‘It did start off as something maybe slightly tongue in cheek but it has grown into this real sport that people actually go out and do." Phil Shaw, codename Steam, takes extreme ironing very seriously. As the founder of the world’s first white goods extreme sport, perhaps he has reason to be proud.
It was late one afternoon in 1997, when, after a long day at work in Leicester, Shaw was faced with a guaranteed mood-dampener, a huge pile of ironing that required immediate attention. Eager for a way to improve the situation, Shaw had his Eureka mo
ment when he decided to take the ironing outdoors to the garden. All that fresh air seemed to trigger something and before long, he had recruited his housemate and they set about developing the sport that is simply defined as "involving ironing clothes outdoors in dangerous or unusual locations".
Perhaps afraid of ridicule and determined to keep their identities secret, Shaw adopted the pseudonym Steam and his flatmate became Spray. They were soon joined by Starch, Flex, Short Fuse and several other willing participants.
Perhaps the first response to extreme ironing is to ask the question "why?" Isn’t rock climbing challenging enough without strapping an ironing board to your back and smoothing out the creases from your favourite shirt once you reach the summit? However, this question could equally be applied to any sporting challenge - mountains are there to be climbed, endurance exists to be tested and the extreme ironers would probably argue that their sport has the added bonus of keeping your clothes in pristine condition.
Shaw has now written a book that delves into the how, why and where of the sport and it reveals this domesticated yet wild duality. "Participants of the sport are known as ironists and pride themselves on returning to work on a Monday morning with a well-ironed shirt, which they pressed at the weekend whilst dangling from a rock face or riding the rapids," says Shaw.
What could have remained a novel activity restricted to a group of friends proved to be less than a flash in the pan when Shaw embarked on a worldwide recruitment campaign in the summer of 1999. Germans, New Zealanders and many more quickly embraced the activity and set about making it their own. Before long these domestic gods and goddesses had moved on from mountains, taking their ironing up trees, into rivers, through potholes and in North Wisconsin, US, an ironist known as Siltkicker took his board below frozen water to perform the task under 40cm of ice.
Munich, 2002, was the first location for the Extreme Ironing World Championships, an event where competitors had to get round a course with five ironing stations as quickly as possible before being judged on style as well as their technical prowess. This year’s international competition took a different slant, inviting competitors to submit a photograph of themselves ironing in the most bizarre, unusual and extreme places. South African Troye Wallett and his photographer Gordon Forbes came top out of 160 entries, having ironed suspended across a 30m wide gorge at Wolfberg Cracks in the Cederberg mountain range.
If this all sounds surreal at best, farcical at worst, it is worth remembering that the ironists are merely following in a great British tradition of madcap sporting antics. The forerunners were the old Etonians who made up the Dangerous Sports Club. Its founder member invented bungee jumping and as a group, en masse, they indulge in activities such as playing Chopin on a grand piano fitted with skis while hurtling downhill.
In an era where opportunities for adventurers are fast running out or becoming more obscure - witness Felix Baumgartner’s unpowered flight across the English Channel earlier this year using a carbon fibre wing - perhaps Steam and his comrades should be applauded for taking extreme sports in a different direction altogether.
In April, John Roberts and Ben Gibbons proved their dedication to the cause by climbing 17,800ft up Mount Everest to iron a Union Flag. "I didn’t think that would happen when I started it off, but it has just sort of grown and grown and it’s got a life of its own now," says Shaw. One thing that’s notable about the extreme ironists is that they tend to already be proficient in their chosen sport before accessorising with an iron. Shaw says that for safety purposes, this is essential. His book also touches on less awe-inspiring area of "choosing your fabric", saying: "Ironists are sometimes so absorbed in getting themselves into some sort of awkward or dangerous situation with their ironing board that they forget the main reason they are there in the first place: to rid their clothing of creases and wrinkles."
Around 29 per cent of extreme ironists prefer to work on a shirt, while a tea towel is the novice’s favourite. Perhaps most surprising is Shaw’s admission that he doesn’t particularly like ironing. "That was part of the original idea of taking it outside. I think probably most of the people that do it aren’t that fussed about ironing, this just makes it a bit more interesting."
• Extreme Ironing, £7.99 is published on 1 November by New Holland Publishers.
• • The Extreme Ironing Bureau
