PUBGOERS played with a bomb disposal robot and tried on an eight stone protective suit at a fundraiser for the family of an Army bomb disposal expert killed in Afghanistan.

Warrant Officer Gary O’Donnell, 40, died trying to defuse a Taliban device, alone and without body armour, at Musa Qala in Helmand Province in September last year.

On Sunday, four of his colleagues from the 11 Explosive Ordnance Regiment, based at Vauxhall Barracks, in Didcot, displayed some of their bomb disposal equipment at the Old Black Horse pub, in St Clement’s, Oxford, including a remote-controlled robot on caterpillar tracks.

About £1,500 was raised for Mr O’Donnell’s four children, Cayleigh, 16, Dylan, 14, Aiden, nine, and seven-month-old Ben., who live in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire.

Last month, Mr O’Donnell was the first serviceman in 28 years to be awarded a posthumous George Medal for bravery, the second time he had received the award.

Major Eamon Heakin said: “We brought along the latest suit and we dressed up some members of the public in it.

“They looked like something out of the film Alien when they were in it.

“We work in it up to 54C. The only skin you can see is your face, through a protected visor.

“It’s worth in the region of about £12,000 and it will save you from half a pound of explosives at one metre.

“It’s very difficult to move in.

“One of the guys did press-ups in it and only managed two.

“We walk about 200m in it and work for about 20 to 30 minutes on top of the device.

“The best operators of the robot were the children, who play on their Xboxes all the time.

“It has a manipulator, which is like a mechanical hand and it will pick objects up.

“They were picking up objects from one washing-up bowl and putting them into another washing-up bowl.

“Within minutes they had full control and were moving objects around easily.

“They were unbelievable.”

Pub landlord Pete Saini, 37, who donated the proceeds from a barrel of beer to the cause, said one of his regulars, Dave Wright, whose nephew Corporal Kevin Wright worked with WO2 O’Donnell, suggested the idea of holding the event.

Mr Saini said: “We raised just under £1,500.

“Quite a lot of people come into the pub and if we can persuade them to give a bit of money to a good cause, then why not?

“It was quite an attraction. People were stopping and looking at this robot going around.”