little spark in the glance of an eye.

My series of pumps ends and they approach. They are amazed that a lad as thin and small as me just totally smashed the prison pump record! They say that if I had been as big as them, then I would have been something they refer to as an 'ass kicker'. Other hip-hop profanities follow and I add these colourful metaphors to my expanding English vocabulary. They call me 'Little Schwarzenegger' and seem particularly pleased with this comparison. When they laugh, their abdominal muscles move like waves in a sea of fury. The most enormous of these big men asks me why I am here.

"I climbed the Golden Gate."

Puzzled faces. It looks like they have never heard of it. There's a murmuring of consultation and then they seem to conclude that I wanted to blow it up, which appears to be more logical.

I show them a new game, doing press-ups on one arm. I manage about 40. My record? Eighty. They grin and nod and take to the floor. They grit their teeth, wince, strain, growl and give all they have. But for them, no way. It seems rather pointless to explain to them that for this type of exercise, it is important to have a good weight-to-power ratio. They carry much more weight than me and have to work twice, three times as hard. But also I have my lactic acid training. To these guys, if you are solid, big and heavy, then you must be the strongest — so my demonstrations have them flummoxed.

To finish I make a perfect board on the portico, right in the middle of the yard. I levitate before them. It's funny but when I undertake this exercise I always believe I should create an absolutely perfect board. My body should be as straight as, well, a board. It is not really a big deal for training purposes, but for me, it is a stylistic composition. To keep the body absolutely horizontal whilst hanging by the arms has something of a surrealist, incomprehensible nature about it. I guess it is similar to escalation, another fight against the laws of gravity. My fellow prisoners really love it and as a result of all this showing off, I become a sort of mascot for the group.

Bureaucracy and crap has led to me spending six days in a penitentiary. Apparently in San Francisco it takes six days to find a French translator! In this time I have become the clown of the prison yard, the jester. The pumping competitions in jail are a cheerful game but by the end of a week, you get a little tired of it. These guys train in their cells to fight, to defend themselves, but happily for me a fight was never going to happen. 'Little Schwarzy' was held in respect in San Francisco! But today I face a fight. I find myself before the judge, fighting for my liberty, and this time I do have an interpreter. Third time lucky I hope. I am also accompanied by my agent Julie Cohen who bails me. I am free for a few days before I must return and stand again.

From wearing a pair of ludicrous pyjamas which made me look like one of Snow White's dwarves, I return to court in my cowboy boots and snakeskin. I feel much better about my clothing, though I think the judiciary here prefer my pyjama look. I was originally charged with a felony and at first I did not know what a felony actually was. I thought a few days in jail would do the trick. But after a bit of manoeuvring, my lawyer asks me to plead guilty to lesser misdemeanour charges. I shrug and agree. I remember my childhood, the times when I got in trouble with authority for riding my bicycle where I shouldn't have, or when I got into fights. I won't do it again Miss, Sir, Mister Policeman, I promise! As a result of my humble remorse, the court thinks that my six days inside are sufficient punishment and fines me an additional $200 towards costs. No problem — I can go back to France, and instead of my prison press-ups I can restart my normal training, on my favourite cliffs of Verdon or Lubéron.

It has been a revealing six days and, as usual, quite a bit of fun. Every time I am thrown in jail in any country of the world — rich, poor, democratic or dictatorial — my physical training has led to me being pointed out and even respected. This is quite useful in there when you are one metre sixty-five high and not aggressive. To be honest I have been in prison yards where I could easily have climbed out. But what's the point? The prison side of what I do is very much part of the escalation experience for me. I am a climber, not a fugitive. Many of the guys in prison find themselves there for expressing their frustrations in illegal ways. This is what I do too, I guess. I vent my frustrations by climbing. My street fight, my vandalism, my hold¬up is urban escalation. For the judges, what I do throws up legal confusion, for it is not something they have ever seen before. But ultimately for them my climbs are a disruption to law and order, the status quo, and for this I must be punished.

