Spiderman, Spiderman, does everything a spider can! Including, it seems, using home-made vacuum gloves to stickily scale the walls of the BBC’s White City building, a vertical drop of 120 vertigo-inducing feet.

In this case, Spiderman isn’t the meek Peter Parker but engineer and TV presenter Jem Stansfield. Looking more like a low-rent steampunk Doc Ock than Spidey himself, Jem clanks his way to the top, in front of a cheering crowd. There’s even a dramatic slip a few yards from the summit.

How did Stansfield manage this trick, a stunt to promote his TV show Bang Goes The Theory? No, he wasn’t bitten by a radioactive vacuum cleaner. Not quite. The suction is being supplied by an old hacked cleaning machine, though, and the pump is evacuating air from his plywood flippers. It’s all delightfully King of the Rocketmen in looks, and if the series continues to be this good it might be worth a quick Mininova search for us foreigners. And as the Beeb warns, “This stunt was carried out by trained professionals following strict safety procedures and should not be attempted or replicated.” Thanks, Aunty!

Man climbs building with vacuum gloves [BBC via Geekologie]