In the early 2000s Robot wars was at its peak and I was fortunate to live close to an unofficial event. The event was organised by Mike Franklin from team 101, who lived in Kettering. Presumably his daughter Amy went to the Southfield girls school that hosted the event.

Here is the programme that I received on entry, signed by a whole host of roboteers. I have some signatures in an autograph book too, although I can't remember where that is. I plan to scan this properly at some point.

Something that alwys stands out to me on this back page is the line dancing demonstration at 2:30pm. I wonder if they overbooked the hall so had to somehow fit the dancing in.

My dad had a 35mm camera with him, the negatives have been scanned as well as possible. They aren't perfect but good enough.

Bigger Brother and team.

Me with George Francis and Chaos 2, with far too much flash. Chaos 2 is a small robot but you really get a sense of scale.

Arthur Chilcott and Mortis. Mortis was my favourite robot in early Robot Wars, I really liked the tank tracks.

Rex Garrod with Cassius and Cassius 2. Rex will always be the king of Robot Wars in my eyes and also engineered Brum from the TV series. He appeared with Tim Hunkin on the 1980s TV show The Secret Life of Machines, which has now been remastered and can be seen on YouTube.

Hypno-Disc and the Rose family.

101 and Scuttle from Technogames. To the other side of 101 is the armour it wore when fighting Razer, with big holes punched through it.

The Plunderbird boys were there with Plunderbird 4, great guys.

Behemoth. The controller on the top of the robot looks very much like the Tyco controller I had for my Rebound R/C car.

The Witch

Robocow

Onslaught, with Plunderbird 4 and King B visible in the background. One of the few robots to keep using traditional steering. Much larger than it looked on the TV, just much smaller than the other robots.

80:20, not a robot I really remember that well and I can't find any references to it online. I would guess the name came from the use of 80x20mm aluminium extrusion in the construction, some of which is visible in the photo.

There were a few tame fights out in the playground. Firstly Bigger Brother against what I believe is Sharky, then most of a shot of King B fighting 101. Remember when a camera could just run out of film?