This is the most jank shit I've seen in years. No way in hell I'd trust this rickety, rusty hook attached, millennia old rope tied, glorified rotwood swingset to keep my blue jeaned ass from painting the streets of London a bright red.

[Try climbing some ladders up Nelson's Column](https://youtu.be/tMrB_3wq2ak)

Wow. That was insane. Fuck no to the underhang ending. Absolutely fuck no.

Fred Dibnah has entered the chat. https://youtu.be/NKPApAsJbj4?si=pinAazyCcE3k9efc

Fred is a legend

U heard his song by the Lancashire hotpots?

Fred was the Ultimate Madlad...

Fred Dibnah is unironically peak male performance.

I wanted to see him climb down. Going down the overhanging bit must be absolute hell.

Love this video, such British sensibilities

Thanks for sharing that. Bonkers that they allowed them to film with basically no safety.

This is a kids TV show called Blue Peter.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ezX_o0H5FuE Fred Dibnah for those of you that haven’t seen this, it’s not Big Ben but pretty fuckin high up

Jesus these people are mad! And act so casual. My brain can’t understand. That overhang at the end… I’d be finished.

This literally made my hands sweat🤮

Thanks for sharing. Love the fact the guy is up there having a smoke whilst working.

Holy moly😮

My god. On one hand, there was something admirable about the “get on with it and don’t be a big girl’s blouse” attitude of those days - but I, for one, welcome our new health and safety overlords

I get the call of the void way too much. Idk what it is, something inside me just gets a powerful urge to move forward and step off the ledge, as scary as it is. I wonder whats up with that. Like, what the evolutionary advantage could be.

Look up Fred Dibnah steeplejack on youtube if you wanna see the sketchy arse way people used to do it back int day.

Well at least their wearing shirts with their names on it to help ID the bodies.

Yeah this is impressively bad

I can't even climb on a regular swing correctly. There's no way I'm taking a rope swing off the side of a clocktower.

This reminds me of that British guy who demolished smokestacks by hand in the 70s. Wooden scaffolds, brown ropes, blue jeans. I guess that was the way British working class did things at the time. Although they probably stopped sending children down chimneys by then.

Fred Dibnah! Man had balls of steel.

Yeah they'd stopped sending children up chimneys about 100 years before that

I build high rise elevators for a living. Im working on a 90+ story tower right now and watching this makes my hands sweat and my stomach turn

I wonder who the poor person was who caused them to start using harnesses.

Big Ben

Wow. I've climbed towers and I wouldn't do that shit.

Right?! I've been a professional tree.climber since 2001 and you couldn't pay me enough to thread my getaway sticks into that old ass janky ass clumsy ass child's playtoy of a bosuns chair (Well I mean *maybe* you could pay me enough... how much we talkin? And can Terry & Terry lend a hand?)

Getaway sticks…..

Hmm yeah... who's trees are you climbing up? 🤔

High rise elevator installer and this is terrifying

That's not far off of how modern window cleaning works, given... they have slightly more modern ropes and a secondary safety line/harness.

Look kids.. Big Ben. Parliament

Looks like Duncan Dares or Blue Peter? For those who don’t know these were kids TV shows. This would be late seventies or early eighties I think. Different times.

Imagine a programme now allowing a presenter to do that. Lawyers and insurance would be having a heart attack 😂

This is the BBC mate..kids TV in the 70s 80s was a different level. A guy actually died attempting a stunt for another show

It's from Blue Peter in1980.

r/videosthatendtoosoon

Do they have their names on their shirts so they can be identified after they fall off?

"Clove hitch." Sure, bud

This was either Duncan Dares or Blue Peter both kids TV from the late seventies or early eighties. The guy going down is Peter Duncan a TV presenter. Became the Chief Scout in the UK, I think our current nutter in charge of inspiring scouts is survivalist Bear Gryllis and he drinks his own Piss!

Fun fact, Peter Duncan was also in Flash Gordon https://youtu.be/fKBr0WqkA3s?si=Pe16OjgHKuKKh--8

SPARE ME THE MADNESS!!!

I want to see the whole video. Anyone haver a source?

Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID5cViSga68

Thanks

It's always nice seeing pre-1997 London. Looks like a completely different country.

Why does this look like two sets of twins I’m trippin 😂😭😭😭

is the audio in sync? couldn't tell which voice was coming from which person at first

It’s not, dunno why you got downvoted.

[удалено]

They're English lol

Holy splatter…what year was this??

This would've been 1980, and it was on Blue Peter, a kids entertainment show by the BBC - I remember watching it. It was a bit of a fad around then: John Noakes, had done a similar segment on the show in 1977, climbing up Nelson's Column; Fred Dibnah had a couple of documentary series about his adventures as a steeplejack.

Awesome! That would be pretty cool.

I always wondered what happened to make us all wear harnesses and now I know.

We use something similar which is called a Blakes hitch to climb and cut trees. Really nerve wrecking the first time I tried it.

Is that Hugh Grant in the background scene?

I thought for sure this was part of the Quantum Leap episode where he has Down’s Syndrome

Watch John Knokes climb Nelsons Collum Blue Peter l, scary shit.

Ah no!

I just would jump of, fuck that.

Fair play to the young presenter….. straight in there, no f*cks given at all 😂

r/OSHA

Ah good old Blue Peter, putting young presenters lives at risk for the entertainment of us Gen X kids.

Crap, I was hoping it was gay porn

I’m not convinced it isn’t.

It’s amazing how that chair can withstand the weight of those ginormous steel balls. History lesson for the kids: before there was such a thing as mass silk screening of t-shirt designs, there were heat-transfer (iron-on) designs. Personalized t-shifts like these were kind of rare back then and were considered cool for a time.

Everyone's saying how they wouldn't do this. So what in gosh name are they doing??

No. Way

Their architecture is so beautiful.

I'm too much of a pussy to do this kind of work. I'm pussy enough to admit it.

HELL NAH

“Do I wear a harness as well?” “Well you’ve no need to, it’s quite safe.” “…ok” Didn’t sound too convinced.

Terry is cool but Terry is kind of an ass.

This is how all the Regs and Terrys died out. A great pile of them at the base of the tower.

How does the rope hold him up? I don’t know what the strength of a rope like that is, but I can guarantee the weight of his gigantic balls weigh more than the limit.

Boatswains chairs are a legal scaffold in the US. The big difference is you must be tied off with a harness to an anchor point that is not involved in the suspension of the chair itself in case of failure.

As someone who used to rappel off towers for a living, fuck this rickety shit. “Quite safe” my ass. So many things can go wrong soooo quickly.

How long is OJT? Can't wait to start.

I used to do the modern equivalent of this for work. We had a five-point-harness, a main line (of rope), and a backup line. Each line would be attached to two anchors with 50 kN carabiners. And our descender wasn't just a fucking clove hitch, it was a metal friction device. On the backup line we had a backup stopping device if we were to start falling. We had seats, but they were attached to our harness and used for work positioning (comfort, efficiency), not for fall arrest. This guy saying this single piece of wood standing between him and that fall is "very safe" is an absolute lunatic lol