Former Northamptonshire lift engineer to do battle in revamped Robot Wars

The show, which first launched in 1998, returned to BBC Two on Sunday after a 12 year hiatus and will see 40 teams pit their homemade remote controlled robots against one another in a series of battles across the six part series.

Pitsford dad-of-two Jason Marston had been part of a team which entered the competition in series six and seven.

But despite going out in the first round on pone of those occasions, the 45-year-old is trying his luck again in 2016 on his own with his robot Thor.

He said: “I watched original series and at some point I said, you know what I think I can do better than them.

“So I started building them back then and now I have been building robots for around 14 years. The one for Robot Wars took about 300 to 400 hours and cost me £4,500 in materials, so it’s a serious hobby.”

As well as battling it out against each other, the robot teams must avoid being crushed to pieces by one of the show’s “house robots,” such as “Sir Killalot,” or falling into dangerous hazards of fire, spikes, a flipper and a pit.

But with the series having already been filmed in a purpose-built Glasgow warehouse, builder and former Express Lifts engineer Mr Marston, could not say whether Thor made it back from the show intact.

“When you see these full combat shows it can be horrible,” he said. “Sometimes you see these great robots being reduced to a bag of bits.

“But as it has already been recorded I’m not at liberty to say how I got on.”

Mr Marston’s and Thor, given its name because of its roof-mounted hammer, are set to feature in episode two of Robot Wars this Sunday.