James May's Shed Load of Ideas (2025) s01e03 Episode Script
Fly Tipping
1
Hello.
These days, I spend
more and more time
in my Wiltshire home
and the pub I own,
thinking about
all the big problems in the world
and some smaller ones that annoy me.
Luckily, there's a place I can go
to solve them all,
or at least try
My shed.
Right.
It's here that I have the tools
Let's just saw some wood up.
the tea Mm.
and a couple of other
highly competent blokes
- Very good.
- Brace yourself.
who've agreed to help me
rid the world of problems
Did she get a ticket out?
great
Dirty fly tippers.and small.
This cereal has gone soggy.
I'll also have to take on
other people's problems.
What is wrong with Peter?
He used to make a sound,
and now he doesn't.
By which I mean the locals at my pub
who are always bringing me
stuff to mend.
Is it a train set?
So, join us and our
excitable crew
who will capture
our endeavours
That was epic.
as we create.
make That feels like
a terrible thing we've just done.
repair So it's never worked?
Not in my lifetime.
and repurpose
Wow!
in my shed load of ideas.
What do you think?
This is just brilliant.
Here in Wiltshire, I have time
to reflect on those issues
that concern us all,
such as how to preserve
this beautiful landscape,
the muse of England's
poets and artists
The rustling hedgerow,
the delightful babbling brook
and the abject weeping willow,
the heart of the idyl
that nestles in the breast
of every English man and woman.
Oh, and the fly-tipping site.
The blights of town
and country alike.
These people disgust me.
There are over a million
fly-tipping incidents
reported in the UK each year,
and they cost local authorities
hundreds of millions of pounds
to tidy up.
It's a huge problem,
but no problem is too huge for me
and my two very handy
right-hand men.
My trusty engineer, Sim,
with his big ideas
Some kind of pivot from this point,
anywhere between here and here.
and my ever-ready carpenter,
Tony the tool.
Don't worry. I'll just do everything
over here. You carry on chatting.
And so, to my large
and well-equipped workshop
where the very
practical magic happens.
So we've decided that our revenge
on fly tippers should be poetic.
It is a fly trap
or a fly-tipper trap, if you like,
taking our inspiration
from good old-school flypaper,
which is this stuff.
It's really like a very big piece
of sticky paper,
and you hang it up in your house.
Flies fly into it
because they're stupid,
their brains are absolutely minute,
and they stick to it. Ha!
And that's the end of them.
So we want to do something similar.
But that acts on human beings,
which means-- God.
Which means we need a sticky
substance that will trap them.
We'll leave Simmy to search
for something sticky enough
to catch our human flies,
as Tony and I move next door
to start work on the actual trap.
Now we have to devise
the trap itself, how it will be
What would the trendy
word be? "Delivered."
It's Tony's idea,
so Tony will explain.
- Collapsible cattle grid.
- Oh!
So we take a sheet
of eight-by-four Yes.
we build a frame around it.
Two supports,
all our sticky stuff
in the middle here.
- Mm-hmm.
- Box section, forming a grid.
Holes attached by string,
go into two pulleys,
and go that way to a single pulley
with a mechanism
that pulls and collapses.
Why is the cattle grid there?
- Is there a gate?
- To stop cattle.
No, I know what it does.
But it's not-- You couldn't--
Yes, so-- Usually you dump it--
Usually, I've heard people who
dump things, dump it in a field.
So, the van pulls up,
people get out with a sofa, say,
and they walk across
the cattle grid, which is
positioned in front of a gate
and therefore is perfectly normal
because you get cattle grids
in front of gates.
They throw the sofa
into the fly-tipping area
and it triggers
a weighted mechanism.
We haven't quite worked
that bit out yet.
Which, through this pulley system,
concertinas the cattle grid
like a Venetian blind,
exposing the sticky stuff.
The panicking fly tippers run back
to their van through here
and are stuck like flies
on flypaper.
That's basically it, isn't it?
Easy.
Right, so should
we put this on the floor
- and do a bit of spacing out?
- Yeah.
Let's just rough it out.
Tony and I start laying out
the steel rods
that will eventually
become our cattle grid.
How far apart are the rails
of a cattle grid?
Does it depend on what
sort of animals you've got,
because cows have got bigger paws
than sheep, haven't they?
Obviously, if you're making one
for an elephant,
you could make them
a little bit further apart.
Right, the dilemma is
we have to balance authenticity,
i.e., the spacing of the rails
on the cattle grid
with the requirements
of the mechanism,
because it's got to pull
all these together over here.
It's quite a weight, isn't it?
- It's a lot of steel.
- Yeah.
I think that gap is too big, but it
could be bigger than that one,
which it will be
when they're evenly spaced.
So there's no getting around this,
Tony. We're going to have to do
a bit of arithmetic.
So, for our 1,220
millimetre-wide cattle grid,
we're going to need ten bars,
107.7 millimetres apart.
Yes, this is an exact science.
Oh, our arithmetic is spot on.
- Well, nearly.
- Nearly?
Okay, that's our cattle grid,
correctly spaced out.
Come in with the sofa.
Yes. You'd walk across it carefully
because it's a cattle grid
because you tend to walk carefully
across the cattle grid.
I think, yes, I think
we'll get away with that.
Let's mark out the board
with the exact positions
of our roofing batons.
We can fix those in place Mm-hmm.
and go from there.
Right, so the concept looks good.
We've just got
to make the thing now.
First, Tony and I construct
the wooden base frame,
keeping a close eye on our maths.
Then we need a bit of help
from Simmy to cut the steel rods
so that Tony and I can drill
very precise holes into them,
which we'll thread rope through
to collapse the grid,
as long as we can keep up
with Simmy's exacting standards.
I said put the hole
in the middle, right?
I mean, look at that.
How in the middle is that?
All is proceeding at pace until
The problem is, well, there's no
easy way of putting this
It's Tony.
Sim has spotted that the board
isn't perfectly square.
It's just I didn't
cut the factory edge off
because we were rushing.
I'll just recut these.1,790.
Or thereabouts.
Thank you, Simmy. And once
he's squared off our mistakes,
Tony and I thread
the poles together with rope,
which will make
this cattle grid collapsible.
Ow. What have you done to that?
There but we're going to
have to flame it again.
And finally, we get to see if
our cunning concertina plan
actually works.
In three, two, one
- - Oh!
- Ho-ho! That works.
- It's beauty.
It doesn't need
that much force either.
Collapsible cattle grid success.
But we still need to find some
really sticky stuff to fill it with.
We also have to drill
all the remaining pieces,
devise the weighted mechanism
that will close this
and we have to take
the whole thing to a secret location
in the countryside,
fill it with our gunk,
and then wait.
For now, though, we take a break
from our war against fly tippers
for a well-earned pint.
And it's now, when I'm at the pub,
that people start bringing me
their broken stuff
that they want me to mend.
In fact, I'm so used to this,
I take my toolbox
to the pub every time I go.
- Hello.
- Hi, I'm Kirsty.
- Hello, Kirsty.
- Hi.
What have you got for us?
So, I have got my teddy bear, Peter.
He's 53 years old.
Oof. Younger than me.
Definitely younger than me.
And apart from being
utterly furless
what is wrong with Peter?
He used to make a sound,
sort of like a sheep,
and now he doesn't. He's been
in a loft for 35 plus years.
- Poor sod.
- Yeah.
Is it one of those
where you do that and you
- Yeah.
- You can hear it.
- Oh, yeah.
- Whatever that is.
Something's moving.
What noise did it make?
It was like a sheep.
Like a "bah".
I think-- Well, I do know somebody
who used to run a thing
called Teddy Bear Hospital,
and these old bears,
they've usually got a moving weight
and some sort of bellow.
They used to be classified
- as squeakers and growlers.
- Right.
One of them had a reed,
and the other one had
Some kind of diaphragm or
Yeah. Something like that.
So you want us to try
and make the sound work again?
If you could, that would be lovely.
And you've had him
since you were, how old?
Before I was born,
my grandmother gave it to my mother
while she was pregnant with me.