It sounds strange, but in prison I have always had the impression that my fellow prisoners would have enjoyed taking up the sport as a physical and therapeutic outlet. Escalation helps adapt and calm a frenzied state of mind. Reaching the summit by mastering the risks, dominating the elements, forcing oneself to respect a simplicity and discipline in life, these things would appeal to many of the guys I am locked up with. We are all misfits. But climbing lets you channel your aggression or independence into something positive, allowing you to be different but respectable. From Paris to New York, from Hong Kong to Moscow, from Tokyo to Melbourne, every time I am thrown behind bars I become a sort of symbol for the other prisoners. The reaction has always been positive. Sometimes a certain celebrity is associated with my crimes: Houdini or Schwarzenegger, Spiderman or Bruce Lee, prisoners always try to compare me to such characters. There is a lot of monotony in jail so they are happy to see someone who has done something new. In a way it brightens their stay. This may sound big-headed but it has often been told to me. Hey, I don't think I am a great hero, but I do think that people, wherever they come from, do feel an affinity with someone who does things out of the ordinary. It's natural to chase that buzz, that risk, that high.

Check out team-building events at the big corporations. What are the best ones? Are they those where people go through pie charts which are highly relevant to everyday work? No, they are the ones with bungee jumps, paint-balling or survival training, the ones which physically engage us in a raid against the bureaucracy imposed upon us in the first place. How much of this is about bonding with colleagues? And how much of it is a personal experience, the heightening of senses, self-control, and an exercise in bettering oneself?

We all dream of taking risks, of discovering what we are really capable of. Twisting an ankle in your home is hardly a drama or adventure, but twisting an ankle in the middle of nowhere will test you and draw out a supreme commitment. I guess my solo escalations are urban representations of the same thing. A life lived in a disinfected world makes us restless. We are all drawn to a challenge, even if we shun the risk. But not all of us decline such adrenaline. My fellow inmates are men who are willing to take risks, sometimes outrageous ones — just imagine what kind of man you must be to attempt an armed robbery — and when they are caught, there can be few places more sterile or regimented than a correctional facility. It punishes them but it also bottles up their frustrations and maybe perverts these personality traits into something darker and more criminal. I say, give these men a way of using these instincts positively. Maybe we should give them climbing lessons.

I am fortunate to have found my outlet. Who knows what I would have become without it? But regardless, it puts me on the wrong side of the legal fence, and after each ascent I know that I am entitled to a stay in prison.

My first jailhouse experience was in Chicago after my first climb. Despite colliding with the cold reality of a prison cell — an experience which could easily have been intimidating or could have conjured a sense of failure — I had the weird feeling that I was enjoying privileged access to a rare place, to be able to experience something exceptional. I was not at all prepared for detention, I had no criminal leanings or objectives, but for me prison was the cherry on my cake. This sounds a tad stupid, right? I know, but it is exactly how I felt.

In my cell, I sang, alone but happy. Happy to be in Chicago, happy to have made a successful and beautiful ascent, but especially happy to have reached my first objective. I guess you could say I was happy to be alive. As I conducted other climbs, I found myself back behind bars, again with a smile on my face. Prison was so connected to what I did that it became a necessary component of my dreams. It's something like the pain you suffer when you run a race and beat your personal best. It won't stop you running again, you accept it, and eventually you dream of that crippling stitch you know you must endure to reach new heights. My dream back in Chicago had just begun to take shape, deep within my subconscious. But I was totally unaware that I had just begun my world tour of prison cells. Lying there, I rediscovered a song about the French prison Fleury-Merogis, by the punk group Trust. It was so appropriate to my new situation.

Fléury-Merogis one day in September 1976

Where he existed so little, like he was a nobody

His food is slid along the ground

And a bowl of water that quenches his thirst

He is alone, without sun.

It sounds crap translated into English without the accompanying beat, but in my cell that night those lines struck a chord with me. I imagine the authorities would not want me to feel pleased with being locked up, they would much rather break me. When I am in jail, of course, I have been removed from society as a public enemy. But even if I am persuaded that I have no right to clamber up walls, I have a lot of difficulty feeling guilty. Besides, the other prisoners have always accepted me as different, as if it was evident that I was not part of their world. Prison for me holds no fear, no punishment, no 'correctional effects'. I quite like it. Remember New York? That magical experience of being thrown in the air like a hero could have happened nowhere else.

