Skip to content

Is Furze My Surrogate Dibnah?

  • 11 min read
Colin Furze and Fred Dibnah. My two heroes.

Pictured above: Colin Furze on the left and the late Fred Dibnah MBE.

Before we go any further, I can almost hear you go: “who?” So let’s do a summary of both:

Fred Dibnah MBE

Bolton-born and bred, Fred Dibnah MBE found British National television fame in 1982, when he became the subject of a documentary series called “Fred”.

In 1978, while making repairs to Bolton Town Hall, Dibnah was filmed by a regional BBC news crew. BBC Manchester then commissioned a documentary series, which followed Fred as he worked on chimneys, interacted with his family and talked about his favourite hobby – steam.

The series – Fred in particular – was popular with viewers and several series followed. The earlier series focussed on Fred’s primary job of steeplejacking and followed the same format as his first series (BBC Producer Don Haworth wrote, directed and produced many of these series). Later on as Fred got older and steeplejacking became more obscure (and more difficult for the older Fred), Fred concentrated on his steam engines and home steam-driven workshop.

Fred was invited to present several television series about Victorian engineering, the Industrial revolution, architecture and many aspects of Victorian (or earlier) Britain. He did this with his usual Northern wit and copious demonstrations (pronounced deee-mon-strations in his Bolton accent) of the engineering, carpentry and architectural structures he was presenting.

When dealing with steam, Fred was happy. Whether it was his traction engines and steam rollers, or static steam engines, Fred was at his happiest driving them, or maintaining them, using old-school engineering methods, including drilling holes in pressure vessels using nothing but a ratchet drill and copious amount of elbow grease.

Colin Furze

Stamford-born Colin Furze is described as a British YouTube personality, stuntman, inventor and filmmaker. Colin’s YouTube channel currently has in excess of 12.3 million subscribers (as of Feb 2023).

Colin started his YouTube channel in 2006. His first video is 16 seconds of him dressed as Mr. Blobby jumping on shopping trollies! And on that day, a legend was born (on YouTube!).

According to his (rather short) Wikipedia page, Furze has said that he attended Malcolm Sargent Primary School as a child until he entered secondary school. By then he had already begun making underground dens and a few tree houses. He became a plumber after leaving school at 16, which allowed him to focus working on tools, gadgets and engineering. Shortly after the death of his father, he discovered the video-sharing website YouTube on which he shared his inventions beginning with his wall of death ramp in 2007. He is helped by his good friends Tom Lamb and Rick Simpson.

YouTube is his primary method of presenting himself to the world, however he has a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. He has also appeared on various TV programmes, both in the UK and abroad, demonstrating and explaining his inventions and achievements.

Furze’s main modus operandi is working from his shed in his back garden, making his inventions in there using various hand tools and non-CNC equipment. Welding and plasma-cutting feature on most projects – especially the bigger projects that are usually sponsored.

He is currently the proud holder of four Guinness World Records.

What’s the big deal?

Let’s start with Fred. I watched that first series in 1982 (when I was about 20). At that time, I was working through my engineering degree at college and working in maintenance engineering at an ice cream factory. Engineering was (and still is) my passion and I was having great fun doing and learning all sorts of engineering practises both at college and at work.

Fred’s series’ focussed on his steeplejacking, his steam engines and his life. Although I would never do any actual steeplejacking, it was fascinating working out the engineering principles behind how Fred used to demolish chimney stacks by hand. His steam engines though were a different matter. These things I understood, as they followed “normal” engineering rules. He restored them lovingly and with great expertise and care. He didn’t care for modern engineering practises and used old school methods to restore his engines in his steam driven backyard workshop in Bolton.

It was often mentioned that he was a person in the wrong time – he should have been born 100 years earlier in the Victorian era. He took that very seriously and admitted that he preferred Victorian methods, in engineering and in life.

He had his own steam-powered workshop in his garden in Bolton. This was something I was very jealous of – at that time I was living at home and had no workshop as such to speak of. He even sank a mineshaft in his garden to quite a depth – lining it with bricks and mortar in a traditional Victorian style, of course.

I continued to watch Fred’s series on various subjects, all the way up to his last series in 2004 (and then the compilation series’ thereafter). I loved his work ethic (he was not afraid of hard work, even up to his death), I loved the “proper” way that he approached his work – if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing right. He applied that ethic all the way through his life.

It was Fred that got me interested in steam engines and big engineering, really. I’d always been interested in it, but it was watching Fred’s work that fired up that interest further and kept my interest running. It was one of the main reasons that I wanted to continue my career in Engineering and the reason I ended up being a specialist machinist and then a production engineer for a manufacturing company. In those days, CNC (Computer Numerical Control) was very much in it’s infancy – the company that I worked for had very few CNC machines. The machines I worked on were either cam-controlled mechanical machines, electro-mechanical hydraulic machines, or manually operated machines. There was great skill in setting these types of machines up to produce quality components – something I enjoyed very much and very much akin to Fred’s various “doings”.