So it predates you. The Teddy
was waiting for you Yeah.
as you popped out of the womb.
He was.
Are these are your initials?
They are my initials. Yeah.
My mum stitched them in because
he used to go everywhere with me.
I've got a picture of him, actually.
Aw. That's when
he still had his fur.
Yeah.
And his head was on properly.
Yes.
At what point
did Peter lose his speech?
Mm. I have no idea.
He's travelled with me.
I was in the army,
and he came everywhere with me.
And then he ended up in a loft
and I thought I'd lost him.
And then I got him back
about three months ago,
and he doesn't make any sound.
How would you feel
about us opening Peter up?
- That's fine.
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
- We'll have to ask you
to sign a consent form
Absolutely.
and a "do not resuscitate".
Oh, look, there is my special
super power magnifying spectacles
and there, is a scalpel.
Has this been opened before?
Not that I know of. No.
How are you feeling
about this, Kirsty?
- I'm slightly nervous.
- Oh. Swab.
We found something that has not
been exposed to the light
since the early 1970s.
Can I put my finger in?
You might want to look away
Oh, yeah. Kirsty.
My God, it's huge.
We need a bigger hole.
We need a bigger hole.
I'm actually getting nervous.
Here it comes.
Was that the noise it used to make?
Slightly.
- But longer.
- Longer, yeah.
Simmy afford him some dignity.
Oh, sorry.
We'll put him
in the recovery position.
Okay, we will take this back
to the workshop, Kirsty,
we will mend it,
reinsert it in the bowels of Peter,
Simmy will stitch him back together,
he will be returned to you,
growling as he did in your youth.
And you will never know
and neither will he
that anything had ever happened.
Excellent.
Either that or it will go wrong,
and we'll chuck him on the bonfire.
Please don't.
Will we be able to perform this
important and lifesaving operation?
Will Peter growl again?
Ah, Wiltshire,
the beautiful countryside.
But did you know
that every 27 seconds
somebody ruins it by fly-tipping,
causing damage
to farmland and wildlife?
Luckily, Tony, Simmy and I
have come up with a cunning plan
involving a collapsible cattle grid
that will expose
a sticky substance beneath
to stop our fly tippers
in their tracks.
Now we just have to select our gunk.
The options we have arrived at
are cornflour,
er, epoxy resin,
and this one, which is a mastic.
So it remains plastic and sticky.
- Is that right?
- Yeah.
What should we try?
Should we try cornflour?
I mean, cornflour,
isn't it thixotropic?
So if they run across
a cornflour mix quickly,
they will simply Go across it.
Go across it. But if they amble
across it Yes, they will sink.
Will sink.
How much should we put in?
- Let's put it all in.
- Put all in.
- You think?
- Yeah.
Cornflour's weird stuff, I think.
I don't like using it
in the kitchen.
- It's useful, though.
- It is use--
I mean, it's a crafty way
to thicken up your cheese sauce.
That is quite-- So, it's solid
but if you put gentle pressure,
- you sink.
- Oh, yeah.
Ooh! Quite nice, actually.
And then it just goes liquid.
The trouble with this,
it's so much fun,
you'd find millions of fly tippers
just frolicking in your cornflour.
This cornflour and water goo
is non-Newtonian,
meaning it doesn't follow
Newton's laws,
as it can act as both a solid
and a liquid.
And handily, for us,
this ambiguity makes it very sticky.
Shall we put it on the floor
and put some shoe covers on?
Who wants to try?
We can try one each.
After you. I'll do
I'll do this one, then, shall I?
Make sure you use the right foot.
Yeah, good thinking, Batman.
So you've thrown your sofa away
or your fridge or whatever,
fly tips, nobody saw that, I'm off.
It's not very good.
What's the drag on your foot there?
No, it's it's pretty grippy,
but I don't know that
you'll necessarily get stuck.
The idea is that the fly tipper
is stuck to the fly-tipper trap.
I mean, let's reserve judgement
until we've tried
a few other things.
Shall we try the mastic?
So it never sets?
- No.
- It remains plastic
in the true sense,
- and hopefully quite sticky.
- Shall I?
- Yes. Carry on.
- Yeah.
It looks sticky.
It does look sticky.
This particular mastic forms
an elastic, watertight sealant
that sticks firmly to wood,
metal, concrete,
and, we hope, humans.
It smells fantastic.
So, has anybody got any Bob Dylan
records?
Right.
Whose turn is it to try?
You gonna do it, Tony?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, go on, Tony.
- Are you gonna put both feet in?
- Yes.
I don't want to get splashes
on me trainers.
So, remember to method act.
- What are you dumping, Tony?
- A telly.
A telly, okay.
Oh, you've done that before.
- Whoa!
- Whoo!
Hey, that looked like
- it could be quite good.
- Wow!
It's slippy as well. Really slippy.
- That's really sticky.
- Oh, that's
- pretty good.
- It's very good.
So the mastic works.
But because Simmy hates
to feel left out,
we decide to let him test
the epoxy resin option.
Also, he's got a bit of a thing
about shoe covers.
- You ready, Sim?
- Right.
With a big fridge, and action.
I've got my fridge
and over the hedge it goes.
Oh
That's not very good.
It's not very good, is it?
It's also all over the floor.
It is all over the floor.
We need to get it off the floor.
It's very slippery.
So that's not ideal, is it?
No. It's rubbish.
So to conclude this scene, men,
because we've wanted to do it,
you have one.
Are you ready? In three, two, one.
The mastic is a clear winner.
- It's the stickiest.
- Yeah.
- Are we agreed?
- Absolutely.
Right. So that's what we'll do.
Once that sticky mastic
is added to our cattle grid flytrap,
we may just be able
to protect rural idyls
up and down the country
from the blight of fly-tipping.
But there's another danger
threatening the countryside,
and that's the worrying demise
of pub games.
As a landlord myself,
I'm not keen on fruit machines
and dreary pub quizzes,
but what about revisiting
one of the old standards?
The game of darts,
it's essential to the formation
of England's character.
Because without
our prowess at darts,
we wouldn't have been good
at archery and defeated the French
at Agincourt, for example.
Now this is a standard dartboard,
probably the one
you're familiar with.
It's got doubles on the outside,
trebles on the inner ring
and then a bull and a double bull.
But there are other
types of dartboard.
For example, there is
a Yorkshire dartboard,
which only has the doubles.
And then there's
a Manchester dartboard,
which has the numbers
in a different order.
There's also a Bath dartboard, which
has some extra scoring areas
around the outside,
and so on and so on.
Wiltshire does not have
its own dartboard,
so we thought maybe
we'd come up with one.
What do you think, Tony?
Er, yeah. What would you do, though?
When I was a kid, me and my brother
used to play drop darts.
Where you put the dartboard
on the floor.
We actually used to do it
out of the bedroom window
with the dartboard
down below in the garden.
Let's try holding it by the
Oh, shot.
- Is it in?
- No, it's 25.
Miles off.
Yeah, it's I mean
It involves a lot of
bending down, though.
What if the dartboard
starts rotating?
Imagine how difficult it would be
to throw at a rotating darts board.
Yeah, that would be-- Yeah,
we could do that.
That'd be fun.
Obviously, because we are,
in fact, engineers,
we need to test out the concept.
Okay, so stand on the oche,
but about two feet
back from the oche.
Oh, I don't want to throw darts
at you like that.
- No, no.
- Oh.
You ready?
- You having a laugh?
- No.
Yes. Three in the board.
Okay, now it's my turn.
Crap rolling.
Crap rolling.
It's supposed to go over there.
You deflected it
with your first dart.
So the rotation idea works,
but not rolling the board.
Now we need Simmy's help to try
and make the board rotate in space.
- Shall we have a beer?
- Good idea.
While Tony and I head off
for a pint, Simmy throws himself
into creating a mechanism that will
rotate our Wiltshire dartboard.
First, he attaches a rotary switch
to a wooden frame,
and then he rigs up
a variable speed controller
before, after a quick swig,
soldering together
a small motor with a manual switch.
