Illusionist Blaine successfully ends stunt

American illusionist David Blaine successfully ended his 44-day starvation stunt at 2030 GMT yesterday, as hordes of onlookers gathered underneath the perspex box that has become one of London's prime tourist attractions.

Visibly thinner, filthy and unshaven, Blaine emerged from the container that has been his home late last night before being taken to hospital to be slowly reintroduced to food, a process doctors say is potentially life threatening.

Mr Blaine says he has been consuming only water through a tube since September 5 when he entered the box, which is suspended from a crane on the banks of the River Thames.

Thousands of onlookers have flocked to "Camp David" but his stunt has divided Britain into breast-baring Blaine admirers and egg-throwing Blaine baiters and has sparked a national debate about the merits of dangling in a box without any food.

The 30-year-old New Yorker has been verbally abused, taunted with sizzling hamburgers, pelted with golf balls and kept awake with drums and foghorns.

"It's not big, it's not clever, it's a grown man in a plastic box," reads the website www.wakedavid.co.uk, which has led a campaign to deprive Blaine of any rest.

Some critics have said his fast insults the world's hungry and the memory of hunger strikers who have died for a cause. Others simply ridicule him for what they say is a pointless, publicity-grabbing stunt and many accuse him of cheating.

But Mr Blaine's stunt has won him crowds of female admirers. Women have bared their breasts and one even ran naked past his box.