Close-Up: Newsmakers - Lee and Dan come clean after that VW viral.(Lee Ford and Dan Brooks Volkswagen Polo's advertisement)

Police, pillows and a Polo - the real story behind the VW viral that almost blew up in its makers' faces.

As an attempt to get a job as a creative team, making a viral starring a suicide bomber had wider repercussions than its creators, Lee (Ford) and Dan (Brooks), imagined.

If they'd wanted to court notoriety and demonstrate the power of viral communications, they would have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams - but they didn't. 'We just came up with the idea for a spec ad and decided to put it together with some friends,' Brooks says. 'We wanted it to be TV quality to use on a showreel when we were approaching agencies - it was never intended to go on the web.'

The viral featured a suicide bomber who attempts to blow himself up outside a restaurant in a Volkswagen Polo but the car remains intact. The endline, 'Polo. Small but tough', then appeared.

So how did it make its way around the world in hours? 'Some mates who had worked on it with us asked about it so I put a hidden link on our website and just told a few of them it was there,' Brooks says.

'I went to bed that night and when I woke up the site was really slow so I checked the hits and realised how many people had accessed it overnight.

I said to Lee 'we've got a problem here' and took the link down. Then we started getting hundreds of e-mails via the site from people saying they couldn't find the link.'