Then he attaches a battery,
has another essential beer break,
and, finally, tests
the rotating mechanism
that will eventually attach
to the dartboard,
which we'll try out later,
once Sim's joined us
in the garden for another pint.
Exciting.
You find me back
in my Wiltshire pub,
and for good reason.
There isn't enough entertainment
in the pub,
especially since I've banned
Morris dancers and minstrels.
So we're looking at how to refresh
the greatest of all pub games
With the introduction
of the Wiltshire dartboard.
Allow me to show it to you.
Here it is, hanging on the wall
at the regulation height,
with the 20 at the top,
where you'd expect.
My two players, if you'd like
to take the oche, gentlemen.
And you will remember where you were
when you first saw this,
because the game of darts
was changed forever.
There it goes. The rotating
Wiltshire dartboard.
Doesn't look like much, but it makes
the game extremely difficult.
And, let's be honest, it wasn't easy
to start with.
We're playing highest score,
three darts.
Your throw, sir.
It's making me dizzy.
Here's the 20,
but it's going round and round,
you see, because it's
the Wiltshire dartboard.
Rubbish.
Oh, he's going for the bull.
- Oh, it's tricky.
- Forty-three.
Twelve. Oh.
- Nineteen.
- Aw.
Rubbish.
James, come on, do your best.
- Ooh! And again.
- Ooh, hang on.
Thirty-four Ye Oh.
- No. No, no, no.
- No. No.
Right, I'm speeding it up
for round two.
- Oh!
- Ooh!
- - Wow! Yes!
- Ooh!
- Yes! Wow!
- Shall we reverse?
- Ooh!
Ooh, he's got 60!
I do believe
that missed the board, James.
Now what am I gonna do?
I've only got this one left
and I have to score 29 or more.
That means the winner is Sim.
Yay!
But this invention wasn't meant
just to entertain the three of us.
It has to work
on the seething, roaring mass
that is the general public.
Let's see if any of the locals
would like to play Wiltshire darts.
- Hmm. No.
- It's not
looking good.
Well, yes, you're right.
It's not good. It's 24.
And that's nothing.
At least I tried.
Five.
Six.
Ten. Congratulations.
That's a truly terrible
Rubbish.
Eight.
Oh, dear. That's 17, sir.
That's very poor, I hope
you don't mind me saying.
Scores may be low, but the game is
a huge hit with the regulars.
And also, it turns out,
with our film crew,
with producer Lucy
very keen to play.
You've thrown it away.
As everybody rushes to stand
in front of the board
for their own safety,
it's probably time to sum this up.
I'm not entirely sure what to say
about Wiltshire darts,
apart from that it's excellent.
Thank you for watching.
That's one successful step
along the path to revitalise
British pub entertainment,
and I've got plenty more ideas
up my sleeve.
But now, we must return to the
pressing matter of Kirsty's Bear,
who, after years in the loft
has lost his growl.
And Simmy and I have been entrusted
with the weighty task
of giving Peter his voice back.
Right, viewers, our mission today
is to provide Peter the bear,
beloved of Kirsty,
with a more impressive
one of those.
According to Kirsty, it was
originally louder and longer,
and we may be able to
improve the sound as well.
We've never done this before, oddly.
First, we need to remove
Peter's growl box
to see how it works.
What if we made that just twice
as long and this twice as long,
and then you'd get
a longer .
So, it is. It's like
Ugh, God!
It's got a very simple reed there,
similar to something you would find
in a crude musical instrument.
And this seems to be some sort of
very, very simple amplifier.
We could remake that bigger,
much bigger and much longer.
There's a lot of room.
There's tonnes of it. It could go
right down to his
and up to his neck.
So we could, you know, we could put
an enormous growler in there.
Yes.
Right, that's the plan.
We're going to remake it
bigger and better,
which in terms of
a teddy bear growl, means longer.
To see if we can give Peter
a larger, longer growl,
Sim and I want to see what happens
when we elongate
the sound box's journey,
by throwing it down
the longest tube we can find.
Three metres of cylindrical,
polyvinyl chloride.
Is everybody ready?
Also known as a drainpipe.
Let her go. Er
Erm
I think it needs to be
totally upright.
- That was epic!
- Nice!
You try him with a shorter length?
Yes.
So Peter's growler needs to be
- - About there?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Now we've established how big
we can make Peter's new growler,
we cut it to size.
Let's just see how long
a growl we get.
It's got to be a bit slower
than that.
To slow the movement of the growler
and thus lengthen the growl,
we need some sort of fabric cap
with holes punched through.
That's a bit on the wonk,
isn't it?
I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean,
no one's ever going to see it
because it's going to be
deep in Peter's bowels
Apart from
apart from all the people
watching it on the television, obviously.
I think to get a result,
we need to tape this on to the end,
to seal that one end.
- The noise goes in that way.
- Yeah.
Well, how can that
Is there a plan B
- at this point?
- No.
Okay.
Anyway, we're not gonna give up.
Luckily, Simmy, ever the optimist,
has an idea that might help
create the sound.
And it involves a pair
of black rubber gloves.
Making a replacement bellow.
The old one
is rather elaborate.
We're not sure what material it is.
It's almost like a waxed paper,
but it has been ironed, so that
it has effectively a helix in it.
Er, so it's ironed
in two directions,
so it's got ridges on the outside
and the inside.
But that seems
unnecessarily complicated
in a world of modern materials
such as rubber gloves.
So we're making it
out of the rubber glove.
The theory here is that
the rubber glove
should fill with air
and force it past the reed,
which makes the sound.
Okay. Are we ready?
I'm slightly
How can that not work?
The addition
of the bellows has made
Let's have a look.
the growler stick the tube.
Oh, is that what it's doing?
It's so feeble.
Situation update
on Peter the teddy.
The situation update is that
since Peter the bear was admitted
to our bear growler hospital,
his condition has deteriorated.
Some of his stuffing has come out.
He's got a massive wound
in his spine
and his voice doesn't work any more.
But apart from that
It's not easy, is it?
I hate this bear.
So our attempts at repairing Peter's
existing growl box have run adrift.
But we can't let Kirsty
and her precious bear down.
And so, after some deliberation,
Sim and I decide that
desperate times
call for desperate measures.
Are you sitting comfortably, children?
Kirsty had a very special bear
called Peter,
and Peter could growl
like a proper grown-up bear.
But one day, Peter's growl failed
and Kirsty sent poor Peter
to Simmy and James to be repaired.
It's proved rather difficult
because Peter's reed
is bent and worn out,
his bellows have perished.
But, of course,
you know all that children,
because you've been on this
incredible adventure with us.
But now, Simmy and James
have had to do something
they've never done before
on this show,
which is order a spare part
and fit that instead. Here it is.
Commercially available growler
from a bear specialist.
Peter can growl again.
And now, Mr Oakley, the surgeon
is going to sew it into Peter.
And nobody need ever know.
It's our secret.
Here you go, Sim.
Thank you very much.
Once Simmy has sewn up the patient,
we'll send him to convalesce.
The bear I mean. Before returning
him to Kirsty as good as new.
Well, almost.
You rejoin us in Wiltshire,
where I'm coming up with ideas
to solve problems big and small,
that bother us all,
whether that's fly tippers
ruining the glorious countryside
or that your lunch is just lacking
that certain something.
We have identified a problem,
which is that you go out
to a pub or a restaurant
and you have some food
and it's all jolly nice,
but you think I'd like
a little bit of garnish on that.
What if you could take
the garnish with you
and then you could garnish whatever
it was you were eating, wherever?
So we thought,
why not incorporate them
into an item of clothing,
to whit, a hat?
You see, this rests
very conveniently on your head.
If the brim were
full of soil and herbs,
you could merely pluck one
and add it to your cheesy pasta.
So
join me as we make
the world's first
herb hat.
This is harder than it looks.
Problem I'm experiencing
is that the brim of the hat
is not as deep as the typical
English garden herb bed.
So maybe we need to get
rid of some bigger
Maybe make the soil a bit wetter.
