yes indeed, and any English person of the appropriate age will have seen children's TV present John Noakes climbing Nelson's Column and then going over the edge in a bosun's chair to clean it, with no harness, utterly terrifying!
More terrifying and yet unseen .. the cameraman had to hump his gear past the overhang to film Noakes arriving .. and those 50+ year old cameras weren't GoPro's or iPhones.
Yes! You do see him standing at the top in one of the long shots. Terry Doe, interviewed briefly in this documentary about Noakes: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6c72u3
The Fred Dibnah stuff is some of the most impressive stuff I've seen, not just the scaling heights but the logistics of building the ladders as he went, and the demolition of large brick structures with a minimum of tools.
The steeplejack work of Fred Dibnah is quite a thing to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ma9iYx4rg