UNDATED (CNN) -- Who hasn't been tempted at one time or another to go "down" the "up" escalator, but a man trying to get to London's Underground ended up escalating his mistake to new heights.
He wants to go down, the escalator's going up. You know it's going to end up on YouTube, thanks to British TV producer Sam Napper who pulled out his camera phone. Napper says, "It was pretty evident by his disheveled look... He was evidently drunk. He was so determined to go down the wrong way."
There he was lurching like Frankenstein trying to get down into the London underground, oblivious to commuters yelling advice.
It was 11:30 at night and the Asian businessman didn't seem to understand English. No one tried harder to set the businessman straight than one woman.
She physically grabbed the guy and tried to yank him. But he couldn't be deterred from his march to nowhere. Online posters called him the 'human hamster' and 'hamsterman.' and though the comparison was apt, even a hamster takes a break sometimes. Not this guy. The red head kept trying to come to his rescue.
It must have seemed like an endless commute stuck on what that old Robert Hazard song called the "escalator of life."
This is hard enough to do sober. If someone hadn't eventually pushed the stop button he might still be on that escalator.
They tapped him, tried to get his attention from the side and finally a young man pressed the stop button and grabbed the businessman. Napper says, "The weird thing about this chap was the minute we pressed the stop button... He had an opportunity to walk down the stairs, turned around and walked the other way."
The escalator ride of his life was over and he may never know he took it unless or until he sees this video.