Boy racers pull out the pitstops

“Last time I was on one of these I was wearing high-heeled stilettos, a bikini and a lot of suntan oil,” shrieked a go-karter last weekend, as she draped herself in a king-size oil-stained boiler suit.

The scene was Lydd Kart Circuit in Kent, the cause was Centrepoint charity for the homeless.

The karts were driven by maddened design consultants hurling themselves round the track with grim mouths and furrowed brows, hands taut on the wheel as their colleagues cheered them on to fever pitch.

Their thoughts were firmly focused on that guy who says “any spare change” every morning. The desire of these boy (and girl) racers to score more laps than ANY other company came from the purest of motives.

CGI London won with 214 laps, followed swiftly by London’s Team Event with 206 laps, while Northampton group The Real Artwork Company came in third with 205 laps… and the motley DW crew came a successful last. Centrepoint will receive around 4000 from the proceedings.

“It roused all my fierce animalistic instinct,” says Robert Ryan, Real Artwork’s creative director. “It was amazing to see some drivers staring really hard at others to put them off, it’s a technique called psyching out.” Get that, Michael Schumacher.