Being jailed around the world has given me great insights into various peoples and nations. You can tell a lot about a society and its culture by its policing, courts and prisons, its attitude to human rights or dignity, and the way the authorities treat you if you do not obey them or do something they don't understand.

In Malaysia, the police arrested me when I had just attempted to climb what was then the world's tallest structure. As the Petronas Towers had just been finished, I was covered with construction dust and other salty residue and grime you find on buildings in this permanently damp environment. In the tropics, or on a humid day, you find everything sticks to a surface. These cops meant business and took arrest much further than in other lands. Roughed up, I had to undress for a body search. I had to strip stark naked. They searched my body, hands rubbing and groping my most intimate areas. Then a creepy guy came to see if I had anything hidden within my body. Inside my mouth, my hair, in my ears, my nose. They even inspected inside my anus. What would a rock climber keep in there? A rope so I could escape? Climbing slippers? These space invaders were not professional proctologists, that's for sure. Alright, alright, it was not the worst thing in the world, but these hands touching my whole body left me the sensation of an abuse of power, maybe even a sense of rape.

After this unpleasant rectal investigation I was allowed to put on a tattered pair of swimming trunks. Was I heading to the shower due to my grimy and blackened state? Not at all, this was the prison clothing I was to be issued with. For security reasons the tightening cord and the tiny metal logo had been removed. Bare-chested, with these torn and ragged trunks ready to fall to my knees, I landed in a big murky cell full of Indian, Malay and Chinese prisoners, a typical reflection of mixed Malaysian society.

I have seen my fair share of prisons and certainly none is ever listed in Zagat or the Small Luxury Hotels ofthe World, but this Malaysian jail was something else... The ground was sticky, disgusting. Even the cockroaches had difficulty moving around. We would try to crush these enormous tropical bugs on the floor, often having to stamp on them several times, such was their armour and strength. The air was stale and thick with pungent sweat and urine. As the door slammed, all eyes were upon me. I could not communicate with these guys and they would stare at me endlessly. A Caucasian in prison? It just didn't happen.

I sat there for hours, staring at my gloomy new home. Eventually two snarling guards brought us the newspaper — how nice of them. The news was bad apparently. But this paper was not for reading, as it was soon torn and divided between the men. Then the food arrived. It was awful: a mixture of rice in some limp watery sauce, with fragments of things we could vaguely call 'chicken'. It could just as easily have been rat, camel or orang-utan for all I knew. Okay, maybe not, but it was not like any fowl I had ever encountered. There was no plate, nor a place setting, just an old tin can and a sheet of newspaper. I had not washed since my escalation and my hands were so dirty that I did not dare to eat with my fingers. I am not particularly stuck-up, but there are limits I find difficult to exceed. But I was hungry. It took me a minute or so, but once I had absorbed this cheerless scene, I decided to spread my page of newspaper over a tiny spare area of the filthy sputum- and cockroach-splattered floor. On my knees, my nose planted in the tin like a mongrel, I tried to eat. Do they not allow for human dignity here or is it considered a western or subversive concept?

Pitying me, one of my banqueting companions showed me how to eat 'properly' by using the main three fingers to scoop this bleak gruel into my mouth. I knelt again, with pleasure, shovelling this muck in as it spilt over my chin. My knees began to ache. This new method may have resulted in getting more into my mouth but it was hindered by the limited function of my wrists. What can I say? There are days when we really feel old.

Some suffer from rheumatism, and would not enjoy this experience. I am such a person. Indeed it is very difficult for me to turn my wrists at all, and this was exactly what was required by this Malay speciality. I reminded myself that there are countless peoples of the world who eat this way and eat food of this calibre if they can eat at all. I plunged diligently into this survival operation, but I was pretty bad at it. Half the food was being lost. Slowly, the sauce poured along my arm. Grains of rice fell on the foul ground or remained in the hairs of my forearm. Misery...

