User blog:Toon Ganondorf/Top 10 Roboteers

Welcome to Top 10!

I'm back for a moment of inspiration.

Robot Wars was full of memorable personalities, and I'm going to pin down my rambling thoughts this Saturday morning with a list of whom I consider the most memorable of all. This includes sportsmanship, persona, demeanour, skill as a driver and robot builder and just how quickly you can come to their name.

I felt that some teams, like Hypno-Disc, Tornado, Kat 3 and Diotoir, had equally memorable personalities, and so I've left them off. However, there is no rule about one per team, necessarily.

The Next 10 in line (no particular order)

 * Peter Gibson (Wheelosaurus): A kindly old man with a far outdated robot, even in The Fourth Wars, one-man team Gibson blustering about Victorian pram wheels and dustbin lids is among my first memories.
 * Alan Gribble (Team Cold Fusion): Constantly behind the scenes as far back as Series 2, Alan was a genuinely terrific guy with a massive heart and a big grin. He was always fun to watch and I loved how he kept Pussycat going and handled the transition to Barnwell in Extreme 2.
 * Graham Bone (Firestorm): Gains points for being one of the best drivers out there, but evades the top 10 for being a quiet personality. It says a lot when your driving skill alone gives you name recognition.
 * David Crosby (Dartford Girls Grammar): Every inch the fussy, micromanaging teacher, Crosby was a delightfully unapologetic Scottish dork, and I loved watching him get incredibly animated when a battle was and wasn't going his way.
 * John Reid (Team Hurtz): Such a mild-mannered seeming fellow creating such a psychopathic robot seems fitting. The reason I'll never forget John Reid, however, is his exasperated face after driving into the pit against Cerberus.
 * Rob Knight (Mortis): The guy from Mortis with the hands-free thing, and the one who protested against the Napalm decision.
 * Ian Watts (Team Big Brother): The guy who made Robot Wars into fun for the whole family, a quiet, self-effacing man who loved his kids so much he gave them centre stage.
 * Mike Franklin (Team 101): A clever man whose biggest claim to fame is either building the most successful cheap robot, or the most successful walker. Neither is anything to scoff at.
 * Ellie Watts (Team Big Brother): As cute as her brother, Ellie's most memorable moment was crying during the brutal devastation at Hypno-Disc's hands.

10. David Gribble (Team Cold Fusion)
The Robot Wars community prevented David Gribble's death from just another tragic statistic of road deaths. Even today, over ten years after he died, people still mourn the driver who was able to cripple Razer and Hypno-Disc by hitting the single weak spot on the machines. Lands at 10 because we never got to see much of what his personality was like, but his skill easily speaks for itself.

9. Roger Plant (Team Big Cheese)
"Hello, I'm Roger, that's John, that's Murray..."

- Roger Plant's seemingly uninterested openings

Plant's dry and uninterested tone of speaking suited the relatively dull The Mule, but juxtaposed beautifully with Wheely Big Cheese. He'll always be the guy who built the robot that catapulted Axe Awe into orbit.

8. Amy Franklin (Team 101)
"He's going to die."

- Amy Franklin, deadpan on Superbunny

With the exception of the much older girls from Dartford, Amy was the first female roboteer to take prominence. Her sweet shyness often came across as dry humour far beyond her years. Her poem to Craig Charles and deadpan "he's going to die" regarding Superbunny are among my most memorable laughs at Robot Wars.

7.Rex Garrod (Team Cassius)
A lock for top three had he been around longer, Garrod is memorable for his cheerful personality, well-known protest, and for creating the pioneers of many famous robot wars designs and weapons.

6. Steve Merill (Sir Chromalot)
"What, the robot? The jacket's more important."

- Steve Merill

While his similarly suit-and-tied companions blurred into one, Merill's boundless energy and seemingly complete lack of interest in the carnage around him made him well and truly stand out. It was always hilarious to watch Merill ironically hype the hell out of a glorified lorry wheel, with limousines and cheerleaders and air guitars.

5. Ian Lewis (Team Razer)
I'm sure Ian is a great guy in real life, but I'd be lying if I said he's memorable for coming across as a genuinely terrific guy like so many others on the list. Lewis is memorable as much for the drama behind the scenes as his obvious skill at driving and engineering.

4. Kim Davies (Panic Attack)
Like Graham Bone, Davies fades into the background because he was such a quiet, normal personality. But Davies skyrockets because A) He is a championship driver and B) I mean it, the guy's name is synonymous with good driving. With the possible exception of Gribble, I would say that Davies is certainly considered up there. He managed to reach the semi-finals four times in a row, and that three years after he won the championship. That's consistency.

3. Mike Onslow and Bryan Kilburn (Plunderbird)


There's no way I was splitting these two, even if my gut wanted me to go with Onslow. The two played off each other so well, like a comedy duo in Monty Python. Entertaining but obviously such great guys, as seen in the interview after losing to S3 and when faced with elimination in Series 1.

2. Joe Watts (Team Big Brother)
"These two spikes here, I've been checking them with my thumb..."

- One of Joe's many rambling introductions

"Little Joe" will always be an adorable kid, even though I realise he's only a year younger than I am, even when I was about his age I thought of him as a cute little kid. His hugging Phillipa, his adorable "bad luck" concession to Sir Chromalot, his rambling introductions (even as late as Extreme 2) - everything about him just made you love him.

But what set Joe apart from other cute kids like Amy Franklin and his own little sister is that the kid was genuinely good. He had a sense of timing on that flipper up there with the best - he's the one responsible for flip-clamping Tornado, he's the one that flipper Splinter and S3 out of the arena, he's the one who ended Chaos 2's unbeatable winning streak. He was ten years old when he and Ellie won the Minor Meltdown, and that's a tournament that I'll happily sit through just so Joe could take home a prize for what he brought to Robot Wars.

1. George Francis (Team Chaos)
"If you know anything about Robot Wars, you'll already know who we are"

- George Francis introducing his robot to Robot Wars Extreme

There was never, ever any doubt in my mind who #1 would be. George Francis is just a whole other level of memorable. His ridiculous height, his bright red hair, his effeminate voice, his outstanding engineering abilities - George Francis is Robot Wars for me. He won both series I watched as a kid, and as such got most exposure than anyone else. He sucked up so much attention that Mick Cutter, Ian Swann and Richard Swann faded into the background. If there are two things I never forget about Robot Wars, it will be Hypno-Disc destroying Stealth, and George Francis' voice.