Blocking HTTP call seems to timeout

Question

I want to fire a blocking call to my php file which queries my db. I want it to be blocking and not async as i don't want the user shown anything until this call is successful or not.

I run the below code, it stops at response = httpclient.execute(httpget); for a minute or two before going into catch for error. I cant see an error in the e item.

Anybody know whats going on here - my php file works with async task.

public static String blockingHttpCallToUrl(String url)
{
    String result="nothingReturned";
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();

    // Prepare a request object
    HttpGet httpget = new HttpGet(url);

    // Execute the request
    HttpResponse response;
    try {
        response = httpclient.execute(httpget);
        // Examine the response status
        Log.i("Praeda", response.getStatusLine().toString());

        // Get hold of the response entity
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        // If the response does not enclose an entity, there is no need
        // to worry about connection release

        if (entity != null) {
            // A Simple JSON Response Read
            InputStream instream = entity.getContent();
            result= convertStreamToString(instream);
            // now you have the string representation of the HTML request
            instream.close();
        }


    } catch (Exception e) {}

    return result;
}