But don't I have to retain the root?
Yes. But if you just
So if we get rid of those boys
and keep that one in its root
What, and discard those?
I think snip that off.
I always have my comedy carrot
shaped Japanese scissors
in my pocket, fortunately.
Now snip those off.
We're now getting somewhere
with the herb hat.
We've compacted soil
and a sprig of basil.
I've been in television
quite a long time now.
I think it's about 25 years.
And because I understand
the basics of television,
I know that we're going to skip
forward to a comedy shot of me
approaching my own pub
with a hat full of herbs on my head.
And here I am.
- Afternoon.
- Afternoon.
Ham, egg and chips.
- Yes.
- Epic.
Nice hat, James.
Thank you.
Yeah, you're rocking that.
Sorry.
There's a bit of a breeze.
Would you like some garni?
- Have you got any coriander?
- I have.
- I believe it's there, isn't it?
- Yes.
May I?Yes, of course.
Here are the exquisite
Japanese scissors.
- Thank you.
- Sim,
anything you'd like with your--
A little basil would be nice.
Basil is Ooh.
Can Tony reached that? Ooh, ooh.
- Is that enough?
- Yeah.
- Oh, look at that.
- I think
Ham, egg and chips, I would like
I'd like a few chives on the eggs
- and the chips.
- Allow me.
- Here you go.
- Thanks awfully.
What do you think of my hat?
I mean, be honest.
- Well, honest?
- Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you look
like Worzel Gummidge.
It's a bit Morris dancer, isn't it?
- It is.
- It's actually very useful.
It's a top hat. See what
I did there?
- I'd say this works.
- Hmm.
It's a little uncomfortable,
but it's very achievable at home.
All you need is a hat,
some nutrient rich soil, some herbs,
a low sense of self-esteem.
And Robert's your mother's brother.
Next, spice shoes.
No, that's ridiculous.
Shoes covered in spices
would just look stupid.
Meanwhile, here are some lovely
shots of the Wiltshire countryside,
and we're hoping to keep it that way
with our cunning invention
to stop the curse of fly-tipping.
We return
to the fly-tipper fly trap.
Fly-tipping is becoming
a blight in the countryside
and we have devised a way
of catching people in the act.
It is essentially a fly trap.
It's based on the idea
of a retracting cattle grid
that exposes a very sticky substance
that traps the miscreants
so that they can be apprehended
and then they can pay
their debt to society.
Now, in the previous instalment,
we proved the principle
of the retracting cattle grid,
and now we've set it up
in this fly-tipping area.
It's already full of junk,
it's a very popular location,
you know, sawhorses,
old record players,
speakers, badminton, bats and so on.
And amongst is a fairly
typical old bicycle, or is it?
No, it isn't. It is actually
the trigger mechanism
for the whole thing.
Let me explain to you how it works.
When our fly tippers approach,
they walk over the cattle grid,
which is closed,
and it's outside the gate.
They suspect nothing. And they lob
whatever it is,
their bread maker, whatever,
over here,
and it hits this trigger string.
This trigger string
via this pulley here,
pulls on this hinged piece of wood,
which releases the front brake
of the bicycle.
The front wheel, now free to rotate,
begins to rotate
under the tension
of this bungee cord,
until the sledgehammer,
which is attached to the wheel,
passes top dead centre,
and then gravity does its work.
The rotation of the wheel
and the extra torque
provided by the sledgehammer
operates this pulley system,
which retracts the cattle grid.
They think, "We got away
with that runaway", stuck,
we turn up with clubs
and beat them to death.
Now we're gonna test this out
with some fictitious fly tippers.
This is not real. This is a setup.
But me, Tony and Simmy,
to see if it works,
I'm going to watch from
over there behind the wall.
If you didn't understand
the explanation, don't worry,
we're filming it all
with little cameras,
and we'll do
a slow motion action replay,
and you can see it all working
in graphic detail.
Right. Are we ready?
Let's prime the trap.
So, a few redesigned
and repurposed bits of junk could,
if we've got our calculations
correct, trigger our trap
and catch some fly tippers
in the world's first ever
fly-tipping fly trap.
It's quite sticky.
Patent pending.
Right, I think we can go and hide.
So, the trap is set.
And as if by Magic,
a mysterious van pulls up.
- Oh, he's stopping.
- He is, he is.
Ooh, ooh, he's got to be one.
That's a really tatty van.
That's always a sign.
He's getting out.
Oh, they've got hoodies. Oh.
Oh, look at them. Dirty fly tippers.
Yes, dirty fly tippers
that do look remarkably
like members of our crew.
What is it? What is it?
Washing machine?
It's a bloody mattress.
- Oh!
- God.
Over the cattle grid. Go on.
There you go.
Yes, yes, yes, oh.
Yeah!
- Gotcha!
- That's so good.
Hey, it actually works.
Oi, fly tippers.
You're in a fly trap
and you're going down.
Oh, well done, men.
That is fantastic.
- Good job.
- That's an absurd idea,
but it works.
And, as promised, here it is
in glorious, slow motion.
It may be a prototype,
but the principle is sound.
Fly tippers can be caught
like flies in a trap,
and that is engineering
and poetic success.
So, we've solved
fly tipping, pub entertainment,
garnishing on the move.
But we've really struggled
trying to fix Peter the bear
whose growler was
no longer fit for purpose.
I never imagined
I would end up being involved
in the repair of a teddy bear.
I was expecting clocks
- or lawn mowers.
- Yeah.
- You know?
- Not teddies.
Not a teddy bear.
What a pain. I'll be quite glad
to see the back of him.
- Aw. I'll miss Peter.
- I can see
the back of him now.
I don't know how she's going
to react when we admit that
we haven't really
mended him as such.
What happens if she throws one?
I don't think she will.
- You don't think so?
- No.
What we've actually done here
is a transplant.
We have, yeah.
And a successful one.
And that's really the cutting edge
of teddy bear medicine.
Hello, hello. Have a seat.
Hello, hello. Nice to see you again.
- Hi.
- Hi.
Here is Roger-- Peter.
Have you missed him?
I've missed him a lot.
- Have you?
- Yeah, I have.
Well, it's strange.
We've become very familiar
with Peter.
He's been a constant
lurking presence in our lives.
And looked after
very carefully, of course.
I'm glad. I'm glad you did.
Well, do you want to know
- what we've done?
- Yes, please.
Well, Simmy began
the quite difficult operation
with a long incision
- down his spine.
- Yeah.
Erm, and then we successfully
- removed his growler.
- Yes.
And that's where things
became a bit difficult.
It had sort of
disintegrated a bit
Yeah.and his growl wasn't
very strong any more.
- Oh, no.
- And we looked at making
a longer tube and a bigger bellow.
We tried various fabrics,
we tried the rubber gloves.
It sounds a bit complicated.
It was complicated.
He was on the table for hours,
and at one point we thought
we might lose him.
Oh, bless him.
Eventually, we consulted Yeah.
Well, a consultant
- teddy bear surgeon.
- Yep.
Who said, "I'm afraid
he had to have a new growler".
So he's had a transplant.
Erm Okay.
But if you'd like
to tip him on his back
Oh, it's the same!
It sounds exactly the same.
Aw.
Oh, it does.
It sounds exactly the same.
If you tip him right back
and wait It's really cute.
for a bit,
so sort of the Okay.
growler to extend, and then
It sounds just like a telephone.
So you're pleased?
Very pleased. Thank you so much.
Oh, it's so good.
I'm delighted that you're pleased
- with Peter.
- I'm very pleased.
Because I thought I'd lost him
for a long, long time,
and now he sounds exactly
like he did when I was a child.
So, yeah, it's quite emotional.
Well, you can take him back
to your home
and enjoy the rest
of your lives together.
I will. Thank you so much.
It's really appreciated.
That's okay. It's a pleasure.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.
Bye. Bring him back
when his head falls off.
Can you see her?
She's properly delighted.
That bear is loved.
And if we as humanity
could love each other
the way Kirsty loves that bear,
everything would be okay.
