3 mins. duration

The Dangerous Sports Club has created a gigantic catapult, which can propel a human 200 feet through the air at 60mph into a huge safety net.

We witness the members dressed in the club's trademark dinner jackets as they propel a very nervous but brave lady into the blue yonder. She lands in the safety net but recoils out of it and hits the ground with a deafening thud and groan. She is rushed to hospital where they diagnose a broken pelvis. She was lucky it could have been her neck!

Hunters are strange folk. And once a year they gather in Dortmund for the deer shouting championships. They don strange uniforms and create bizarre noises which imitate singing, waling and mating deer. The instruments they use are strange and exotic horns in one shape or another.

3 mins. duration

Strange but true, this sport has gripped dog lovers all over the world. We visit the Benelux International Championships in Belgium and marvel at the wondrous feats these dogs can perform. They literally dance on their hind legs! Participants from the UK, Holland, Belgium, Germany and the Czech republic.

In September visitors from many parts of the world descend on Egremont in Cumbria every year to attend the World Gurning Championships.

To gurn means to growl like a dog, to look vicious or to make a face at someone.

To start off a yoke is put around the neck of the contestant – who then has to try and win over the jury with the ugliest possible expression…

There are three disciplines – Junior Gurning, Ladies Gurning and the World Gurning Championships.

Andy Parks is a well known character throughout the land and a Christmas junky to boot. He wakes up to the Queen’s Christmas speech every single day of the year and then opens up his Christmas presents in his house full of lametta and Christmas decorations. 365 Christmas turkeys a year has taken its toll. He celebrates Christmas every day of the year.

Duration 6:00 minutes

Polo is played every winter on the frozen lake at St Moritz and the game attracts a wide array of international glitterati at this, the opening event of the high society winter season.

We follow a regular face in St. Moritz, Renate Hirsch Giacommuzzi, throughout the weekend’s festivities. Classy shopping, elegant parties, meeting friends and of course Polo.

4:32 mins. duration

Shrove Tuesday sees the kick off at Ashbourne in Derbyshire of the world's oldest, largest, longest and maddest football match. Up to ten thousand players compete for two days with a hand painted, cork filled ball. The goals are two miles apart and the ball is played through the streets and the local river.

3:05 mins. duraion

4,000 foolhardy runners gather each year for the maddest, most dangerous gruelling slog, half cross country race, half assault course, in which contestants have to run 14 miles across bogs, crawl under barbed wire, swim under water through a soup of mud, clamber up rock faces, walk planks, haul themselves across tightropes and grope their way through tunnels of freezing water.

A day at the races on Ladies Day is a sight to behold. We accompany 2 well known London socialites, Patricia Hayes and Jayne Payne, down to Ascot on the train. We picnic with Lady Colin Campbell and Prince Mongol Kapur. As the day wears on and the champagne takes its toll we witness hilarious shenanigans on and around the course.

3 mins. duration

A 7-day non-stop race with 32 teams, representing 14 countries, covering a distance of 300 miles in Northern Ireland.

Spectacular footage showing various disciplines: track, kayak, mountain bike, horseback ride and run, abseiling, juma climbing, Tyrolean traverse, caving

2.30 mins. duration

The prestigious National Sporting Club regularly stages black tie dinners for members and guests.

The highlight on these evenings is after dinner boxing. Staged in the magnificent art deco 'Napoleon Suite' in London's Café Royal, 300-400 guests partake of a candlelit dinner at tables placed around a boxing ring.

We join the event on Burns night, and witness the ceremonial piping in of the traditional haggis. 4 fights then take place, each one consisting of 6 two - minute rounds.

2.37 mins. duration

For one week in June Appleby in Cumbria is swamped by about 5,000 gypsies. Horse trading is what they come for and large amounts of cash change hands.

One of the sights of the week is the bravado with which bareback riders gallop their horses down a closed road, showing the horse’s form to the punters.

We visit Appleby on 'horse wash day', when the horses are cleaned with washing up liquid in the local river before they are put through their paces.

Every year in the month of June England celebrates its most extravagant social event by staging ©Ladies' Day" at Royal Ascot. Ladies' Hats are what Ascot is all about and we visit the famous milliner Edwina Ibbotson to get some inside information. We then view an amazing and humorous array of hats and eccentrics in and around London's Waterloo stationÉall showing off their wares on their way to the big race.

1:36 mins. Duration

Perhaps the most famous New Year's Day football fixture, probably the longest standing and certainly the most violent is the annual "Ba" in Kirkwall, Orkney. Contested by teams made up of 400 villagers born above the Market Cross...'Uppies'...and below...'Doonies'.

The aim is to plant the ba'...a 4lb leather ball filled with cork, at the opposite end of the town. The sea is one of the goals. There are only three rules: no women, no time limit and no players under 15. And there's no referee.

