Articles - Lisa Rogers

Graham Keal meets Lisa Rogers, presenter of Vroom Vroom and Scrapheap Challenge

She can laugh about it now, but when TV presenter Lisa Rogers saw svelte young socialite Lady Isabella Hervey drive her way into a spectacularly unscripted roll in a TV motoring show, the colour drained from her face.

 

Lisa co-presents Sky's Top Gear rival Vroom Vroom, now in its second series , including a mischievous feature entitled "Cat and Mouse", in which a big cat (a 1986 4.2-litre Jaguar XJ) chases a celebrity-driven mouse (a MkI VW Polo with a grey fur coat, roof-mounted ears and a tail).

 

Lady Isabella, having already been warned for crashing through the course barriers, made her memorable exit in series one. "It was a massively anxious moment," recalls Lisa. "Isabella was the last one to go and when the car rolled over everything kind of stopped. You could see the production manager, head in hands. Then we heard her laughing, so we thought, 'Well, we know she's all right'.

 

"Cat and Mouse was crazy, really hairy. It was a last-minute addition to the show and we weren't sure it was going to work, but once the first couple had gone and we saw how seriously the celebrities were taking it, we thought, 'This will be an absolute winner'." Former lads' mag favourite Lisa is perhaps best known as Robert Llewellyn's co-host on Channel Four's Scrapheap Challenge, wherein teams must bodge bizarre vehicles from whatever bits and pieces they can scavenge.

 

"I absolutely love Scrapheap. We're up at five in the morning and you don't usually wrap before 10 at night, or sometimes midnight, and we're out in the freezing cold and chucking rain. But the great thing is that the contestants are on it only because they really want to make the things. They're not there to be on telly or to win money." Her favourite scrap creations over the years have included an amusingly unstable amphibious motorbike ("extraordinarily funny") and a sheep-flinging machine ("we didn't use real sheep").

 

Lisa's previous petrolhead presenting credentials include Carlton's regional motoring mag Pulling Power and a ride around Holland and Belgium in Mark Owen's Celebrity Scooters, for BBC3 precursor BBC Choice. "That was one of those jobs where you look at it on paper and think, 'There's got to be a catch'." Lisa, former Take That member Mark Owen and sundry Vespa-riding celebs buzzed around eight host cities for the Euro 2000 soccer championship. The itinerary included presenters-versus-locals soccer matches, a spot of travel reporting and lots of late-night drinking.

 

"We were a bit worse for wear most mornings and one day I did come off, but I wasn't hurt or anything. It was just a lack of concentration." Lisa has since taken her bike test and is motivated by machines that make a throatier rumble than a Vespa, but she retains a pragmatic preference for comfy cars: "I think motorbikes are really exciting but I'm a bit of a wuss. I don't like going out when it's cold and wet." Lisa grew up on her parents' farm in Monmouthshire, where her interest in cars was sparked by brother Grantley. "I had the classic younger sister thing of thinking that my older brother was fantastic, so if he was interested I wanted to be interested too. His first car was a fifth-hand VW Passat but he had a Dutton and a couple of Beetles, as well." Grantley blotted his copybook, however, by totalling Lisa's first car, a red Citroën BX. Lisa's only car accident came early, too, as an 18-year-old, when she shunted her dad's Daihatsu 4x4 on a roundabout.

 

"But I think one accident in more than 15 years isn't bad," she says. "Friends of mine might disagree, but I think I'm quite a safe driver." Vroom Vroom guest and Faithless rapper Maxi Jazz must have been convinced. He allowed Lisa to drive his cherished Marcos LM 500R home from a test track where they put in a few fast laps. Maxi couldn't drive on public roads as he was serving a three-year drink-drive ban.

 

"He had some fantastic cars, particularly the Marcos," says Lisa.

 

Maxi revealed his collection in a feature called "What's In Your Garage?" His contained an immaculate 1979 Escort RS2000 (a car he has immortalised in song), a limited edition Subaru Impreza, a Ford Sierra RS Cosworth tweaked to pump 445bhp and the "visceral" Marcos, with its five-litre Rover V8. "You could feel the g-force on your face," drools Lisa.

 

Later in series one Lisa peered into the garage of reformed gangster Dave Courtney, finding "a TVR, a Range Rover, a BMW, lots of blacked-out windows, and an old convertible Roller. I didn't ask many questions about where the money came from to buy them…"

 

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