MARTIN

I know what you're thinking, all you clever-clever people who read the Guardian and shop in Waterstone's and would no more think of watching breakfast television than you would of buying your children cigarettes. You're thinking, Oh, this guy wasn't serious. He wanted a tabloid photographer to capture his quote unquote cry for help so that he could sign a 'My Suicide Hell' exclusive for the Sun. 'SHARP TAKES THE SLEAZY WAY OUT'. And I can understand why you might be thinking that, my friends. I climb a stairwell, have a couple of nips of Scotch from a hip-flask while dangling my feet over the edge, and then when some dippy girl asks me to help find her ex-boyfriend at some party, I shrug and wander off with her. And how suicidal is that?

First of all, I'll have you know that I scored very highly on Aaron T. Beck's Suicide Intent Scale. I'll bet you didn't even know there was such a scale, did you? Well, there is, and I reckon I got something like twenty-one out of thirty points, which I was pretty pleased with, as you can imagine. Yes, suicide had been contemplated for more than three hours prior to the attempt. Yes, I was certain of death even if I received medical attention: it's fifteen storeys high, Toppers' House, and they reckon that anything over ten will do it for you pretty well every time. Yes, there was active preparation for the attempt: ladder, wire-cutters and so on. He shoots, he scores. The only questions where I might not have received maximum points are the first two, which deal with what Aaron T. Beck calls isolation and timing. 'No one near by in visual or vocal contact' gets you top marks, as does 'Intervention highly unlikely'. You might argue that as we chose the most popular suicide spot in North London on one of the most popular suicide nights of the year, intervention was almost inevitable; I would counter by saying that we were just being dim. Dim or grotesquely self-absorbed, take your pick.

And yet, of course, if it hadn't been for the teeming throng up there, I wouldn't be around today, so maybe old Be............