There's an underground film "The only building I ever wanted to climb" showing the summiting of Centrepoint Tower after your uncle's attempt. The overhang of the restaurant base was what stopped him from going further, later parties had to pull the blueprints of the building and make up some rings to slot into the rails underneath.

See: http://brydenallen.com/sandstone_and_clock-towers.pdf

It has been for a while, in certain dialects. One of the wonderful things about english is that it evolves.

Yup, that happens pretty regularly, some coianges being better than others.

For example, during the Beijing Olympics, various coaches and commentators unfortunately verbified 'medal'. The resulting sentences were not pleasant...

Disclaimer: English is not my first language.

In my experience, I see it's very, very common to turn a noun as a verb, in informal contexts. Do you people still bother to make a distinction?