Apart from for me.
Hello.
These days, I spend
more and more time
in my Wiltshire home
and the pub I own,
thinking about
all the big problems in the world
and some smaller ones that annoy me.
Luckily, there's a place I can go
to solve them all,
or at least try
My shed.
Right.
It's here that I have the tools
Let's just saw some wood up.
the tea Mm.
and a couple of other
highly competent blokes
- Very good.
- Brace yourself.
who've agreed to help me
rid the world of problems
Did she get a ticket out?
great
Dirty fly tippers.and small.
This cereal has gone soggy.
I'll also have to take on
other people's problems.
What is wrong with Peter?
He used to make a sound,
and now he doesn't.
By which I mean the locals at my pub
who are always bringing me
stuff to mend.
Is it a train set?
So, join us and our
excitable crew
who will capture
our endeavours
That was epic.
as we create.
make That feels like
a terrible thing we've just done.
repair So it's never worked?
Not in my lifetime.
and repurpose
Wow!
in my shed load of ideas.
What do you think?
This is just brilliant.
Here in Wiltshire, I have time
to reflect on those issues
that concern us all,
such as how to preserve
this beautiful landscape,
the muse of England's
poets and artists
The rustling hedgerow,
the delightful babbling brook
and the abject weeping willow,
the heart of the idyl
that nestles in the breast
of every English man and woman.
Oh, and the fly-tipping site.
The blights of town
and country alike.
These people disgust me.
There are over a million
fly-tipping incidents
reported in the UK each year,
and they cost local authorities
hundreds of millions of pounds
to tidy up.
It's a huge problem,
but no problem is too huge for me
and my two very handy
right-hand men.
My trusty engineer, Sim,
with his big ideas
Some kind of pivot from this point,
anywhere between here and here.
and my ever-ready carpenter,
Tony the tool.
Don't worry. I'll just do everything
over here. You carry on chatting.
And so, to my large
and well-equipped workshop
where the very
practical magic happens.
So we've decided that our revenge
on fly tippers should be poetic.
It is a fly trap
or a fly-tipper trap, if you like,
taking our inspiration
from good old-school flypaper,
which is this stuff.
It's really like a very big piece
of sticky paper,
and you hang it up in your house.
Flies fly into it
because they're stupid,
their brains are absolutely minute,
and they stick to it. Ha!
And that's the end of them.
So we want to do something similar.
But that acts on human beings,
which means-- God.
Which means we need a sticky
substance that will trap them.
We'll leave Simmy to search
for something sticky enough
to catch our human flies,
as Tony and I move next door
to start work on the actual trap.
Now we have to devise
the trap itself, how it will be
What would the trendy
word be? "Delivered."
It's Tony's idea,
so Tony will explain.
- Collapsible cattle grid.
- Oh!
So we take a sheet
of eight-by-four Yes.
we build a frame around it.
Two supports,
all our sticky stuff
in the middle here.
- Mm-hmm.
- Box section, forming a grid.
Holes attached by string,
go into two pulleys,
and go that way to a single pulley
with a mechanism
that pulls and collapses.
Why is the cattle grid there?
- Is there a gate?
- To stop cattle.
No, I know what it does.
But it's not-- You couldn't--
Yes, so-- Usually you dump it--
Usually, I've heard people who
dump things, dump it in a field.
So, the van pulls up,
people get out with a sofa, say,
and they walk across
the cattle grid, which is
positioned in front of a gate
and therefore is perfectly normal
because you get cattle grids
in front of gates.
They throw the sofa
into the fly-tipping area
and it triggers
a weighted mechanism.
We haven't quite worked
that bit out yet.
Which, through this pulley system,
concertinas the cattle grid
like a Venetian blind,
exposing the sticky stuff.
The panicking fly tippers run back
to their van through here
and are stuck like flies
on flypaper.
That's basically it, isn't it?
Easy.
Right, so should
we put this on the floor
- and do a bit of spacing out?
- Yeah.
Let's just rough it out.
Tony and I start laying out
the steel rods
that will eventually
become our cattle grid.
How far apart are the rails
of a cattle grid?
Does it depend on what
sort of animals you've got,
because cows have got bigger paws
than sheep, haven't they?
Obviously, if you're making one
for an elephant,
you could make them
a little bit further apart.
Right, the dilemma is
we have to balance authenticity,
i.e., the spacing of the rails
on the cattle grid
with the requirements
of the mechanism,
because it's got to pull
all these together over here.
It's quite a weight, isn't it?
- It's a lot of steel.
- Yeah.
I think that gap is too big, but it
could be bigger than that one,
which it will be
when they're evenly spaced.
So there's no getting around this,
Tony. We're going to have to do
a bit of arithmetic.
So, for our 1,220
millimetre-wide cattle grid,
we're going to need ten bars,
107.7 millimetres apart.
Yes, this is an exact science.
Oh, our arithmetic is spot on.
- Well, nearly.
- Nearly?
Okay, that's our cattle grid,
correctly spaced out.
Come in with the sofa.
Yes. You'd walk across it carefully
because it's a cattle grid
because you tend to walk carefully
across the cattle grid.
I think, yes, I think
we'll get away with that.
Let's mark out the board
with the exact positions
of our roofing batons.
We can fix those in place Mm-hmm.
and go from there.
Right, so the concept looks good.
We've just got
to make the thing now.
First, Tony and I construct
the wooden base frame,
keeping a close eye on our maths.
Then we need a bit of help
from Simmy to cut the steel rods
so that Tony and I can drill
very precise holes into them,
which we'll thread rope through
to collapse the grid,
as long as we can keep up
with Simmy's exacting standards.
I said put the hole
in the middle, right?
I mean, look at that.
How in the middle is that?
All is proceeding at pace until
The problem is, well, there's no
easy way of putting this
It's Tony.
Sim has spotted that the board
isn't perfectly square.
It's just I didn't
cut the factory edge off
because we were rushing.
I'll just recut these.1,790.
Or thereabouts.
Thank you, Simmy. And once
he's squared off our mistakes,
Tony and I thread
the poles together with rope,
which will make
this cattle grid collapsible.
Ow. What have you done to that?
There but we're going to
have to flame it again.
And finally, we get to see if
our cunning concertina plan
actually works.
In three, two, one
- - Oh!
- Ho-ho! That works.
- It's beauty.
It doesn't need
that much force either.
Collapsible cattle grid success.
But we still need to find some
really sticky stuff to fill it with.
We also have to drill
all the remaining pieces,
devise the weighted mechanism
that will close this
and we have to take
the whole thing to a secret location
in the countryside,
fill it with our gunk,
and then wait.
For now, though, we take a break
from our war against fly tippers
for a well-earned pint.
And it's now, when I'm at the pub,
that people start bringing me
their broken stuff
that they want me to mend.
In fact, I'm so used to this,
I take my toolbox
to the pub every time I go.
- Hello.
- Hi, I'm Kirsty.
- Hello, Kirsty.
- Hi.
What have you got for us?
So, I have got my teddy bear, Peter.
He's 53 years old.
Oof. Younger than me.
Definitely younger than me.
And apart from being
utterly furless
what is wrong with Peter?
He used to make a sound,
sort of like a sheep,
and now he doesn't. He's been
in a loft for 35 plus years.
- Poor sod.
- Yeah.
Is it one of those
where you do that and you
- Yeah.
- You can hear it.
- Oh, yeah.
- Whatever that is.
Something's moving.
What noise did it make?
It was like a sheep.
Like a "bah".
I think-- Well, I do know somebody
who used to run a thing
called Teddy Bear Hospital,
and these old bears,
they've usually got a moving weight
and some sort of bellow.
They used to be classified
- as squeakers and growlers.
- Right.
One of them had a reed,
and the other one had
Some kind of diaphragm or
Yeah. Something like that.
So you want us to try
and make the sound work again?
If you could, that would be lovely.
And you've had him
since you were, how old?
Before I was born,
my grandmother gave it to my mother
while she was pregnant with me.
