Will Pike, a victim of the Mumbai terror attacks in November, had been recovering from his injuries in a South London hospital for weeks.

After falling from a makeshift rope he had manufactured from bedsheets in his room in an attempt to escape terrorists who had taken over his hotel, the 28-year-old broke three of his vertebrae, both his arms and shattered his pelvis.

One of the consequences of his fall was that he had to give up his tickets for the comedian Eddie Izzard’s show at the Lyric Theatre, London, last month. (Our critic Dominic Maxwell said of Izzard’s performance “It’s charming, it’s charismatic, it’s accomplished.”) In an attempt to cheer up his bed-bound son, Nigel Pike wrote to Izzard asking if he could send a note to Will.

But Izzard, who had just finished a tour playing to sellout audiences in the country’s top venues, decided to do far more.

The cross-dressing comedian unexpectedly turned up at Mr Pike’s sterile room in one of London’s spinal cord units and performed his entire 90-minute show.

Nigel Pike, although reluctant to speak about the performance, told The Times that Izzard’s unexpected appearance was a “great thing to do” for his son.

Will Pike, from Hampstead, North London, and his girlfriend, Kelly Doyle, also 28, had been visiting the Taj Mahal Palace hotel at the end of their two-week holiday in India when they were caught up in the attacks. Officials said that at least 100 Britons had been in such a situation and that more than 40 had been held hostage or forced to hide for their lives.

The couple were in their room when they heard explosions in the lobby as the terrorists burst in, throwing grenades and firing automatic weapons.

The couple had initially huddled in the bathroom but decided to escape when the gunfire came closer. Smoke was already pouring in from under the door, after fire took hold in the corridor outside the room.

Ms Doyle, 32, later told a newspaper: “Will was saying, ‘This is it, this is it’. We were hugging and saying, ‘I love you’.”

From their third-floor hotel room, Mr Pike tied bedsheets, curtains and towels together to create a makeshift rope. Concerned for his girlfriend’s safety, he went out first to make sure that it would hold. But only 10ft into the 60ft descent, the rope gave way and he fell to the pavement.

Mr Pike said: “Clearly I never did my Boy Scout knot badge because my knots were rubbish. The last thing I remember was falling. The next thing I was on the ground looking at the bone shards sticking out of my wrist.”

Mr Pike is unable to move his legs. His prognosis is not clear.

Soon after her boyfriend’s fall, Ms Doyle was lowered to safety by a fire crew that put up a hydraulic platform to the level of the hotel room.

A spokeswoman for Izzard said that the visit was a private affair and declined to comment further.

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