One lovely summer evening in 1997 in Leicester in the center of England, Phil Shaw came home from his job in a knit-wear factory to find a pile of laundry needing to be ironed. He looked longingly outside and thought, “I’d rather be climbing” (he’s a rock climber). But there was no denying that laundry, so he made the best of it by running a long extension cord out into the yard and working there. His housemate, Spray (well, he’s Spray now, but then he was just Paul Cartwright) came home, saw Shaw ironing his trousers outdoors and — reasonably — asked, “What are you doing?”
Shaw said the first thing that came to mind — “extreme ironing” — and the rest is pressed in history.
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Q. Leroux — First of all, thanks for calling from England. How’s the weather?
A. Steam — [Shaw’s extreme ironing moniker] Actually, it’s beautiful tonight, just like the evening the idea came to me.
Q. How did extreme ironing move from your yard to become the intriguing international sport it now is?
A. Paul and I did some ironing whilst rock climbing, then ironing in the tops of trees in the Black Forest in Germany, ironing while skiing in the French Alps. That last is a real challenge.
Q. Ski a little, iron a little, ski, iron, ski. Like that?
A. No, not like that. It was all done in motion. The way to do it is to ski with the ironing board on your back and someone on a snowboard follows you and does the ironing.
Q. What are some extreme examples of extreme ironing?
A. One of the most dangerous was an Australian who did a B.A.S.E. parachute — that’s parachuting off something, not out of a plane — in the Blue Mountains there. He just said, “One, two, three,” jumped, ironed for a few seconds and pulled the cord to open the chute. I don’t think he got much ironing done, maybe a sleeve. There were runners in the London Marathon with ironing kits on their backs. A woman ironed after scuba diving to a depth of 100 meters. That was off the coast of Egypt. It was sort of futile in terms of getting the goal of a well-pressed shirt. I just heard someone wants to go to the South Pole to iron. That would be the furthest south. The highest for a while was Base Camp One on Everest. Now the record is on a mountain in Argentina, can’t remember the name of it.
Q. Pretty long extension cord there.
A. You heat the sole plate on a camp stove. In some other situations, though, you’d use an extension cord or a generator.
Q. How many ironers . . .
A. Ironists.
Q. Sorry, ironists. How many ironists are there now?
A. About 1,500 worldwide. There were 10 countries represented by 80 competitors at the World Championships in Germany in 2002. It’s big in England, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Holland. It’s just around the corner in America. People like the quirky quality of it . . .
Q. They think it’s quirky?
A. They do. I would call it a minority niche sport myself. We’re hoping to have it accepted as an Olympic sport. [In competition, scoring is on a 120-point scale with style counting 40 percent, speed 20 and quality of the press 60.]
Q. What Olympic sports do you cite as reasons for letting extreme ironing in?
A. We point to synchronized swimming and curling.
Q. And unlike those sports, extreme ironing has an element of danger. Has anyone been hurt?
A. Thankfully nothing serious. Mostly they burn themselves.
Q. Can we talk equipment?
A. Rowenta sponsored an American tour by Starch and Short Fuse and me earlier this year, so we used those, of course. [The Web site, www.extremeironing.com, carries product reviews and cites the Rowenta DM820 Professional Luxe as a favorite. Ironing monikers, by the way, include Hot Crease, Basket, Jeremy Irons, Iron Matron, Iron Lung, etc.]
Q. What’s become of your fellow sport founder, Spray?
A. He found himself experimenting with other extreme activities. He got into extreme hair styling. We’ve gone our separate ways.
Q. Spray is hair styling now?
A. He is.
Q. Is that ironic?
A. (Hangs up).