So it predates you. The Teddy
was waiting for you Yeah.
as you popped out of the womb.
He was.
Are these are your initials?
They are my initials. Yeah.
My mum stitched them in because
he used to go everywhere with me.
I've got a picture of him, actually.
Aw. That's when
he still had his fur.
Yeah.
And his head was on properly.
Yes.
At what point
did Peter lose his speech?
Mm. I have no idea.
He's travelled with me.
I was in the army,
and he came everywhere with me.
And then he ended up in a loft
and I thought I'd lost him.
And then I got him back
about three months ago,
and he doesn't make any sound.
How would you feel
about us opening Peter up?
- That's fine.
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
- We'll have to ask you
to sign a consent form
Absolutely.
and a "do not resuscitate".
Oh, look, there is my special
super power magnifying spectacles
and there, is a scalpel.
Has this been opened before?
Not that I know of. No.
How are you feeling
about this, Kirsty?
- I'm slightly nervous.
- Oh. Swab.
We found something that has not
been exposed to the light
since the early 1970s.
Can I put my finger in?
You might want to look away
Oh, yeah. Kirsty.
My God, it's huge.
We need a bigger hole.
We need a bigger hole.
I'm actually getting nervous.
Here it comes.
Was that the noise it used to make?
Slightly.
- But longer.
- Longer, yeah.
Simmy afford him some dignity.
Oh, sorry.
We'll put him
in the recovery position.
Okay, we will take this back
to the workshop, Kirsty,
we will mend it,
reinsert it in the bowels of Peter,
Simmy will stitch him back together,
he will be returned to you,
growling as he did in your youth.
And you will never know
and neither will he
that anything had ever happened.
Excellent.
Either that or it will go wrong,
and we'll chuck him on the bonfire.
Please don't.
Will we be able to perform this
important and lifesaving operation?
Will Peter growl again?
Ah, Wiltshire,
the beautiful countryside.
But did you know
that every 27 seconds
somebody ruins it by fly-tipping,
causing damage
to farmland and wildlife?
Luckily, Tony, Simmy and I
have come up with a cunning plan
involving a collapsible cattle grid
that will expose
a sticky substance beneath
to stop our fly tippers
in their tracks.
Now we just have to select our gunk.
The options we have arrived at
are cornflour,
er, epoxy resin,
and this one, which is a mastic.
So it remains plastic and sticky.
- Is that right?
- Yeah.
What should we try?
Should we try cornflour?
I mean, cornflour,
isn't it thixotropic?
So if they run across
a cornflour mix quickly,
they will simply Go across it.
Go across it. But if they amble
across it Yes, they will sink.
Will sink.
How much should we put in?
- Let's put it all in.
- Put all in.
- You think?
- Yeah.
Cornflour's weird stuff, I think.
I don't like using it
in the kitchen.
- It's useful, though.
- It is use--
I mean, it's a crafty way
to thicken up your cheese sauce.
That is quite-- So, it's solid
but if you put gentle pressure,
- you sink.
- Oh, yeah.
Ooh! Quite nice, actually.
And then it just goes liquid.
The trouble with this,
it's so much fun,
you'd find millions of fly tippers
just frolicking in your cornflour.
This cornflour and water goo
is non-Newtonian,
meaning it doesn't follow
Newton's laws,
as it can act as both a solid
and a liquid.
And handily, for us,
this ambiguity makes it very sticky.
Shall we put it on the floor
and put some shoe covers on?
Who wants to try?
We can try one each.
After you. I'll do
I'll do this one, then, shall I?
Make sure you use the right foot.
Yeah, good thinking, Batman.
So you've thrown your sofa away
or your fridge or whatever,
fly tips, nobody saw that, I'm off.
It's not very good.
What's the drag on your foot there?
No, it's it's pretty grippy,
but I don't know that
you'll necessarily get stuck.
The idea is that the fly tipper
is stuck to the fly-tipper trap.
I mean, let's reserve judgement
until we've tried
a few other things.
Shall we try the mastic?
So it never sets?
- No.
- It remains plastic
in the true sense,
- and hopefully quite sticky.
- Shall I?
- Yes. Carry on.
- Yeah.
It looks sticky.
It does look sticky.
This particular mastic forms
an elastic, watertight sealant
that sticks firmly to wood,
metal, concrete,
and, we hope, humans.
It smells fantastic.
So, has anybody got any Bob Dylan
records?
Right.
Whose turn is it to try?
You gonna do it, Tony?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, go on, Tony.
- Are you gonna put both feet in?
- Yes.
I don't want to get splashes
on me trainers.
So, remember to method act.
- What are you dumping, Tony?
- A telly.
A telly, okay.
Oh, you've done that before.
- Whoa!
- Whoo!
Hey, that looked like
- it could be quite good.
- Wow!
It's slippy as well. Really slippy.
- That's really sticky.
- Oh, that's
- pretty good.
- It's very good.
So the mastic works.
But because Simmy hates
to feel left out,
we decide to let him test
the epoxy resin option.
Also, he's got a bit of a thing
about shoe covers.
- You ready, Sim?
- Right.
With a big fridge, and action.
I've got my fridge
and over the hedge it goes.
Oh
That's not very good.
It's not very good, is it?
It's also all over the floor.
It is all over the floor.
We need to get it off the floor.
It's very slippery.
So that's not ideal, is it?
No. It's rubbish.
So to conclude this scene, men,
because we've wanted to do it,
you have one.
Are you ready? In three, two, one.
The mastic is a clear winner.
- It's the stickiest.
- Yeah.
- Are we agreed?
- Absolutely.
Right. So that's what we'll do.
Once that sticky mastic
is added to our cattle grid flytrap,
we may just be able
to protect rural idyls
up and down the country
from the blight of fly-tipping.
But there's another danger
threatening the countryside,
and that's the worrying demise
of pub games.
As a landlord myself,
I'm not keen on fruit machines
and dreary pub quizzes,
but what about revisiting
one of the old standards?
The game of darts,
it's essential to the formation
of England's character.
Because without
our prowess at darts,
we wouldn't have been good
at archery and defeated the French
at Agincourt, for example.
Now this is a standard dartboard,
probably the one
you're familiar with.
It's got doubles on the outside,
trebles on the inner ring
and then a bull and a double bull.
But there are other
types of dartboard.
For example, there is
a Yorkshire dartboard,
which only has the doubles.
And then there's
a Manchester dartboard,
which has the numbers
in a different order.
There's also a Bath dartboard, which
has some extra scoring areas
around the outside,
and so on and so on.
Wiltshire does not have
its own dartboard,
so we thought maybe
we'd come up with one.
What do you think, Tony?
Er, yeah. What would you do, though?
When I was a kid, me and my brother
used to play drop darts.
Where you put the dartboard
on the floor.
We actually used to do it
out of the bedroom window
with the dartboard
down below in the garden.
Let's try holding it by the
Oh, shot.
- Is it in?
- No, it's 25.
Miles off.
Yeah, it's I mean
It involves a lot of
bending down, though.
What if the dartboard
starts rotating?
Imagine how difficult it would be
to throw at a rotating darts board.
Yeah, that would be-- Yeah,
we could do that.
That'd be fun.
Obviously, because we are,
in fact, engineers,
we need to test out the concept.
Okay, so stand on the oche,
but about two feet
back from the oche.
Oh, I don't want to throw darts
at you like that.
- No, no.
- Oh.
You ready?
- You having a laugh?
- No.
Yes. Three in the board.
Okay, now it's my turn.
Crap rolling.
Crap rolling.
It's supposed to go over there.
You deflected it
with your first dart.
So the rotation idea works,
but not rolling the board.
Now we need Simmy's help to try
and make the board rotate in space.
- Shall we have a beer?
- Good idea.
While Tony and I head off
for a pint, Simmy throws himself
into creating a mechanism that will
rotate our Wiltshire dartboard.
First, he attaches a rotary switch
to a wooden frame,
and then he rigs up
a variable speed controller
before, after a quick swig,
soldering together
a small motor with a manual switch.
