James May's Shed Load of Ideas (2025) s01e04 Episode Script
Cinema Seat
1
JAMES: 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 yourselves.
who've agreed to help me rid the world of problems
Is she getting a ticket out? great
Dirty fly tippers. and small.
The cereal has gone soggy.
I'll also have to take on other people's problems.
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.
Oh!
make That feels like a terrible thing you've just done.
Not in my lifetime.
Wow. in my shedload of Ideas.
What do you think?
This is just brilliant.
Here in Wiltshire,
my mates and I spend a lot of time in my big shed
solving problems.
Simmy lends us his engineering expertise
And release it.
while Tony chips in with his top-notch carpentry skills.
Hazar!
And today we're taking our combined wisdom out of the workshop
and into a particularly pretty cinema in nearby Salisbury.
Sure.
There we are. Oh, fantastic. You're welcome.
With cinema attendance in the UK in decline,
we think we might just be able to eliminate one of the problems
that could be putting people off.
I will now demonstrate with these two and the crew.
So here you are, at the cinema with your mates.
You're about to watch one of your favourite films of all time,
and then this happens.
I mean, that is exactly in the way of the screen.
And if that's bad for me, and I'm reasonably tall,
imagine what it's like for these people entering the cinema now.
If they sit behind us
We've known about this for as long as we've had cinemas,
in fact, as long as we've had theatres,
which goes back to Nell Gwyn and people like that.
And the fact is, the cinemas have a raked floor, obviously.
This has a very typical one.
It's about four degrees, but it's nothing like good enough,
'cause if we take Ethan, if you wouldn't mind standing up.
He's the tallest member of this crew,
and then we put him next to our smallest member,
who is Lottie here.
Look at the difference in height.
It is interesting that all people, it doesn't matter
whether they are massive units, massively overfed like Ethan,
or Lottie, under-nourished and quite small,
the distance between the centre of the eyes
and the top of the head is always pretty much the same.
If you wouldn't mind turning around, Ethan.
You will see even on his enormous bonce
that distance is roughly the same.
So, cinema seats ought to be arranged
so that that distance is the distance of the next row's eyes
above the head of the person in front.
So, why not simply say,
"Small people have to sit at the front of the cinema,
and big people have to sit at the back?"
That would make sense, except, as Lottie points out,
she's got a massive boyfriend,
'cause she didn't have the decency to go out with someone her own size.
So we'd have to split them up and have Lottie at the front and her boyfriend on the back row,
and they can't have a snog like that, let's be honest.
So, I think there might be a more sophisticated solution to this,
and I think we can probably come up with it.
And in just the time it takes to watch
Battle Of Britain: The Director's Cut
and get back to the shed,
we have indeed come up with an idea for adjustable seats,
designed to equalise the cinema-viewing experience.
Now, obviously, the cinema seats have to go up and down.
We have some old cinema seats
and we have these screw jacks of a type
that you use to raise your car up before changing a wheel.
What do we think?
So, I think all we need to do is
we'll make up a little steel frame which we can weld to this.
This is our seat which will be on our frame, like so.
A couple of back supports coming up to here.
How are we supporting them?
So we've got a steel frame that'll go under here,
welded to the jack, so it's solid.
Come up to here and we'll pick up into the wood.
At the right angle and the right height.
That is.
We could put riser blocks underneath?
Well, this is the original.
So that should be our kind of set height.
So, they'll have to be on riser blocks,
therefore we have to calculate
how big a riser block we put underneath it.
105mm.
So, if we know now that that is our height of our plinth
So, riser blocks are 150mm. That's not complicated.
This is probably how the Saturn V was developed.
Somebody wrote 150mm on a bench and drew a box around it,
and then they knew, "Right, we've got it."
So, we need to make the plinths
and we need to make the steelwork at the same time, ideally.
We now know the height our riser block needs to be
for the jack to sit on to bring the seat to its correct starting height.
First, Simmy gets to work on the steel frame for the seat
while Tony and I build a box plinth
which will act as the riser block.
That's near enough for government work.
148mm.
sawing and screwing.
While Simmy sets about welding the steel frame,
which joins our old cinema seat to the jack
Nobody touch that, it's quite warm.
Tony and I do some more measuring, sawing and screwing
to make the box plinth the jack will sit on.
Now all we need to do is put it all together
It's quite heavy, that.
I hate that noise!
Right. Backrest.
To begin with, should we put somebody small
We could put somebody small. Light.
All right, all right.
Who would like to be the first person
to sit in the elevating cinema seat?
When you say "like", I mean, I will do it.
Okay.
All right. What do I hold on to?
You're not gonna be launched, it's just gonna go up a bit.
Okay. Don't be alarmed.
Yes!
Yeah, that
"What did you do at work today, darling?"
"Well I wound Lucy up and down."
Oh, I think that's too wobbly.
Yeah. I mean, it's not comfortable.
This isn't really very good, is it?
Well, we might have to have a little rethink.
So the screw jacks are a lot wobblier than we realise
when it doesn't have a car steadying it.
But what if they were the hydraulic jacks instead?
Slower to pump up
but they'd be much more stable.
Yes.
No, not at all. Just so, sorry
The other way is to make a mechanism
that stays rigid and has the jack just as the lift.
Ah, that's Yes.
It's just a lot of work.
While Simmy starts work designing the new
hydraulic jack-powered box structures,
Tony and I head to the pub.
And as usual, and because of my reputation for mending things,
we've only been there about five minutes
when a local, in this case, Peter,
turns up with some weird brass thing.