I began dreaming of Valence, its subtle scents, the serenity of family ballads in the Rhône vineyards. I wanted to drink a little of that famous wine I buy every year from a small fellow with a fine vineyard, a vineyard almost at the foot of the cliff which has inspired many of my finest challenges. But instead of the tannins of my favourite beverage, I was given only a worn plastic bottle, half full of a worryingly unclear water, doubtful and yellowish. Two weeks of this! Not eating is okay, but it is impossible not to drink in such stifling heat and humidity. And so I drank, even if I had not been entitled to the necessary vaccines in these tropical parts of the world.

My mind wandered elsewhere. I even dreamed about the five-gram pack of potato chips which had been given to me in a cell in the USA. Imagine holding such an item in such high esteem, to long for it, to marvel at it. Your mind does strange things in such a place. After a while, I even began to think that they had only looked inside my anus so I didn't smuggle any food in. I began to wish that I had perhaps tucked a chocolate bar right round the corner of my colon where it would be safe and hidden. It would be melted, perhaps, but how lovely it would be. Though despairing, I shook myself out of these increasingly unhealthy thoughts and decided to adapt for survival. I couldn't go without food and water for long in this environment, so I felt it was better to satisfy my hunger and thirst with an amoeba or a bug.

That was Malaysia, a country which desperately needs to look at its prisons and the welfare of its inmates. Prison food in Malaysia was woeful and in general the food I have sampled in the world's jails has been at best nondescript. In France, if someone is going to jail there is always a friend somewhere telling them "I will bring you some oranges!" I have heard this countless times, and today I still continue to receive oranges at the door of my home from mischievous friends. But once I did actually get some in jail! And they made a very nice snack for me and were most appreciated. So you see this story of oranges is not a legend.

Shared hardship does help forge bonds. The prisoners pretty soon find out why I am inside, and my fellow inmates often ask me to sign things for them. Even the screws ask for autographs. In Philadelphia, a guard approached my cell to ask me to perform my famous speciality — the board. He had discreetly opened a few cells nearby so I could show off my party trick to certain prisoners with whom he shared an unlikely affinity. I am always surprised by this kind of request, but I agree happily. I had often wondered whether such requests were a joke or some kind of provocation. Today, I recognise that I was wrong. My cellmates are no different to the people who gather at the foot of one of my ascents, curious, maybe bored of whatever routine they had been following at that given moment, and looking for a good show.

I'd really like to stress that I do not care for jail. People have told me they think I must like it if I keep on with my escalations, and that I seek imprisonment as some kind of masochism or badge of honour. This is not true! Prison just decreases the time spent pursuing new dreams. Yes, I am often happy to have made it to jail but only because it is a by-product of a climbing success, not for the experience itself, as interesting as it has often been. These successive confinements have allowed me to compose these lines, because after spending the first hours of isolation recovering from my efforts, the only thing to do is engage in introspection, trying to decipher the graffiti engraved on the walls or adding your own. You can count the inscriptions too, and this may take between one to four hours depending on the size of the cell. Then you count all there is to count. Furniture, bars, bugs. Finally, you sleep to escape. But when you have slept like a log for 48 hours, you remain awake for a long time. The ability to sleep has been exhausted, the ticking of the alarm clock is too loud, the wasted hours stretch on and on. I can compare this artificial wait to that I underwent in hospital, nailed to a bed and full of tubes. The only means of escape is through thought, through dreams... Dreaming about another life, happier times. Having lost some months of my life in hospital beds, it seems evident to me that there is a link between these wounded hours of dreams and my pursuit of the world's highest buildings. Maybe the waiting, the loss of time, must be compensated for. So I must be patient, whether in prison or in hospital, and make up for this lost time.

Two years after we first met on top of the Elf Tower, a still-fuming Le Floch-Prigent has me in court again. I will need to dig deep into my pockets to hire a defence, but fortune smiles on me. Since this is a unique case, with an interesting legal and media slant, I somehow manage to land a famous lawyer. Le Floch-Prigent meanwhile has diverted a significant amount of Elf's money and resources towards punishing me. He really will not let this go and therefore a lot of people find themselves gathering in this courtroom today. But in these two intervening years my fame has grown and so has my experience of lawsuits. I humbly enter the courtroom in a green snakeskin jacket over a black shirt and a pair of dark glasses perched on my irregular nose. My attire is enough to help the judiciary relax. Poor guys, they don't have many opportunities to have fun. The charges are read out, something along the lines of trespassing on private property, endangering the multinational company and responsibility for potential accidents.

