WHEN a Clayhall black cab driver stopped to pick up two men on London's Lower Regent's Street he had no idea it was the beginning of a 2,000 mile adventure.

Mark Thurbin, 38, of Malborough Drive has been a cabbie for more than 14 years and has had some strange requests in his time - but none compare with this.

He said: "I expected it to be an ordinary fare but when they told me where they wanted to go I thought it was a wind up.

"When I spotted their TV camera equipment I was half expecting Jeremy Beadle to jump in the cab."

Far from requesting a short ride to Waterloo station as Mark had expected, Richard Connolly and Steve Shanyaski asked him to take them on a journey taking several days, a journey that would take them through Europe, across the Mediterranean and into North Africa.

"They said they wanted to go to Marrakesh in Morocco. I waited for one of them to laugh, but they were deadly serious." Mr Connolly and Mr Shanyaski explained they worked for a television company and wanted to film the journey to North Africa as part of a promotion campaign for lads' magazine Zoo.

Sensing an opportunity for adventure, Mark agreed to their request, but admits he came close to turning the offer down. If he had he would not have been alone.

He said: "It was only when I got home after the trip that my girlfriend Alison told me her friend had taken a cab and that the driver had told her that he'd passed up on doing the same journey the day before I took it. He must be gutted now."

After driving his passengers to a television production studio to sort out the details of the journey, Mark drove home to pick up his passport and to try to explain to Alison where he would be for the next week.

The meter, which had been running since the pick up in Central London, had already clocked up a healthy fare by the time the group reached Dover, where they boarded a ferry to Bordeaux. From Bordeaux Mark drove the cab past the vineyards of south west France and through the towering Pyrenees into northern Spain.

The three men marvelled at the rapidly changing landscape around them as the cab sped through the green fields of the Pyrenees foothills and down through Spain into the sun-baked south.

Ordinarily Mark would have shuddered at the thought of 12 hours of driving a day, but the beauty of the country and the banter the men shared meant time flew quickly by.

Mark reserved special praise for his companions, whose mischievous behaviour in the back of the cab kept the atmosphere light throughout the trip, with laughter never far from the horizon.

"Steve and Richard, were fantastic. We were travelling during the football World Cup, so they decked the cab with England memorabilia and flags.

"People who saw us probably thought we were going to Germany but got lost."

On several occasions however, their boisterousness left Mark in a sweat.

"We were getting a bit bored driving through this barren part of Spain and it was really hot. One of the lads suggested we turn off the air conditioning and close all the windows to see how long we could stand it.

"We managed to last an hour and a quarter."

After cruising along the Andalucian coast the men arrived at the British outpost of Gibraltar, and stared across the choppy waters of the Straits to Morocco.

After an anxious wait in Tangiers as the Moroccan border police scrutinised Mark's passport, the men made it to Marrakesh and headed to the ancient marketplace.

Even as he leaned back on his cab to watch the terracotta-red Saharan sunset Mark still expected to see Jeremy Beadle burst out of the crowd, but he never came. After a farewell night out, Mark dropped his erstwhile companions at the airport and began the long trip home, stopping off to visit a friend in Barcelona for a spot of sky-diving on the way.

The cabbie enjoyed the experience so much he forgot the reason he had agreed to make the journey in the first place, finally collecting the £8,000 fare two weeks after returning home on the instruction of his girlfriend.

l The latest edition of Zoo magazine is out in newsagents now.

For more on this story visit www.zootube.co.uk