THREE friends from Lydney and their purpose-built, motorised ‘monster’ Warhog will be seen battling for honours this weekend in Sky One’s new series Carnage.

The programme is billed as ‘the most extreme contest on the planet, with thirty weaponised vehicles clashing in three thrilling arenas in the desert’.

Self-confessed petrolheads Chelsea Hopkins, her boyfriend Zak Powell and their friend Tom Ovens applied to take part via Facebook. To their amazement their design ideas were accepted and they were sent £7,000 to find and convert a roadworthy vehicle for the competition.

Based on a Landrover Discovery, Warhog is painted bright colours – luminous green with pink-tipped spikes – and equipped with an array of weapons ranging from air-powered paintball cannons to steel tusks.

It was built by the team over seven weeks in the Magor workshop belonging to Chelsea’s dad, Richard Hopkins of Bearbones Racing, who’s an off-road specialist.

Chelsea, who’s 26 and has a passion for classic cars, was to be the team’s driver, with Zak and Tom screaming directions from a garage on the sidelines.

“We broke our gear box just filming the introduction, but fortunately another team helped us to repair it,” said Chelsea.

The vehicles were shipped out to South

Africa last November and thirty teams from across the UK and Ireland were flown out to the filming site in Tankwa-Karoo National Park in February.

In total 500 people – from presenters and contestants to camera technicians and caterers – were involved in the production, living for several weeks in a tented city run by generators and solar power in the Kalahari Desert.

The site was five hours’ drive from Cape Town and two hours from the nearest town.

The battles, which took place in arenas called ‘The Grid’, ‘The Scrapyard’ and ‘The Dome’, were so fierce that each team was assigned five safety officers.

“The battles were insane,” Chelsea added. “There was so much dust flying around that I couldn’t see anything from the driver’s seat and had to rely completely on Tom and Zak’s directions.

“At one time the temperature hit 52C, melting a camera lens. If I had to sum up the whole experience it was totally surreal. We’ve never done anything like it before and likely never will again, though we would love to.”

And all this in the searing heat.

• The team features in Carnage this Sunday at 8pm.