The Elf corporate law firm are there and the case commences. It rumbles on for a while but it soon becomes clear to everyone that the prosecutor is in despair and really doesn't know what to do. Obviously, the jurists know that the prosecution is only supported by the stubbornness of their boss. It's a pretty weak case even with the best lawyers that money can buy. In a further stroke of good fortune, the prosecution forget to indicate that I could have potentially fallen on a passer-by and killed them — according to my hot-shot lawyer, my only legal weakness.

After fumbling through a series of unconvincing legal arguments the prosecutor sits down. My lawyer gets up and smiles — the case is already won. He addresses the court and advances my professional abilities better than I could ever have done: highly experienced climbing instructor, world record holder in solo escalation, famous high-level athlete, instructor to the fire and police services in climbing and rope training... the list goes on. Did I really do all that? It sounds pretty good. I have to say I feel pretty happy to have this guy around me. It gets even worse for the prosecution, and before long the trial descends into farce. The judge tells Elf's lawyers that instead of suing me they should have sponsored me!

The case collapses. Elf and Loïk Le Floch-Prigent have lost again. The onlookers applaud and joke as if it had all been a Sacha Guitry comedy. The magistrates relax and share in the jovial atmosphere. My trial has been a breath of fresh air for these guys. Some magistrates even ask me to sign autographs for them, to the annoyance of the lawyers of the following case impatiently waiting outside to use the courtroom. The prosecutor, resigned but human, approaches us and tells us he did not want to pursue this desperately hollow case. But as a member of the Elf corporate law firm, he had no choice.

And though it ends there for me, the court soon beckons Le Floch- Prigent. They say that the flutter of a butterfly's wings can trigger a hurricane. Maybe this is true, because events were about to take a quite implausible twist. I do not wish to overstate my role in subsequent events as I was quite incidental to it all. But it was exactly my public ascent of their building and the following trial that had attracted a lot of attention to Elf's wasteful decision-making.

Elf is a state-run company funded by taxpayers so the decision to prosecute me twice comes under scrutiny. With these matters discussed in the national press, an investigation is launched into Le Floch-Prigent's misuse of company money. Numerous people criticise Elf and their bosses for their folly, and demand answers.

Suddenly Le Floch-Prigent is on the back foot. He becomes evasive, ducking and avoiding journalists. In the coming weeks, wheels turn and it soon emerges that there are many more such irregularities, some of them increasingly outrageous. Elf is state-owned and so the issue becomes political. What started out as what many regarded as a total waste of Elf's and therefore public money soon spirals out of control and turns into a full-scale financial investigation into all dealings within the corporation! Elf's CEO is dragged through the courts in a blaze of publicity for misuse of company funds and property.

This monumental scandal shakes the French financial community and becomes news around the world. In the investigation it emerges that as head of Elf, Le Floch-Prigent is one of three top executives who illegally enriched themselves by creaming off huge sums from the oil giant.

An incredible web of political favours, kickbacks, mistresses, secret accounts, luxury villas and international bribery is uncovered. He is convicted on charges of corruption and embezzlement in a case The Guardian newspaper of Britain calls 'the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since World War II'!

Elf is shaken to its core by the scandal, and 37 people are charged with embezzlement. It is nothing short of a sensation. The fallout claims Le Floch-Prigent, his deputy Alfred Sirven and another high-profile figure, Andre Tarallo — known as 'Monsieur Africa' because of his shadowy dealings with African leaders. It embroils members of the government and results in the former foreign minister Roland Dumas receiving six months in jail plus a not-so-small fine. The others are also put behind bars for several years.

Loïk Le Floch-Prigent, former CEO of Elf Aquitaine, is heavily fined and thrown in jail for his part in a $350 million fraud. The man who was so desperate to see me locked up is found guilty before a court of law and sent to jail for five years.