Keep your head on a shed!

On August 30th, 2025 at our Naas Road Branch, we gave away a Mammoth Shed to someone who kept their head pressed up against a shed longer than anyone else. How long did they last? Just over three hours. Oh, you think that’s easy, do you? Read on and see why it might have been your personal hell (spoiler, I was there making awful jokes in people’s faces).

Promotional Video

First off, we spent a few bob on having this video made, so you should really check it out. It also shows the premise of the whole event.

The Prize

The prize for the biggest Shed Head was a 12ft x 10ft Mammoth Shed, supplied and fitted, worth at least €2,350, excluding delivery. Not bad, right? However, it was also the exact shed that you kept your head pressed against for hours – this one here:

 

Eh, but why did you do this?

We keep saying that we’re “Bleedin’ Shedly”, and this sort of proves it. It was a bit of fun, it was something different to do of a Saturday and to prove our utter soundness, we gave away arguably our best shed as well. The Mammoth is built like a brick, it’s easy on the eye, it has a window built into it and it’s entirely lined with anti-con felt on the interior. A bleedin’ shedly gesture, indeed.

Besides, it was a great advertising opportunity – a load of gas people with their head pressed up against a shed and a supportive, yet baying crowd behind them? It was picked up by the local news, including the Dublin Gazette and all. What more could a shed company ask for?

 

What else could a shed company ask for?

I’m glad you asked. FM104 brought their ginormous RoadHog to the event, pumping out the tunes, handing out goodie bags and offering spot prizes to the contestants’ families and anyone else in attendance.

We managed to grab European-Heroes Mark Coyle and Paddy Barrett from Shelbourne FC to assist us with trying to put the competitors off their game. They were excellent at this. Mark got exceptionally close to each competitors face with a permanent marker and Paddy was banging on the inside of the shed to try and get their noggins off. The Coffee Crew were also there handing out exceptional coffee and cakes (for free, making it all the more exceptional!) and

Rules

The rules were pretty simple

• Your forehead must be in continuous contact with the designated area of the shed
• The judge’s decision is final
• You’ll be out of the running if, but not limited to:
  • You remove you forehead from the shed
  • You fail a task
  • You refuse to follow safety instructions
  • Foul play or interference with others

Sounds easy, right? It didn’t play out this simply.

What happened on the day

Here’s a brief rundown of the events:

Initially, signs were not great. The weather was forecast to be utterly atrocious and at 1.25pm, only one person had arrived to take part. He joked that it could be a ‘loaf the shed!’ competition instead. Thankfully, for us at least, the rest of the competitors arrived in the next half and hour and our 2pm kick off went ahead without delay.

The First Hour

The first half-hour was fairly uneventful. It was literally people just resting their heads against a steel shed in the rain. I was the emcee for the day, and this was a very tough crowd to work with. The competitors were weary of me from the get-go, thinking any conversation I struck up with them was a ploy to get them eliminated. So I talked to myself for the first half-hour, like an eejit as nobody, and nothing moved. Thankfully, Mark Coyle and Paddy Barrett from Shels were on hand to liven things up after this first half hour.

The two European-bound footballers were more than ready to hassle al those taking part. They shook the shed, they doused the participants with water, they told frankly awful jokes and one of them was caught threatening to draw a moustache on one lady with a permanent marker before he was apprehended. Still, the head-on-a-shedders remained strong. We only lost our first competitor after the first Shed-Shuffle – but don’t worry, he didn’t go home empty handed:

The Shed Shuffle meant that everyone needed to do a full lap of the shed, while not lifting their head from the frame. “Those with a right angled head have a distinct advantage in the corners“, I quipped – to absolute dead-silence. One regularly-shaped head competitor lost it just after the corner. The legs got the better of him and he wavered out from the shed for only a second, but that was his race run. It was at this point that clever tactics were deployed. One lady who will remain unnamed moved at a snails pace, to the point where there was a pile-up behind her. She was more than happy to move at her own speed and those behind her felt the squeeze as she did.

The Second Hour

We lost most competitors in hour two. The guys from Shelbourne upper their game, producing a megaphone to help get their message across – “Get your head off my shed!” While. it was as terrifying as it was humorous, we only lost the next participants when the next challenge presented itself: Lift one leg. It was as simple as that – lift one leg and keep it there until someone is knocked out. We lost several at this point, meaning there were only five left, so we gave the guys a rest before the next challenge: lift the other leg.

While the were technically given a rest, their weakened leg now supported their full weight. Add to this the beaming sun and it was no surprise that we lost a two more.

The crowd gathered to see arguably the most devious challenge – the squat.

Hour Three

I’ll be honest, the squatting form on display here was borderline incredible. One of the guys presented on his tippy-toes, while the other absolute mental-cases opted for the flat-foot approach. “The hip mobility on display is off the charts”, cried an audience member. Those just watching felt the burn in their thighs.

We all expected a quick exit from the final four, but only one folded – after at least six minutes of squatting flat-footedly.

It was an incredible display, but with the squat challenge done, we were down to the last three. “Raise a leg and the opposite arm” came the call from the really, really attractive and interesting emcee. I didn’t catch his name. In the end, it was the arm that got our eventual third-place finisher. With a vibrating forearm, and his competitors looking like they could last a week longer, he bowed out to warm applause.

The Winner

Okay, okay – we might not have thought the optics through here, but the last challenge was simply raise one leg (of your choice) and put your arms out straight. It sounded devious and a way to really set the winner apart from the rest – but in reality, the rain, the provided raincoats and the baying crowd made it look a bit like Guantanamo.

Thankfully, we were not blaring Nickleback on repeat, so we could safely avoid any claims of war crimes. With the Geneva Convention worries put to one side, we bunkered down for the finale.

The weather, like a toddler behind the wheel of a Little Tikes car, took a drastic turn. The heavens opened making the shed surface even slippier. There were several near calls – both men almost touched the ground with their elevated foot, both swayed in the rising wind and there was a paper-test to see if one of them was touching the shed with his knee (he wasn’t).

At this stage, both men looked like they could’ve lasted a week, let alone the rest of the hour. Thankfully, the legs got the better of competitor 6 and, well, it created this abolute cinema:

 

We had a winner! Neil Shotter was taking home the Mammoth Garden Shed! His family were delighted. They had initially planned to visit the Sheds Direct Ireland Naas Road showroom to get a quote and then head straight on to Dundrum shopping centre, but upon hearing that the shed he wanted was available to win, Neil entered with the family cheering behind him. “Now your wife has over €2,000 in her pocket to go shopping in Dundrum with!” joked Sheds Direct Ireland founder Alan Dawson to a chorus of laughing, which made the attractive emcee quite jealous, indeed.

 

Neil posed for photos indoors, as the weather had not let up, at all. He received his crown, trophy, plaque and of course, arranged the fitting of his new shed. The day was a massive success from our point of view and we hope to do something like this again in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled if you’re interested.