Last night the Total Politics tug of war team made their way over Lambeth Bridge to Westminster College Gardens to do battle against a Westminster Media Team. To the bookies' surprise, we upset the odds and did it - dragging the Guido Fawkes-led team backwards twice to claim victory in the Macmillan Tug of War 2012. Four of us had attended a quick lesson by Macmillan the previous week, and there was a shambolic rope-less additional practice en route to the ground last night - but that was all the preparation we had. So we were pretty pleased with ourselves.

Thank you to eveyone who kindly dug into their pockets and sponsored us in aid of Macmillan. You were all very generous and hopefully the pictures of us gurning to victory which will appear in the August issue of Total Politics will show the effort we put in to make the donations worthwhile. You can still donate here.

There has been some speculation from the losing team as to whether I called up some ringers to ensure victory. Iain Dale sadly had to drop out of our line-up. Looking at the opposition and correctly guessing they were going to be heavier, we thought we needed some more ballast. So, one friend of mine agreed to take part. He was the only one (in a team of 8) who didn't work for the company. Even so, at the weigh-in of the teams before the match, the Westminster team were over 100kg heavier than us. They also beat us on the donations front, raising over £3,000 so deserve hearty congratulations from us. If you haven't yet donated, and would still like to back us for a very good cause, click here

I don't know if they fancy it next year, but we enjoyed ourselves...

Tags: Macmillan Tug of War, Total politics