4:40 mins. duration

New arrivals at Ginni Little's Bat Hospital in Penzance, Cornwall are immediately given names, examined, weighed and fed worms or crickets. This unique establishment is currently home to 62 patients, mostly victims of car accidents. Others have fallen prey to prowling cats and birds.

Over the last 7 years Ginni has given a new lease of life to hundreds of bats, which she treats with loving care and attention. They have, after all, been around for the last 50 million years.

3.05 mins. duration

Wildlife enthusiasts from far and wide are being attracted to a hotel in North Wales, which has become the unlikely home of some non-paying guests: five different varieties of bat. They include the endangered Lesser Horseshoe bat, of which Penmaenuchaf Hall Hotel has about 140 - one per cent of the British population!

The luxurious country house hotel has 'flying areas' in the attic and a purpose built bat entrance. The enterprising hoteliers are offering special bat watching breaks.

Each year in August the city of Dinant in Belgium hosts an unusual and spectacular race with amazing home made boats. 250 of them race down the river Meuse and points are given not just for speed but also for original designs. This year we see a floating 2CV, an Eiffel Tower, the Nautillus, a Cathedral, the obligatory Viking brigade etc etc

3 mins. duration

On the 14th June 30 teams race 3,28 Km through the North Yorkshire town of Knaresborough with beds on wheels.

Each team consists of six participants of the same sex who push the bed, and one member of the opposite sex, who lies in the bed.

After racing through the streets of Knaresborough the teams have to cross the River Nidd, which always provides spectacular footage.

2:40 mins. duration

The traditional Knaresborough Bed Race has found its counterpart in ThŸringia, Germany.

On 5th July the village of Friedrichsroda staged a Teutonic version with entries from Germany, France and the USA. 41 Teams and thousands of spectators turned up. The route is 2 Km long and climaxes with a river crossing, which always provides spectacular footage.

Each team consists of six participants of the same sex who push the bed, and one member of the opposite sex, who lies in the bed.

2:52 mins. duration

Since the opening of the Channel Tunnel, Europe has become somewhat too close for comfort for many Englishmen. For the last 20 years Bert Frilley has opened and closed the old wooden gates on the main railway line between Ashford and London. This hand operated railway crossing has been here since the 19th Century.

Bert tells us what he thinks of the European invasion as the high tech trains pass his old wooden hut on the way from Paris to London.

3:55 mins. duration

Birdman Rallies take place in all parts of the world but Bognor Regis is the true HOME of the Birdman. We accompany the Rally and witness the participant's attempt to follow Icarus by taking to the skies in a craft of their own making.

Participants take off from Bognor Regis Pier to a mighty crowd of enthusiastic onlookers. Prizes are given for originality and success.

3 mins. duration

One of the most spectacular and wildest events in St Moritz is the International Swiss Championships in Bobrun Skating.

This is the last event of the bob season. 150 fearless participants, wearing padded ice-hockey outfits and helmets, skate the floodlighted bob run and many of them end up sliding instead of skating.

image: © Verkehrsverein St Moritz

1.30 mins. duration

20 participants snorkel through a filthy bog in the heart of Wales in a yearly display of brave frivolity. They swim 120 metres through a rain filled peat bog in record breaking time for charity and bravado.

3’40 mins. duration

Reverend Dr Shannon Ledbetter, curate of St Marys, in Knowsley Village, Liverpool, has travelled an unlikely path to her current calling. She is known for wearing a £250,000 PVC dress in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. Although a little bashful about the attention she recognises her new found fame has helped her bring the church to a wider audience.

3:10 mins. duration

Every Easter Monday in Leicestershire a huge hare pie is ceremonially carried through the streets to the local church where it is blessed and then distributed to the people.

Then anything between five hundred and a thousand players turn up to kick 3 small beer barrels through the countryside between 2 rivers, which are a mile apart. The game is between two villages, the goals are the rivers, and there are no holds barred.

3 mins. duration

John Ward is the archetypal eccentric English inventor, sporting a bow tie with a zany hairdo, huge glasses and a slide rule sticking out of his top pocket.

Apart from the famous Bra Warmer John is famed for the musical frying pan, the yo yo safety net, the bike which turns into a step ladder, the confetti snow machine, the Jehovah's Witness door knocker, the double glazed rabbit hutch e.t.c e.t.c.

2 mins. duration

We visit the first unofficial Bungee Jumping Championships held in the Bruno Banani Adventure Park in the Val d'annivieres in Switzerland. 20-30 participants from Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, England, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand!! Costa Rica etc....

A spectacular jump into a 190 Meter deep gorge. Regular jumps, free style jumps and midnight fun jumps.

4'08 min. duration

Ivor Spencer runs the oldest and most esteemed Butler School in the UK. It takes 6 weeks intensive training to turn out a fully qualified Butler and we observe a day's training of wannabe Butlers at London's famous Dorchester hotel.

We also reminisce with John Gibson who used to be a Queen's butler.