As the sun shone over London's Hyde Park 40 madcap competitors from all the over the UK lined to leap in to the waters of the Serpentine in their home made flying machines for the Red Bull Flugtag 2008. What could possibly go wrong...

As had been the case with the design of our entry in the Red Bull Soap Box race, where we created a bowl of trifle with wheels, we let our imagination run riot this time and came up with er...a bowl of trifle, with wings.

So without further ado we set to work using our highly detailed blueprints. The free crates of Red Bull came in handy that morning as the pressure was on.. First stop DIY superstore, of course making sure that we picked a bank holiday weekend so we couldn't park anywhere and had to queue for hours behind people buying barbeques.

So after a stint of shopping hell we came back armed with a plastic water butt, heaps of polystyrene, wood and of course the main ingredient of all quality engineering projects, cable ties and gaffer tape. Now we could set about building the worlds largest bowl of flying trifle.

Confidence was high. The night before we had built a test machine (left) from real trifle ingredients and were suitable impressed with its plummet from the kitchen table in to the washing up bowl. Although the aircraft itself was totally destroyed in an explosion of custard and cream the pilot (sponge finger stunt double) came up smiling. All good.

The aircraft frame was all built within the first afternoon so naturally we rewarded ourselves with the evening off for beers. Next morning we were heading for the Fyffes banana ripening factory to pick up a job lot of inflatable bananas which we managed to blag.

The rest of the day was spent crafting the finer points such as the pineapple chunk propeller, the custard cockpit and sticking on the hundreds of hundreds and thousands.

So finally after another weekend of painting Captain Custard declared clearance for take off by pulling off an untethered wing walk albeit whilst still parked in the driveway. All done with 3 weeks to spare. It had all been to easy. Confidence was so high we didnt even feel the need to push the aircraft down the street to check that it could taxi without falling apart. More beer celebrations..

By the time the TV crew turned up we were more than a little pissed and evidently it is not possible to say the word "excitable" after one too many. After cocking up constantly and using language not appropriate for viewing before the watershed we decided to change tact.

Suddenly the day was rescued and we opted for maximum titting about on the trampoline instead. Suffice to say non of our antics either before or on the day ever made it in to the director's cut. We like to think it's cos we would have over shadowed the show hosts.

And then before we knew it, the time had come. All teams needed to report to Hyde Park the day before the event for scrutineering. Being scheduled to go 4th off the ramp on the day we had to arrive early in pit lane to get in position. We knew we could have a relaxed morning safe in the knowledge that all we had left to do was a final bit of painting and a bit of sawing to sort out a few design faults. Except we left all the paint and tools behind. So we had some cold beer and a small nap...this was to prove our undoing.

Our relaxed state of booziness came to something of a shuddering halt once we'd had a visit from the Health and Safety bods. Apparently the design of the cockpit meant that Captain Custard would most likely be decapitated on impact. Strangely this had never occurred to us during pre-flight inspections, though admittedly that consisted of checking the propeller went round and seeing who could perform the highest somersault on the trampoline. Since we had no tools and were slightly pissed at this point we decided we'd make the modifications on the day of the event itself which left the rest of the day to carry on drinking and spy on the competition.

Taking a stroll down 'Hanger lane' it soon became clear that some of the other teams had spent considerably more time than two beer fuelled weekends to build their machines. One team of students had even spent a whole year as part of their term project (which made all the more funny when it totally spazzed off the ramp hahahahahahahahaha). Then again there was the odd team who obviously had office jobs and didn't know one end of a hammer from the other. At least we wouldn't be coming last...

So Saturday morning was a nightmare 6.30am start in order to get on site, make all the health & safety changes, finish the painting, get cleaned up and get dressed in time to ponce about for the celebrity judging panel. Imagine our surprise at getting the chance to meet one of our heroes, Cary Grant, not only a Hollywood star but we also thought he was dead. Imagine our greater surprise when it turned out to be a woman dressed as a picnic rug. We were confused.

Still at least we had Jodie Kidd to look at, although she was so tall her head was shrouded by cloud the whole time. The other two judges were the bloke who won the Flugtag back in 2003 and some perma-tan Simon Cowell wannabe tosspot. The fact that they gave us such crap marks has no bearing on our opinions whatsover, but let's just say they all thoroughly deserve to go on celebrity Big Brother.

By this time the 80,000 strong crowd was starting to arrive and get in position. Only two hours to go. We decided it might be time to start rehearsing our on ramp routine. This was our thirty second chance to wow the judges and grab some TV glory. We decided the best thing to do was rehearse it on the way up the launch ramp - that way we would have less time to forget it all. Then in no time at all Radio 1's "Chappers & Dave", the funniest duo since Cannon & Ball took to the stage and we were go. Time to say some last minute prayers and check the make up.

And the rest they say is history...even if history will say we only flew 6 metres, didn't die and were last on the leaderboard for ages until some truly crap teams came along and stole our glory.

So some 4 hours later after a couple of "flights" and considerably more dive bombs the show was over. That's a lot of work to go in to 30 seconds of glory but totally worth it. As as for the winners...even a Ukrainian eurovision song contest entrant could pull off a better performance.

Big thumbs to all the other Flugtaggers - until next time.