FRENCH professional climber Alain Robert will scale the external walls of a building here on Aug 16 as part of The Straits Times' 163rd anniversary celebrations.

As to which building this is will be kept under wraps until Aug 16 for an element of surprise.

Mr Robert, 45, will coat his hands with chalk to soak up the sweat from the heat of the day.

He will also wear a safety harness in a nod to the rules governing his climb here.

His feat will be followed by a grand lucky draw which will win a car for a reader of this newspaper.

Mr Robert, who has been arrested many times before for scaling buildings the world over without permission, has conquered skyscrapers such as the Taipei 101, the Empire State Building in New York City and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

He was arrested here in 2000 when he attempted to climb the 63-storey Overseas Union Bank Building at Raffles Place. Police who were waiting for him on the 23rd floor nabbed him for criminal trespass.

The compactly-built climber, who weighs in at 52kg, can do a pull-up with his pinkie.

He follows a strict diet which forbids the mixing of proteins and carbohydrates in a single meal.

He said: 'Weight gain is the biggest enemy of a someone who climbs.'

In his home in France, he has a 40 sq m climbing surface mounted on his ceiling which he uses for training. He can hang onto it upside-down for 20 minutes.

He views his death-defying acts as a 'healthy challenge'.

The prize for the grand draw following his Aug 16 climb is a new Volkswagen Touran Sport 1.4 TSI worth $79,480 without a Certificate of Entitlement, insurance and road tax.

To win this seven-seater family sports car, ST readers will have to solve a word puzzle.

Letters of the alphabet began appearing in this newspaper's 'A Part of My Life' advertisements last Friday. These ads will run until this Friday, and readers will need to collect these letters and unscramble them to spell out the location where the prize car is on display.

The mystery location will also be near where Mr Robert will do his climb.

Readers have to paste all eight letter tiles on an entry form to be published in this newspaper on Friday and Saturday, and show up at the mystery location with it between 2pm and 4pm on Saturday.

Participants have to be there for the draw at 6pm. Only correct entries will be eligible for the draw.