The traction engine and steam-roller aspect of Fred’s life was also very interesting to me. Not just the engineering aspect and the danger of carrying a load of high-pressure stem around in a metal tube, but also the presentation of the machines. Every bit of copper pipe, brass fitting and shiny stuff was polished to the extreme. The engines had pristine paintwork and they were kept clean as they rattled through the countryside. I’m not sure whether Fred was aware, but he was unknowingly the biggest proponent of the Steampunk sci-fi subgenre (popularised in about 1987).

And I do love a bit of steampunk!

Although Colin’s YT channel was created in 2006, it never actually really registered with me until two months ago (December 2022). Yes, I’d had the odd one or two of his videos pop up as recommended (which I had watched), however in December 2022, Colin released a two hour video describing how he built a tunnel between his shed and his house. By hand!

The two hour video was a compilation of 10 separate videos that he’d done each depicting a section of tunnel he’d built.

Well. I was transfixed! I watched the whole video in one sitting and from then on, I was hooked. Not only was this a massive undertaking (it would be a massive undertaking for anyone, to be fair), he did it with such energy and humour that I just couldn’t not love the bloke.

Then of course, the YouTube rabbit-hole starts, where you go back though the old videos and watch them. All of them. And with Colin, there are quite a few videos to enjoy. But it is nothing but a rewarding experience! 🙂

Colin’s inventions are a sight to behold. He usually thinks of something to make (or is sponsored by a company to make a particular thing). Then he’ll work out and design it in his head. Then he’ll make it. Amazing. And they look amazing, too. From polished fire extinguisher flame throwers to 30ft trebuchets.

He does admit (and there are videos to evidence this) that some things are redesigned along the way (because they either don’t work, or they are not what he wanted), but that’s the whole ethos of Colin. If it doesn’t work, make it so it does. Outstanding.

So is he my surrogate Dibnah?

So let’s look at the two:

As young men, both were trained in skills that they don’t use as their primary skill. Fred was trained at art school, using his art skills to do drawings of architecture and machinery (later used in his documentary series). Colin was trained as a plumber. Although Colin does use plumbing for his inventions, It’s by no means the only skill he uses to build them.

Both describe themselves as backyard engineers (or, not bad for a plumber). They can both turn their hands to anything (and frequently do/did) – the result is always spectacular. Whether it’s Fred’s steam engines, chimneys or buildings, or Colin’s hulkbuster, 60mph dodgem car or steampunk-esque flamethrowers, potato guns or a swimming pool car/barbeque; they are all designed and built to perfection. And they all work. Even Colin’s pulse jet.

Both have tunnelled underground! Fred’s mineshaft, lined with traditional red bricks and Colin’s steel and concrete lined tunnels. Not forgetting Colin’s underground apocalypse bunker!

Both have the workshops in the back garden. From Fred’s steam-powered workshop (with matching chimney stack) with a single steam engine powering all of his engineering tools, to Colin’s shed; with the secret tunnel entrance, the welders, formers, hydraulic systems and hydro forming kit (a pressure washer!) – these are the places the magic is performed and the tools that wizardry is executed.

The Men, the wizards, the engineers:

Then of course, the men themselves. This is where the two of them differ:

Fred was usually quiet and pensive (until he’d had a pint or two), but his broad Bolton accent and no-nonsense attitude were the things I liked about him. Yes, he was of a different era, very Victorian in his ways (which were not necessarily the best), but he told it as it was, he got on with it and was an excellent engineer and story teller.

Colin is not as as quiet (!) but it’s the same work ethic, the same attitude, the same no-nonsense point of view as Fred. Obviously more up to date in terms of engineering, Colin doesn’t do computer programming or CNC machining (the only exception to this is the CNC plasma cutter and laser cutter, but who’s counting!). That makes it perfect for me – as nor do I!!

Just to mention one final thing about Colin. He encourages bands to contact him if they would like their tracks played as background music on his channel. This is highly commendable, as it exposes us to music that we may never have heard otherwise. He lists them either in the video comments or the video itself if used. Well done Colin.

Well?

Yes. I would indeed say that Colin is my surrogate Dibnah. Fred’s legacy of course, lives on through his media and his documentaries. And they are still just as enjoyable as they were when he made them. But Colin’s the next generation. I like his style, his humour and he has the skills. So yes Colin. You can be my Dibnah. Yis boi.

Some links

I wanted (unusually) to share some links to both Fred and Colin’s work. Both are really worth a watch even if you don’t know anything about engineering. If you do, then it’s a real treat!

Tags: