National Shed week starts race for top prize

Published 02nd Jul 2007

FOR some men, it’s where you’re forced to sleep when you forget the wife’s birthday.

But for a secret brotherhood of blokes, it symbolises life’s last refuge – a place to pull up an old paint tin, sit down and chill out, away from the stresses and strains of the daily grind.

That’s why a Welshman has set up a seven-day celebration of that great bastion of the British backyard – the humble shed.

Tomorrow marks the start of the UK’s first ever National Shed Week, created by Cardiff’s ‘head sheddie’ Uncle Wilco on behalf of thousands of people up and down the country who seek solace in their garden hideaways.

“The traditional shed has been a second home to generations of both men and women over the years, but they aren’t so humble these days actually,” says the man whose website readersheds.co.uk receives a whopping 20,000 hits a week.

“A lot of people are turning them into workshops, offices, even putting broadband, bars and hot tubs in some of them.”
One of the highlights of National Shed Week is the prestigious Shed of the Year contest.

“You should see some of the 700 or so entries we’ve had from all over the globe,” says Uncle Wilco. “The website allows people to upload a picture of their shed for the rest of the world to vote on them.

“They range from the basic ones you can buy from B&Q to one guy who’s done his shed out like a Roman temple, while another one has built a sauna inside and put the whole thing on wheels so he can take it round his garden. There’s a few who clearly were Doctor Who fans when they were younger and have built a Tardis to keep their spades, shovels and bottles of weed-killer.

“We’ve even had the seal of approval from Property Ladder’s Sarah Beeny, she called our competition a ‘great excuse to wallow in the gorgeousness of all our sheds’ – and she’s absolutely spot on!”

But all that fun aside, Uncle Wilco says sheds play a serious role too – by providing a source of inspiration for some of the country’s most brilliant minds.

“Fewer famous eccentrics would have come up with their ground-breaking ideas if it hadn’t been for the humble shed,” he says.

“Dylan Thomas had one, Roald Dahl came up with many of his children’s stories in his, while it was in one that inventor Trevor Baylis created the wind-up radio in 1994.

“See? Sheds aren’t throw-backs from a bygone era but an important part of our future too,” he added.

Find out who wins Shed of the Year by logging onto www.readersheds.co.uk on Wednesday.

Ready, sheddy ... go: Shed facts
* Celeb sheddie comic Vic Reeves has vowed to welcome England’s smoking ban today with a fag and a can or two in his Kent shed.

* Estate agents say a garden office can increase the value of your property by up to £25,000.

* Aussie sheddie Lloyd Godson recently spent 12 days living underwater in a metal shed at the bottom of a lake, riding a bike to generate electricity and using algae to produce oxygen.

Source: ' IC Wales '

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