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Rex Garrod, special effects designer who created the superhero car ‘Brum’, updated Doctor Who’s robotic dog, K9, and won a cult following on ‘Robot Wars’ – obituary
Rex Garrod, who has died aged 75, was a former speedway rider who became a special effects designer and inventor; among numerous projects he crafted “Brum”, the Superhero remote-controlled car, based on a late-1920s Austin 7 Chummy convertible, for the eponymous BBC children’s television series that ran from 1991 to 2002.
Garrod appeared on television himself in the late 1980s and early ‘90s as co-presenter, with Tim Hunkin, of Channel 4’s educational series The Secret Life Of Machines, in which the pair provided technophobes with mock-academic expositions of the nuts and bolts of common household and office machinery, such as vacuum cleaners and fax machines, by reducing them to first principles with the aid of wires, bits of string and old tin cans.
The programme ran for three series (the last renamed The Secret Life of the Office). “These two archetypal, unaffected boffins have all the charisma of DHSS employees,” observed a reviewer, “yet their sheer dullness helped the programme succeed: you concentrated intently on the fax machine because it was the most extrovert performer on screen.”
In the late 1990s Garrod resurfaced as leader of Team Cassius in early series of BBC Two’s twice weekly show Robot Wars (1998-2004), in which amateur inventors pitted an array of Heath-Robinsonesque remote-controlled creations, equipped with a lethal armoury of weapons, against each other in gladiatorial contests in a studio arena.
The show attracted a cult following and Garrod became known for his cheerful demeanour and good sportsmanship. He was always ready to help fellow competitors with technical problems while being reluctant to attack their robots once they had been immobilised.
His own robot “Recyclops” (a one-eyed dome which periodically stuck out a giant tongue to flip its opponents over), was runner-up in the first series. He returned in Series Two with “Cassius”, the first robot to be able to flip itself back on to its wheels, finishing as runner-up to “Panic Attack”. The robot returned in Series Three after a redesign as “Cassius II”, but came to an ignominious end in the second round after driving into the pit.
In 2000, however, Garrod announced that he was refusing to take part in any more Robot Wars series after a series of accidents. In one incident, a 170lb robot had come to life after it was switched off and injured a stage technician, who needed hospital treatment. The same robot, Garrod recalled, had previously stabbed another technician who also needed hospital treatment.
“We have very strict safety procedures,” a BBC spokeswoman was quoted as saying.
Rex Garrod was born on September 10 1943, the son of a thatcher, and grew up in Mickfield, Suffolk. After leaving school he was apprenticed to a local electrician who, recognising his talents, taught him electric motor theory.
In the early 1970s he competed as a speedway rider, representing Ipswich, then Scunthorpe. He then joined Anglia Television in its special effects and props department, a career that came to an abrupt end when he was banned by a film union (special effect work was a closed shop at the time).
For a while he repaired washing machines before becoming a freelance inventor and special effects designer. He often worked with his fellow Suffolk inventor Tim Hunkin, who has recalled how Garrod kept an early creation, a severed hand, complete with bone and arteries protruding from the wrist, on his bandsaw table. Their first job together was a wind-powered clock for the 1984 Liverpool garden festival.
Garrod became the man to call when television producers needed a combination of engineering skills and creative imagination. He made props for the BBC children’s show Teletubbies and in 2006 was called in to update and overhaul K9, the faithful mechanical sidekick of Doctor Who, replacing the original wooden dog, last seen with Tom Baker in 1981, with a fibreglass model, with moving head and waggling ears, for David Tennant’s Doctor.
To find the material for his creations, Garrod visited a local scrapyard almost every day, filling not only his workshop-garage, but also a large polytunnel and several shipping containers with junk and no-longer-needed creations. These included the remains of a full-sized animatronic rubber shark that had swum underwater for an advert, powered by windscreen wiper motors.
Always willing to share his enthusiasm, Garrod did much to promote interest in engineering among young people, helping to run Young Engineers of Great Britain, for whom he founded a Rex Garrod Robot Challenge. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of East Anglia and is survived by his wife, Sally, whom he married in 1992, and by two daughters.
Rex Garrod, born September 10 1943, died April 8 2019