PHILIPPE CROIZON HAS become the first person to swim the English channel with no limbs, completing the remarkable feat last night.

The forty-two year old set off from Folkestone in Kent at 6am yesterday and completed the swim in just thirteen and a half hours. He had initially expected it to take a day to reach France.

Croizon had his arms and legs amputated after he suffered an electric shock while removing a television aerial from a roof sixteen years ago. He only taught himself to swim two years ago.

He told the BBC last night after his historic acclompishment “at no point did he feel he was not going to make it, despite pains and aches all over his body.”

The father of two said he wanted to complete the dare “for myself, my family and all my fellows in misfortune who have lost their taste for life”.

Mr Croizon trained for his feat for two years and last month completed a 12-hour swim between the ports of Noirmoutier and Pornic on France’s Atlantic coast.