Yet when you did reach the edge of David Blaine’s enclosure and looked up at the transparent box, you felt as if you were the only human being on the riverbank. An extraordinary aura of calm descended on Potters Fields in the final days of David’s ordeal, an atmosphere I have never sensed in my life. It was as though a blanket of meditation had been spread across the scene. Even the security guards were affected – they stood impassively like marble figureheads, surveying the onlookers. The pranksters vanished long ago with their golf balls and bags of chips. David has calmed them – for I am certain that the relaxed vibrations which all of us sensed were emanating from the man in the box himself. Before he began his ordeal, David told me that his prime objective was to journey within himself and explore regions of his mind which could only be reached by long fasting and contemplation. In the full sight of one of the world’s biggest cities, on continuous live television, David Blaine achieved his aim of becoming a recluse, a hermit. The box became his cave, the crane his mountaintop. Now it is over, and the victory is his. David Blaine has done what everyone said was impossible. Despite the blackouts, the weight loss, the headaches and the muscle pains, despite the abuse and above all despite the loneliness, he endured 44 days without food or the most basic human comforts. A battle just as tough lies ahead of him – re-entry into the real world. David will stay in my prayers for many weeks to come.