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The British have a proud pedigree when it comes to inventing. But a contraption cobbled together from household bits and bobs can be just as ingenious – as Aardman designers and the cult classic TV series The Great Egg Race show.

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Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention will be on BBC One in early NovemberTheir website (see below) has a competition to build a clever contraption – perhaps to wake up Wallace, or move Gromit from A to BSound familiar? It’s like The Great Egg Race, newly digitised on the BBC ArchiveTips and games from Wallace and Gromit And watch The Great Egg Race

Mad hair. Perhaps a lab coat. Or questionable knitwear. Few inventors fit this stereotype, just as few inventions are flights of fancy worthy of Heath Robinson or his contemporary counterpart, Wallace of “and Gromit” fame.

Not that there’s anything wrong with an elaborate contraption bristling with cogs, pulleys and water clocks, that boils a kettle while simultaneously tipping its owner out of bed and straight into a natty vest/corduroys combo.

But often the best inventions come about because an ordinary person has a problem that needs solving.

“The man who invented Velcro, for instance, was inspired by a stuck zipper on his wife’s dress,” says Steve van Dulken, patents specialist at the British Library, currently exhibiting the 15 most ingenious British inventions of the past decade. These include several homespun inventions, of which Wallace and Gromit would be proud.

It is just this sort of inventiveness that Sir James Dyson has urged the government to encourage and reward in a speech this week.

And it’s this spirit which infuses cult TV classic The Great Egg Race – newly digitised from the BBC archives – in which teams built eggmobiles or automatic tea-making machines, all from everyday tools and materials.

Heinz Wolff in action

The science-based show, which ran from 1979-1986, was hosted by Professor Heinz Wolff, all wild hair, bow tie and German accent – the very image of an eccentric inventor, and deliberately so, says co-judge Professor Ian Fells.

“I asked him once why he played it up, and he said ‘if I have to appear as a clown to make people listen to what I’m saying about science, so be it’.”

But why Egg Race? At first entrants built rubber band-powered eggmobiles. But as its popularity grew, keen amateurs were effectively forced out by companies keen to showcase their engineering skills on primetime TV.

“It became immensely competitive – Rolls Royce, for example, put two people onto it fulltime,” says Professor Fells. “So we had to change it.”

The challenges diversified but, by and large, the competitors were cut from similar cloth – quiet, serious men with elaborate facial hair and double denim. This gender imbalance so annoyed Professor Fells’ wife Hazel that she applied under her maiden name.

Her crack all-female team – thought to be the only one in Egg Race history – comprised of a technology and design teacher, a “very practical housewife”, and she herself worked in computing at Newcastle University.

“We scored 85% for our engineering,” she recalls fondly of their challenge to build a contraption to ferry bike parts off a desert island, to reassemble said bike, and ride it around the studio.

“The workshop was set up as if it was your kitchen, garage or shed at home. That’s how it was in those days – if something broke, you didn’t get a man in to fix it, you did it yourself,” says Hazel Fells.

Malcolm Thomas, who competed in the tea machine challenge, says the appeal was to put one’s practical skills to inventive use.

“I was working in engineering at the time, and another team member was always stripping down motorbikes and putting them back together.

“Our machine involved a ball bearing setting off all the stages of tea making. As it rolled down a wooden track, a tea bag was lowered in and out of the water.”

It’s just such a contraption that might appeal to Wallace and Gromit, says Merlin Crossingham, creative director at Aardman, whose job involves dreaming up the duo’s inventions.

“Wallace often invents things to make his life easier and more modern. The root of a lot of inventing is laziness.”

The plastacine pair front a new BBC TV series and competition to encourage budding inventors young and old to design and build their most inventive contraption, made entirely from bits and pieces around the home. Tips and downloadable projects are on a new website to get the creative juices flowing.

A steam chair saves walking, but makes work in refuelling and repairs

“Inventions don’t come about because you set out to be an inventor. It’s because someone has a problem that they really want to solve or need to solve,” says Crossingham.

“I met a man who lives in the middle of Africa where there’s no electricity. So he built a windmill out of bits and bobs to generate electricity.”

It’s apt that Wallace and Gromit have picked up Heinz Wolff’s DIY inventor baton, not least because Aardman devised the Egg Race’s opening sequence of an egg on a rollercoaster made of kitchen utensils.

Crossingham remembers watching The Great Egg Race, and putting its make-do-and-mend principles into practice.

“I was always making things as a child. If I wanted to do a jump on my bike, I’d race off to find some wood and make a ramp. Invention is a very official term but what it’s about is curiosity.”

His top tip for inventors, amateur or otherwise?

“Record every idea – draw it or write notes. You never know when some stupid thought might turn to gold. The best inventions make you smack you head and think ‘why did no-one else think of that, it’s so obvious’ – but it’s not obvious, someone’s spent time thinking about it.”

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