A group of Sutton United supporters have returned home in one piece after driving a third of a way around the world in an old banger.

Gareth Miller, 29, Paul Chalmers, 32, and Dan Taylor, 34, competed in the Mongol Rally under the name This Khan Only End Badly.

In fact, things ended rather well as the team successfully negotiated 7,561 miles in a second-hand 847cc Perodua Nippa with a “chav exhaust pipe”

The main difficulties came in the middle weeks, with Paul having to abandon the race when his girlfriend went into labour a month early.

Then there was the moment they took an unscheduled detour into an 18ft ditch after one member fell asleep at the wheel in Kazakhstan.

Dan said: “We’re still not quite sure how all three of us - and the car - escaped with nothing more than a liberal coating of dust.

“Another mishap involved us being held for three hours at the Kazakh border for not registering our visas.

“We managed to exploit the language barrier to the fullest here, in the end being shoved to the Russian side without having paid a penny of the $100 fine, simply because border officials got bored of trying to explain with hand signals and bad doodles how we were supposed to pay.”

“There were also many random encounters, such as an interview with a local lifestyle magazine called Office, being handed CDs of Kazakh music while on the move in Pavlodar City and receiving a phone number at a petrol station in Balkash from a guy who apparently worked in the President’s office. ‘Any problems, you give me a call’, he told us.”

The team are set to raise more than £1,800 for St Raphael’s Hospice in North Cheam.

  • The Mongol Rally in numbers
  • 7561.7 - Miles travelled.

    Nine – Countries visited.

    374 - teams participating.

    Three – Starting members of This Khan Only End Badly. Two – Finishing team members.

0 – Punctures.

10 – Numbers of times they were stopped by police.

One – Number of times stopped by police for genuinely breaking the law.

One – Bribes paid (Ukraine).