The man on my left is attempting to set fire to his own testicles while riding a unicycle backwards across a tightrope suspended above a pit of hungry crocodiles. The man on my right is preparing to launch himself from a cannon into a wall of flaming bagpipes. And somewhere in the middle, a woman in a leather catsuit is arm-wrestling a depressed-looking bear. This is not a fever dream induced by cheap Bulgarian brandy (though I’ve had plenty). This is the X Games of the damned. This is the World Unregulated Extreme Sports Championship, held in a disused aircraft hangar in Slough. And I, Barnaby ‘Biff’ Thistlethwaite, am your wholly inadequate guide to this monument to human stupidity.
Let us begin with the nomenclature. The organisers, a cabal of men whose facial hair suggests a complete divorce from societal norms, call this ‘Free Form Physical Expression’. The rest of the world calls it ‘the kind of thing that gets your insurance cancelled and your mother weeping into her sherry’. There are no rules. There are no safety nets. There is only the grim, relentless pursuit of a plastic trophy shaped like a flaming skull.
The event I am currently witnessing is ‘Extreme Flaming Bagpipe Yeeting’. The participant, a Glaswegian with the haunted eyes of a man who has seen the future and found it wanting, straps a set of bagpipes to his back, sets them ablaze, and then attempts to hurl them as far as possible using only his neck. The record stands at four metres. The previous record holder is currently in a hospital in Swindon, having his face reconstructed with what I can only assume is gaffer tape and optimism.
But the true horror, the real visceral terror of this spectacle, is not the physical danger. It is the sheer, unadulterated earnestness of the competitors. They believe in this. They have poured their life savings into training for events like ‘Extreme Synchronised Chainsaw Juggling’ and ‘High-Altitude Wheelbarrow Racing’. They have sponsors. They have groupies. They have a perfectly straight-faced commentator who announces each catastrophe with the solemnity of a BBC newsreader reporting a royal death.
‘And there goes Dave,’ he intones, as a man in assless chaps is launched into the stratosphere by a malfunctioning trampoline. ‘A valiant effort. His husband will be proud.’
I interview a competitor between events. He is called Greg. He is a former accountant from Slough. He specialises in ‘Void Stapling’, an activity that appears to involve stapling various objects to his own flesh while reciting the works of Keats. I ask him why. He looks at me with the pure, crystalline clarity of the truly insane.
‘Because the world needs chaos, man. Order is a cage. The soul needs to fly, even if it’s into a wall.’
He staples a copy of the Daily Mail to his forehead and wanders off to prepare for his next event, which involves a pogo stick and a live badger.
I retire to the VIP tent, which is just a lonely corner of the hangar with a moth-eaten couch and a bottle of warm gin. The gin is unregulated, like everything else here. It tastes of petrol and regret. I sip it and watch as a man attempts to break the world record for ‘Most Papercuts in One Minute’ by rubbing sandpaper across his naked body. He is an inspiration. He is a warning. He is exactly the kind of person who gives humanity a bad name, and I love him for it.
As the sun sets (or at least as the fluorescent lights flicker, indicating the passage of time), the final event approaches. It is called ‘The Gauntlet of Despair’. It involves a cardboard maze, four industrial fans, and a lot of bees. The winner will receive the flaming skull trophy and a year’s supply of energy drinks. The loser will receive a lifetime of therapy.
I decide to leave before the weeping begins. As I stumble out into the grey Slough evening, I hear the commentator’s voice echoing through the hangar: ‘And we have a new champion! His name is Kevin. He has no eyebrows. Let’s hear it for Kevin!’
The applause is deafening. The bees are furious. And somewhere, in the smoking ruins of another man’s dignity, a dream lives on.
This has been Barnaby ‘Biff’ Thistlethwaite, reporting from the bleeding edge of idiocy. I need a drink.
