London mayor gets stuck in mid-air in zip line stunt gone wrong

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Surely it seemed like a good idea at the time, sending London’s Mayor Boris Johnson whizzing down a zip line in his suit and tie, blue-helmeted for safety and waving a Union Jack in each hand. Things shortly turned sour, however, when the mayor came to a sudden halt in mid-air and was forced to call down to bystanders for a rope.

Johnson was the first passenger to use the zip line, which was set up in London’s Victoria Park. It was about 1:30 p.m. local time when the mayor leapt from the tower and began his descent, only to run out of steam and come to a halt dangling high above the ground.

“Can you get me a rope?” he called down to the crowd of onlookers gathering to gawk and snap cell-phone pictures of the dangling dignitary. “Get me a rope, okay? I believe they need to test this on someone going a bit faster.”

Teams on the ground were able to manually pull the mayor the rest of the way down.

Watch video of the incident, embedded via YouTube, below: