Channel 4 – Scrapheap Challenge 2004 – Challenges – Jet Boats

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The Hogs secure a sleek hull for their jet boat

Expert Alan gets down and dirty with the welding torch

Some final tinkering time before the test, as Robert looks on bemused!

Darrell cruises in after a successful challenge for the Hogs

Hairy Hogs' diary

What a name … it just came by chance. I think it was put forward at first as Hairless Hogs but it didn't sound as good, so we changed it – I think for the better.

This was an adventure for all of us. Were we going to be a one-hit wonders or would we go on to the next stage? Nobody knew what was going to happen or even if the team would work well together. Darrell is a motor mechanic and I'm a hands-on spark. We could see both these roles would work … but a civil servant? We would just have to wait and see.

Just before someone thinks we've never left Ireland, we do so all the time on our Harley Davidson machines, travelling all around England from Yorkshire to Kent, even to Europe. It's a pity the production team didn't bring our bikes over as well, it would have been a site to see having our Hogs parked alongside the heap!

The first day we were a bit apprehensive of what everything was going to be like. Everyone has a picture in their mind's eye of what goes on at Scrapheap … well, it's nothing like it. It's a real scrapheap with mud, dirt and oil. The materials you have to work with really are scrap and there's rust everywhere.

After the first meetings, we got the feel of things very quickly. Alan, our expert, was good and everything went as it should have. I don't want to spoil it with too much about the build as it would take too long, the only thing I would say is that we finished on time, we had some laughs with the crew and the other team, as well as a few pints after a hard day's work.

For us, having no bike to play with on our day off was a bit of a bummer but the local Harley Davidson shop in Maidenhead soon sorted that out for us, so we got to play for a few hours on nice new machines.

Race day was cool. There was nothing much to do and all day to do it in. The weather was fine and sunny, as were the girls in the production team. They were always smiling like rays of sunshine, keeping our spirits up and feeding us with the odd coffee and sandwich.

What more can I say? We won, we enjoyed ourselves and we moved on to the next round. Nobody wants to read about themselves and how bad they were and luckily, nobody was bad in our team; we worked well together. We had a laugh and a pint and enjoyed each other's company. Well done Alastair and Darrell … bring on the next team.

Conn Kelly