Then he attaches a battery,
has another essential beer break,
and, finally, tests
the rotating mechanism
that will eventually attach
to the dartboard,
which we'll try out later,
once Sim's joined us
in the garden for another pint.
Exciting.
You find me back
in my Wiltshire pub,
and for good reason.
There isn't enough entertainment
in the pub,
especially since I've banned
Morris dancers and minstrels.
So we're looking at how to refresh
the greatest of all pub games
With the introduction
of the Wiltshire dartboard.
Allow me to show it to you.
Here it is, hanging on the wall
at the regulation height,
with the 20 at the top,
where you'd expect.
My two players, if you'd like
to take the oche, gentlemen.
And you will remember where you were
when you first saw this,
because the game of darts
was changed forever.
There it goes. The rotating
Wiltshire dartboard.
Doesn't look like much, but it makes
the game extremely difficult.
And, let's be honest, it wasn't easy
to start with.
We're playing highest score,
three darts.
Your throw, sir.
It's making me dizzy.
Here's the 20,
but it's going round and round,
you see, because it's
the Wiltshire dartboard.
Rubbish.
Oh, he's going for the bull.
- Oh, it's tricky.
- Forty-three.
Twelve. Oh.
- Nineteen.
- Aw.
Rubbish.
James, come on, do your best.
- Ooh! And again.
- Ooh, hang on.
Thirty-four Ye Oh.
- No. No, no, no.
- No. No.
Right, I'm speeding it up
for round two.
- Oh!
- Ooh!
- - Wow! Yes!
- Ooh!
- Yes! Wow!
- Shall we reverse?
- Ooh!
Ooh, he's got 60!
I do believe
that missed the board, James.
Now what am I gonna do?
I've only got this one left
and I have to score 29 or more.
That means the winner is Sim.
Yay!
But this invention wasn't meant
just to entertain the three of us.
It has to work
on the seething, roaring mass
that is the general public.
Let's see if any of the locals
would like to play Wiltshire darts.
- Hmm. No.
- It's not
looking good.
Well, yes, you're right.
It's not good. It's 24.
And that's nothing.
At least I tried.
Five.
Six.
Ten. Congratulations.
That's a truly terrible
Rubbish.
Eight.
Oh, dear. That's 17, sir.
That's very poor, I hope
you don't mind me saying.
Scores may be low, but the game is
a huge hit with the regulars.
And also, it turns out,
with our film crew,
with producer Lucy
very keen to play.
You've thrown it away.
As everybody rushes to stand
in front of the board
for their own safety,
it's probably time to sum this up.
I'm not entirely sure what to say
about Wiltshire darts,
apart from that it's excellent.
Thank you for watching.
That's one successful step
along the path to revitalise
British pub entertainment,
and I've got plenty more ideas
up my sleeve.
But now, we must return to the
pressing matter of Kirsty's Bear,
who, after years in the loft
has lost his growl.
And Simmy and I have been entrusted
with the weighty task
of giving Peter his voice back.
Right, viewers, our mission today
is to provide Peter the bear,
beloved of Kirsty,
with a more impressive
one of those.
According to Kirsty, it was
originally louder and longer,
and we may be able to
improve the sound as well.
We've never done this before, oddly.
First, we need to remove
Peter's growl box
to see how it works.
What if we made that just twice
as long and this twice as long,
and then you'd get
a longer .
So, it is. It's like
Ugh, God!
It's got a very simple reed there,
similar to something you would find
in a crude musical instrument.
And this seems to be some sort of
very, very simple amplifier.
We could remake that bigger,
much bigger and much longer.
There's a lot of room.
There's tonnes of it. It could go
right down to his
and up to his neck.
So we could, you know, we could put
an enormous growler in there.
Yes.
Right, that's the plan.
We're going to remake it
bigger and better,
which in terms of
a teddy bear growl, means longer.
To see if we can give Peter
a larger, longer growl,
Sim and I want to see what happens
when we elongate
the sound box's journey,
by throwing it down
the longest tube we can find.
Three metres of cylindrical,
polyvinyl chloride.
Is everybody ready?
Also known as a drainpipe.
Let her go. Er
Erm
I think it needs to be
totally upright.
- That was epic!
- Nice!
You try him with a shorter length?
Yes.
So Peter's growler needs to be
- - About there?
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Now we've established how big
we can make Peter's new growler,
we cut it to size.
Let's just see how long
a growl we get.
It's got to be a bit slower
than that.
To slow the movement of the growler
and thus lengthen the growl,
we need some sort of fabric cap
with holes punched through.
That's a bit on the wonk,
isn't it?
I mean, it doesn't matter. I mean,
no one's ever going to see it
because it's going to be
deep in Peter's bowels
Apart from
apart from all the people
watching it on the television, obviously.
I think to get a result,
we need to tape this on to the end,
to seal that one end.
- The noise goes in that way.
- Yeah.
Well, how can that
Is there a plan B
- at this point?
- No.
Okay.
Anyway, we're not gonna give up.
Luckily, Simmy, ever the optimist,
has an idea that might help
create the sound.
And it involves a pair
of black rubber gloves.
Making a replacement bellow.
The old one
is rather elaborate.
We're not sure what material it is.
It's almost like a waxed paper,
but it has been ironed, so that
it has effectively a helix in it.
Er, so it's ironed
in two directions,
so it's got ridges on the outside
and the inside.
But that seems
unnecessarily complicated
in a world of modern materials
such as rubber gloves.
So we're making it
out of the rubber glove.
The theory here is that
the rubber glove
should fill with air
and force it past the reed,
which makes the sound.
Okay. Are we ready?
I'm slightly
How can that not work?
The addition
of the bellows has made
Let's have a look.
the growler stick the tube.
Oh, is that what it's doing?
It's so feeble.
Situation update
on Peter the teddy.
The situation update is that
since Peter the bear was admitted
to our bear growler hospital,
his condition has deteriorated.
Some of his stuffing has come out.
He's got a massive wound
in his spine
and his voice doesn't work any more.
But apart from that
It's not easy, is it?
I hate this bear.
So our attempts at repairing Peter's
existing growl box have run adrift.
But we can't let Kirsty
and her precious bear down.
And so, after some deliberation,
Sim and I decide that
desperate times
call for desperate measures.
Are you sitting comfortably, children?
Kirsty had a very special bear
called Peter,
and Peter could growl
like a proper grown-up bear.
But one day, Peter's growl failed
and Kirsty sent poor Peter
to Simmy and James to be repaired.
It's proved rather difficult
because Peter's reed
is bent and worn out,
his bellows have perished.
But, of course,
you know all that children,
because you've been on this
incredible adventure with us.
But now, Simmy and James
have had to do something
they've never done before
on this show,
which is order a spare part
and fit that instead. Here it is.
Commercially available growler
from a bear specialist.
Peter can growl again.
And now, Mr Oakley, the surgeon
is going to sew it into Peter.
And nobody need ever know.
It's our secret.
Here you go, Sim.
Thank you very much.
Once Simmy has sewn up the patient,
we'll send him to convalesce.
The bear I mean. Before returning
him to Kirsty as good as new.
Well, almost.
You rejoin us in Wiltshire,
where I'm coming up with ideas
to solve problems big and small,
that bother us all,
whether that's fly tippers
ruining the glorious countryside
or that your lunch is just lacking
that certain something.
We have identified a problem,
which is that you go out
to a pub or a restaurant
and you have some food
and it's all jolly nice,
but you think I'd like
a little bit of garnish on that.
What if you could take
the garnish with you
and then you could garnish whatever
it was you were eating, wherever?
So we thought,
why not incorporate them
into an item of clothing,
to whit, a hat?
You see, this rests
very conveniently on your head.
If the brim were
full of soil and herbs,
you could merely pluck one
and add it to your cheesy pasta.
So
join me as we make
the world's first
herb hat.
This is harder than it looks.
Problem I'm experiencing
is that the brim of the hat
is not as deep as the typical
English garden herb bed.
So maybe we need to get
rid of some bigger
Maybe make the soil a bit wetter.
