Caber Tossers

The challenge A bravehearted bunch of rollercoaster engineers, The Big Dippers, take on the furiously fast Skids in a Scrapheap-style Highland fling. The challenge: to construct a monster-sized mobile machine capable of tossing a massive 300-pound caber. The Skids The Skids are our southeast speedsters – a racing driver and his pit crew, ready for anything. This happy, chirpy and energetic team of captain Tony (a reincarnation of Dudley Moore, and Frank Zappa’s biggest fan), Dave and Simon mock, banter and jest so much through the day that it’s a wonder they manage to get anything built! Confident there hasn’t been a challenge so far they couldn’t have tackled, these boys are relishing the chance to get away from precision engineering and use their imaginations. Team expert and bodger extraordinaire Tinker, aka John Naylor, has a background in mediaeval re-enactment. He runs his own company, called Time Tarts, providing historical props and costumes for film and TV. John is known as ‘Tinker’ for his ability at just that, tinkering. The Big Dippers The Big Dippers are Lancashire lads responsible for the maintenance of Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Dodgey (he loves car boot sales and ferreting in skips – should be at home on the heap then!), Steve and Brian (nicknamed Two-ey as he only has two front teeth) have been friends for years and have a wealth of experience. Dodgey comes from a family of mechanics, Steve is the electrics supervisor at the Pleasure Beach and Brian claims to be able to weld underwater. So as well as providing a constant level of cheeky banter, these guys are here for more than the ride! Team expert Roger Balls is a quiet, considered man from Bedford. A specialist in prototype agricultural engineering, Roger has a habit of over-engineering things and as a result gets called 'Roger-neering' by friends and colleagues. He has designed and built many novel pieces of farm machinery, including a 'mangle' for squeezing the juice out of fresh cow manure! The judge This week's judge is Berkshire boy Chris Reynolds, a special effects wizard who enjoys nothing more than building machines to fling stuff! After a long stint with the BBC's special effects department, where he was involved in all sorts of weird and wacky creations, he moved to Robot Wars, where he built and maintained all the famous house robots.