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Scrapheap Challenge
This is the fifth series in our quest for junkyard genius.
Every week two teams, each with three madcap mechanics and one technical consultant, construct a machine for a specific task using only the junk they can scavenge from the scrapheap. They have just 10 hours to do it. Whichever contraption performs the best carries its team one step nearer the coveted trophy – and a place in bodging history.
This year Scrapheap Challenge is again presented by novelist, comedy actor and series veteran (oh, all right, how about 'sage'? – ed) Robert Llewellyn. And there's fresh blood on the 'heap: for 2002 Robert is joined by the bodgtastic Lisa Rogers (no relation to former presenter Cathy Rogers – or so they claim). We rate Lisa so highly that we've given her a page all to herself.
News scraps
Full Metal Challenge
Meanwhile, after four series of Scrapheap Challenge and six of Scrapheap's American sister Junkyard Wars, Cathy Rogers has bowed out of presenting the programme she helped create and is now working on Full Metal Challenge. This new show is intended to be the World Cup of bodge-job engineering. Teams from all round the world are given £2000 and 30 days to build the ultimate multi-purpose vehicle. The vehicles are then shipped to FMC's spectacular film set and test centre, where they battle to the death.
Full Metal Challenge will be on Channel 4 early in 2003. Check out www.fullmetalchallenge.com for more information and a few sneak previews of the set.
Webchats
Check out transcripts of an online chat with series champions The Barley Pickers
and with Lisa Rogers earlier in the series.
Rumble in the Jumble
Think you'd make a good scrapheap scavenger? Well now you can find out with the Junkyard Wars Rumble in the Jumble game. Drive your buggy round the 'heap and pick up the most useful bits of scrap. Keep an eye on what your team captain is asking for and you'll maximise your score. Don't forget to drop off your scrap at the build area, or you'll be so weighed down that you can't move. (PS: If you get more than 2000 points, give yourself a big pat on the back. And get a life.)
Scrapheap online
Scrapheap Challenge is exciting, dirty and dangerous. And who said junk TV rots the mind? Check out the 'Science' section in each challenge on this site and find out more about what's happening beneath all that dust, noise and grinding metal. Plus: the story of each challenge, including sensational team diaries; all you ever wanted to know (and possibly more) about presenters Robert and Lisa; how to apply to enter your own team; and links to a selection of sites that may be of interest to devotees. The pages about each week's challenge will be added after the programme goes out (on Sunday afternoons at 5.25).
If you're still not satisfied, why not take a look at Behind the Scenes at Scrapheap Challenge by Robert Llewellyn, which has been described, on this page at least, as one of the most fascinating books by anyone on any subject. Scrapheap videos and a DVD are also available at the Channel 4 shop.
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