Most people would regard being strapped into a three-ring gyroscope, hoisted 40ft into the air and left to listlessly spin around eight times a minute for a couple of days with no food or water in the freezing cold as a really rubbish way to pass the time.

Luckily, though, most people aren't David Blaine. That's a good thing in itself - imagine how annoying it'd be if everywhere you went people kept throwing playing cards through sheets of glass - but we're straying slightly off-subject. Anyway, David Blaine has been going through that exact gyroscope scenario this week, which culminated last night in a dramatic David Blaine-style unshackling of some locks, a 40ft fall through a wooden stage and a quick hobble off to catch a taxi in time for tea. And David Blaine's successful escape from his gyroscope stunt means that 100 poverty-stricken New York children now get to go on a shopping spree around Target, where they'll each spend a special $500 gift voucher that's been personally splattered with David Blaine's very own motion sickness vomit.

When David Blaine puts his mind to a stunt, nothing is impossible. When David Blaine wants to stand on top of a pole for a few days, he'll do it. When David Blaine wants to encase himself in ice for a while, he'll do that too. When David Blaine wants to spend 40 days trapped in a perspex box with only the bloke from Law Of The Playground drifting Pepperamis past him on helium balloons for entertainment, then he'll do that as well. When David Blaine wants to spend a week underwater in a big round aquarium, he'll… well, OK, he'll complain about it a lot then cock up the big finish and almost die and then burst into tears, but you get the general idea.

After carrying out these massively pointless acts of self-promotion, speculation was rife about what David Blaine's next stunt would be. Would he hang from a bridge for a while? Would he walk across a tightrope? Would he, you know, go back to doing actual magic for a change? No. Instead, David Blaine chose to spin round in a gyroscope for a couple of days. But not just any gyroscope, you see, a gyroscope suspended 40ft in the air above New York, that would allow David Blaine to spin around eight times a minute for two days before he had to spectacularly unshackle his way to freedom. And last night David Blaine succeeded in his almighty quest to, um, spin round for a while and then go home, as BBC News reports:

After spending two days spinning inside the device, he took a short time to free himself from shackles around his waist and feet. He then fell 40 ft (12 metre) through a wooden stage before emerging to limp his way into a New York taxicab… "It's actually harder than I thought it would be," he said as he removed the shackles from around his waist. The shackles were added to Blaine after two days in the gyroscope. He then had 16 hours to free himself. Before beginning the stunt, the illusionist had said his biggest concerns, besides not eating or drinking, were the freezing weather and dizziness.  

But this wasn't just any old self-promoting David Blaine stunt. As a reward for his success, Target will give 100 underprivileged New York children chosen by the Salvation Army a David Blaine-led $500 shopping spree through one of its stores, because the spirit of Christmas is nothing if not a sharp reminder to the world's poor that however hard they work, their children will always be more thankful to the smug tit who made more money for their kids by spending a few hours twatting about on a gyroscope than they manage to scrape together in six months of back-breaking labour. 

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Blaine finishes 'gyroscope' stunt - BBC