The games were best described as school Sports Day for adults. For example, team members would attempt to carry buckets full of water over greasy poles or rolling logs to fill up a receptacle. Often, members of the other teams would be allowed to interfere; for example, members of one team may have been permitted to squirt the other teams with water cannons or throw custard pies at them. Limited budgets meant that games were often a variation on what could be done with a long piece of elastic, a lot of water, including the use of a portable swimming pool and a roundabout. It was not unusual for these Heath Robinson games to break needing the judge to invent some bizarre way of scoring them fairly. In its earliest form, however, the show tried to emphasise skill or organization applied in a bizarre way, for instance picking up eggs with an industrial excavator, as well as more traditional village sports such as climbing a greasy pole. The location of the contest might resemble a muddy building site more than a stadium, especially with games like piano demolition, where a piano had to be passed through a small hole with the aid of a sledge hammer. Games of strength were included, for example, carrying a Mini Moke without wheels along a course. From the beginning, a long term contest known as the "mini-marathon" ran for the length of the programme, with updates on progress between the shorter contests. The shift to spectacular displays of silliness, with or without costumes, came later, probably to improve audience appeal, and also to be in line with European traditions which feature more use of bizarre costume than in Britain. The winner of each series was awarded the It's a Knockout Trophy. |
