London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has revealed that he ended up burning his face with a UV lamp just before giving a speech from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London, because he did not want to appear past-faced.
He told a newspaper that he was so concerned at his pale complexion caused by his voluntary incarceration that he resorted to a UV lamp to restore a little colour.
“I put it on so I would look better, not so pale. After an hour one of my staff said, ‘Julian, your face on one side is beetroot, and your neck as well,” Assange told The Mail on Sunday.
“I looked like a boiled lobster, but the balcony was a major political moment and I thought what, what, what am I going to do?” he added.
According to the Telegraph, he decided to roast the other side of his face “to match”.
“My eyes were burning, I couldn’t see, I had blisters all down the left side and then my skin started to fall off,” he said.
According to the paper, eventually he was patched up with a woman’s make-up so he did not look, in his words, “like a Chernobyl victim”.
Assange also said that his health inside the embassy was “slowly deteriorating” despite doing his best to maintain it.
ANI
