Now This Is More Like It, Health And Safety Be Dammed!

many years ago I remember every year being taken to The Royal Tournament,

it was a spectacular event I will remember always, on one side of my fathers family they were all in the navy, the rest were in the police, uncle Harry was a "Crusher" (Master At Arms) so every year Navy Days at Chatham in the Provost office at H.M.S. Penbroke and cheering Pompey at Earl's court, to watch the gun race, this is a competition rooted in that most politically incorrect of imperial conflicts, the Boer War, in 1900, the entire British Empire rejoiced after British forces, besieged inside the South African town of Ladysmith for 119 days, were finally relieved, they owed their salvation, in part, to 280 Royal Navy sailors, even though Ladysmith is 100 miles inland,

the men of the Naval Brigade removed six guns from their warships and placed them on hastily-constructed gun carriages, these were moved inland first by rail, then by mule and, ultimately, by hand and ingenuity, once in action, they brought down enough withering fire to drive off the Boers and liberate the diseased and starving garrison,

Queen Victoria was most impressed and dispatched a congratulatory telegram to the Naval Brigade, who returned home to a euphoric welcome,they were soon re-enacting their heroics at the Grand Military Tournament which, in due course, became the Royal Tournament, the annual celebration of the British Forces, the gun display was turned into a competition and, each year, the big naval bases would recruit teams to heave the same guns over artificial walls and across a 28-foot 'chasm', the teams would compete twice a day through the fortnight of the Royal Tournament and the results were signalled instantly to every ship in the fleet. 'It would make your day if your lot had won,' says Grassy Meadows, who represented Devonport in three Royal Tournaments,

there is nothing quite like the Royal Navy's Field Gun run, a wince-inducing display of teamwork and severed digits, to excel at this sport, you require the explosive speed of a sprinter, the strength of a weightlifter, the precision of a ballerina and the pain threshold of a mother of 12, and now, ten years after it disappeared from national view along with the dear old Royal Tournament, the race is about to return to the big stage in front of both the Queen and the television cameras, next week, the 30,000 visitors to the Windsor Castle Royal Tattoo - including most of the Royal Family and celebrities from Coldplay's Chris Martin to Alan Titchmarsh - will watch two 18-strong teams of the Royal Navy's finest crashing around the main arena and performing a series of Formula One-style pit stops with a Victorian cannon, each set of kit weighs the same as a family car and each gun must be put together, taken apart and dragged up and down an 83-yard course, blasting off six shots in the process, it is all done in just over a minute,

a great British tradition and I am proud of it, alas, the Labour government banned it 10 years ago, may who ever took that decision rot in their grave.