DID you hear the one about the Irishman, Scotsman, Welshman and an Englishwoman driving across Europe?

They’re intent on breaking a world record.

Wacky husband and wife duo Phil Billingham and Shannon Currie are part of the team which plan to drive through 18 countries in 24 hours.

The pair will join Scotsman, Duncan Mackenzie and Northern Irishman, Gerry Mulligan, in setting off at 7am on Sunday, in Poland.

They hope to be in Holland by 6.50am on Monday.

Mr Billingham said: “I like to do unusual things and that goes back a few years to when I set my sights of watching the sunrise in John O’Groats and the sunset in Land’s End in the same day.”

The financial advisor, 53, was part of a team which covered 12 counties in a day, in 2001, but he has always been hungry for more.

“I watched others go and break the record a few times, I saw it go to 15, then to 17.

“So, short of Top Gear getting the police to close off roads and try to do it in a Bugatti, I think if someone gets 18, it will be very, very hard to beat it and I just hope it’s us.”

The couple, from Feering, who run Perceptive Planning, in Little Braxted, are completing the challenge to raise money for the Tom Bowdidge Foundation, set up in memory of the inspirational West Bergholt teen, who died aged 19 fighting aggressive stomach cancer in October.

To sponsor them, go to tombowdidgefoundation.org and click ‘donate’.

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