Captain Scott was one of the first Extreme Ironists. His ill-fated South Polar expedition took Harrods ironing boards and irons in an attempt to set the world-record for the most southerly extreme ironing. Alas, Amundsen pipped him to the post and one can only imagine Scott’s disappointment at seeing Amundsen’s board at the Pole when he arrived. The full story is here.

Shortly after Scott’s death in 1913 Emily Wilding Davison attempted to iron the King’s horse at Epsom. Sadly, the stunt was poorly thought through. Her iron was just not hot enough and those stubborn equine creases just wouldn’t shift. She was trampled underfoot and is now remembered chiefly as a suffragette.

Winston Churchill was another cheeky ironist on the sly. Careful analysis of some of his wartime speeches reveals hidden clues hitherto overlooked by most historians.  Indeed his famous “beaches” speech amounts almost to an early manifesto for Extreme Ironing:

“We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall iron in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall iron with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our ironing board whatever the cost may be; we shall iron on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender to drip-dry...”

And then consider one of the boldest adventures of the modern age: putting a man on the moon. Would this ever have happened without President Kennedy’s waggish challenge of May 1961?

"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man with an ironing board on the moon and returning them safely to the Earth."

Finally, let’s not overlook Martin Luther King (known to be partial to a bit of the old “spray starch” before a major oration). Here’s part of an early draft of one of his famous speeches. 

'I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made smooth, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the ironing board shall be revealed. I have a dream. I have a dream that one day all my little white articles will be washed with all my little coloured articles and that they will all be pressed in the service of the Lord. I have that dream today...