But don't I have to retain the root?
Yes. But if you just
So if we get rid of those boys
and keep that one in its root
What, and discard those?
I think snip that off.
I always have my comedy carrot
shaped Japanese scissors
in my pocket, fortunately.
Now snip those off.
We're now getting somewhere
with the herb hat.
We've compacted soil
and a sprig of basil.
I've been in television
quite a long time now.
I think it's about 25 years.
And because I understand
the basics of television,
I know that we're going to skip
forward to a comedy shot of me
approaching my own pub
with a hat full of herbs on my head.
And here I am.
- Afternoon.
- Afternoon.
Ham, egg and chips.
- Yes.
- Epic.
Nice hat, James.
Thank you.
Yeah, you're rocking that.
Sorry.
There's a bit of a breeze.
Would you like some garni?
- Have you got any coriander?
- I have.
- I believe it's there, isn't it?
- Yes.
May I?Yes, of course.
Here are the exquisite
Japanese scissors.
- Thank you.
- Sim,
anything you'd like with your--
A little basil would be nice.
Basil is Ooh.
Can Tony reached that? Ooh, ooh.
- Is that enough?
- Yeah.
- Oh, look at that.
- I think
Ham, egg and chips, I would like
I'd like a few chives on the eggs
- and the chips.
- Allow me.
- Here you go.
- Thanks awfully.
What do you think of my hat?
I mean, be honest.
- Well, honest?
- Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you look
like Worzel Gummidge.
It's a bit Morris dancer, isn't it?
- It is.
- It's actually very useful.
It's a top hat. See what
I did there?
- I'd say this works.
- Hmm.
It's a little uncomfortable,
but it's very achievable at home.
All you need is a hat,
some nutrient rich soil, some herbs,
a low sense of self-esteem.
And Robert's your mother's brother.
Next, spice shoes.
No, that's ridiculous.
Shoes covered in spices
would just look stupid.
Meanwhile, here are some lovely
shots of the Wiltshire countryside,
and we're hoping to keep it that way
with our cunning invention
to stop the curse of fly-tipping.
We return
to the fly-tipper fly trap.
Fly-tipping is becoming
a blight in the countryside
and we have devised a way
of catching people in the act.
It is essentially a fly trap.
It's based on the idea
of a retracting cattle grid
that exposes a very sticky substance
that traps the miscreants
so that they can be apprehended
and then they can pay
their debt to society.
Now, in the previous instalment,
we proved the principle
of the retracting cattle grid,
and now we've set it up
in this fly-tipping area.
It's already full of junk,
it's a very popular location,
you know, sawhorses,
old record players,
speakers, badminton, bats and so on.
And amongst is a fairly
typical old bicycle, or is it?
No, it isn't. It is actually
the trigger mechanism
for the whole thing.
Let me explain to you how it works.
When our fly tippers approach,
they walk over the cattle grid,
which is closed,
and it's outside the gate.
They suspect nothing. And they lob
whatever it is,
their bread maker, whatever,
over here,
and it hits this trigger string.
This trigger string
via this pulley here,
pulls on this hinged piece of wood,
which releases the front brake
of the bicycle.
The front wheel, now free to rotate,
begins to rotate
under the tension
of this bungee cord,
until the sledgehammer,
which is attached to the wheel,
passes top dead centre,
and then gravity does its work.
The rotation of the wheel
and the extra torque
provided by the sledgehammer
operates this pulley system,
which retracts the cattle grid.
They think, "We got away
with that runaway", stuck,
we turn up with clubs
and beat them to death.
Now we're gonna test this out
with some fictitious fly tippers.
This is not real. This is a setup.
But me, Tony and Simmy,
to see if it works,
I'm going to watch from
over there behind the wall.
If you didn't understand
the explanation, don't worry,
we're filming it all
with little cameras,
and we'll do
a slow motion action replay,
and you can see it all working
in graphic detail.
Right. Are we ready?
Let's prime the trap.
So, a few redesigned
and repurposed bits of junk could,
if we've got our calculations
correct, trigger our trap
and catch some fly tippers
in the world's first ever
fly-tipping fly trap.
It's quite sticky.
Patent pending.
Right, I think we can go and hide.
So, the trap is set.
And as if by Magic,
a mysterious van pulls up.
- Oh, he's stopping.
- He is, he is.
Ooh, ooh, he's got to be one.
That's a really tatty van.
That's always a sign.
He's getting out.
Oh, they've got hoodies. Oh.
Oh, look at them. Dirty fly tippers.
Yes, dirty fly tippers
that do look remarkably
like members of our crew.
What is it? What is it?
Washing machine?
It's a bloody mattress.
- Oh!
- God.
Over the cattle grid. Go on.
There you go.
Yes, yes, yes, oh.
Yeah!
- Gotcha!
- That's so good.
Hey, it actually works.
Oi, fly tippers.
You're in a fly trap
and you're going down.
Oh, well done, men.
That is fantastic.
- Good job.
- That's an absurd idea,
but it works.
And, as promised, here it is
in glorious, slow motion.
It may be a prototype,
but the principle is sound.
Fly tippers can be caught
like flies in a trap,
and that is engineering
and poetic success.
So, we've solved
fly tipping, pub entertainment,
garnishing on the move.
But we've really struggled
trying to fix Peter the bear
whose growler was
no longer fit for purpose.
I never imagined
I would end up being involved
in the repair of a teddy bear.
I was expecting clocks
- or lawn mowers.
- Yeah.
- You know?
- Not teddies.
Not a teddy bear.
What a pain. I'll be quite glad
to see the back of him.
- Aw. I'll miss Peter.
- I can see
the back of him now.
I don't know how she's going
to react when we admit that
we haven't really
mended him as such.
What happens if she throws one?
I don't think she will.
- You don't think so?
- No.
What we've actually done here
is a transplant.
We have, yeah.
And a successful one.
And that's really the cutting edge
of teddy bear medicine.
Hello, hello. Have a seat.
Hello, hello. Nice to see you again.
- Hi.
- Hi.
Here is Roger-- Peter.
Have you missed him?
I've missed him a lot.
- Have you?
- Yeah, I have.
Well, it's strange.
We've become very familiar
with Peter.
He's been a constant
lurking presence in our lives.
And looked after
very carefully, of course.
I'm glad. I'm glad you did.
Well, do you want to know
- what we've done?
- Yes, please.
Well, Simmy began
the quite difficult operation
with a long incision
- down his spine.
- Yeah.
Erm, and then we successfully
- removed his growler.
- Yes.
And that's where things
became a bit difficult.
It had sort of
disintegrated a bit
Yeah.and his growl wasn't
very strong any more.
- Oh, no.
- And we looked at making
a longer tube and a bigger bellow.
We tried various fabrics,
we tried the rubber gloves.
It sounds a bit complicated.
It was complicated.
He was on the table for hours,
and at one point we thought
we might lose him.
Oh, bless him.
Eventually, we consulted Yeah.
Well, a consultant
- teddy bear surgeon.
- Yep.
Who said, "I'm afraid
he had to have a new growler".
So he's had a transplant.
Erm Okay.
But if you'd like
to tip him on his back
Oh, it's the same!
It sounds exactly the same.
Aw.
Oh, it does.
It sounds exactly the same.
If you tip him right back
and wait It's really cute.
for a bit,
so sort of the Okay.
growler to extend, and then
It sounds just like a telephone.
So you're pleased?
Very pleased. Thank you so much.
Oh, it's so good.
I'm delighted that you're pleased
- with Peter.
- I'm very pleased.
Because I thought I'd lost him
for a long, long time,
and now he sounds exactly
like he did when I was a child.
So, yeah, it's quite emotional.
Well, you can take him back
to your home
and enjoy the rest
of your lives together.
I will. Thank you so much.
It's really appreciated.
That's okay. It's a pleasure.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye.
Bye. Bring him back
when his head falls off.
Can you see her?
She's properly delighted.
That bear is loved.
And if we as humanity
could love each other
the way Kirsty loves that bear,
everything would be okay.
Apart from for me.