Hello. You are Peter. Hello.
Nice to meet you. This is Tony. Nice to meet you.
It's not a cannon,
it's actually Oh, it's a telescope.
Ah, it's a beauty, isn't it?
Where did that come from?
My wife bought it on eBay a few months ago.
But it does come with a nice backstory.
It was brought back from India on a round-the-world QE2 cruise.
And I believe in the late '70s, early '80s.
Acquired.
Acquired, yes, like it.
Quite heavy, isn't it? I suppose that's why it comes with a tripod.
Erm, it doesn't seem to quite work.
Er, no.
I don't know.
It's like looking at the world without your specs on.
Do you know? That could be a micro focus. A micro adjustment.
So, the eyepiece does move out
Move your fingers further out, that bit.
Does that move that slightly?
Doesn't appear to.
So usually, there's a gear mechanism in there, like a rack and pinion.
So, my thoughts are that inside the end there,
there may be some sort of thread that connects to it,
or did once upon a time. Yes.
To try out Tony's theory, we mount Peter's telescope
on its tripod and see if we can focus on something.
Everything is still blurry.
That doesn't do anything.
Oh, wait, close things are almost in focus.
So, all the optics seem to line up.
Yes, I'm looking at that power cable, that's nice and crisp.
The trees far away are blurry, so I think you're right, Tony,
that rotating that should gear that very precisely.
Okay, tools.
Old telescopes used to unscrew, didn't they?
Ooh. Have you done this before?
There you go.
So, basically, this has to move, but quite precisely
in order for what you're looking at,
at a particular distance to be in focus.
But Peter has a concern which may scupper the whole project.
It could well be
what's known as a furniture piece.
A furniture piece.
A show scope.
This, quite possibly, was never intended to work as a telescope,
it was just meant to look cool
There is a possibility.
Be careful, there's not a pin in it. Exactly.
Shall I take it off over this slotted table over the garden?
Take it off over my hand.
So, you can see inside there, the thread.
So when you rotate that,
a pin that would locate in the thread
would be pulled one way or pushed the other way.
And Tony has just found that whatever that pin was
appears to have sheared off.
I'm pleased to hear it.
I think this does suggest that
it's a bit more than just ornamental
because someone's gone to the trouble of machining
quite a sophisticated thread in there,
which would suggest to me that this is, in fact, meant to work.
So, how the hell does it connect?
Does the eyepiece come off?
That bit unscrews, that was loose earlier.
Then we pull it through the other way.
It's here. There.
There you go, that's the culprit.
Yeah, that's what's broken.
So in order to mend it, we will have to remake this piece
with two countersunk holes to allow it to be screwed
to the movable part of the eyepiece,
and then with a pin, the exact dimensions
of which we will have to work out using a micrometre
that inserts in this hole and engages on the inside of that.
Put it all back together, mount it on the tripod,
point it out to the sea and say, "I see no ships."
Ladies and gentlemen
we have a lathe job.
So, can Tony and I and the lathe fix Peter's telescope?
Well, I, for one, can't wait to find out.
Welcome back to Wiltshire,
where we've been entrusted with the task
of repairing Peter's busted telescope.
The problem we have identified is that this ring,
which is now broken, as you can see,
sits around the middle of this tube
and has on it or did have on it a pin
which acts in an inverted worm gear
inside there that you turn with that,
and that makes the eyepiece move in and out and focuses it.
So, we've got to remake this, which is a job for the lathe.
Tony here has never used a metalworking lathe
or an engine lathe, as it's sometimes called.
I have found this old flywheel that I accidentally made
to completely the wrong dimensions many years ago,
and we can, I believe, fashion out of that the new ring.
The ratio dictated by the gear Before Tony can have a go,
he has to have a lathe tutorial.
That is the saddle which moves that way.
That is the cross slide, which moves that way,
and this is the compound slide. The way it's set up,
it moves backwards and forwards, a fine feed version of that.
But you can also set it at angles to do clever things
like screw cutting. I hope you got all that, Tony.
There are no safety features.
There isn't even an emergency stop.
You have to hit that with your knee. There's no chuck guard.
I missed then and hurt my knee,
I felt that.
MAN: Do you want to do it again, James? Not really, no.
I'm not sure who's more nervous about this, Tony or me.
Start lathe
and now turn it to ten thou. That's near enough.
We will now bear witness to the genesis of the new inner ring
for Peter's telescope
A tiny bit more.
and Tony's love affair with the lathe.
So, that's indoctrination over
and a new brass ring well on the way.
Sarah, my other half, says, "James has gone into his workshop
to make a piece of metal into a smaller piece of metal."
Because that's actually all you can do.
But now it's an exquisite piece of metal. Exactly.
Yeah, definitely.
It's addictive already. It is.
You either really get it
or you think it's the dullest thing,
which, to be honest, most of my mates do.
But I don't care.
With Tony now a card carrying member of lathe club,
I leave him to finish the ring and the pin for the telescope
under the watchful eye of Simmy.
We're gonna put these holes in and they have to line up
because these holes are pre-drilled and threaded.
We wanna be able to put the screws,
these little, tiny screws, back into those holes
once we've drilled the new holes.
To make the holes, they're using my milling machine.
That
Two of the holes will attach the ring
to the telescope tube.
And the other is for the pin
that will move the eyepiece to control the focus.
I've got clearance holes with countersunks. Yeah.
Next, Sim taps the hole for the pin, which they make from an old screw.
Do you wanna just do it freehand?
Which in turn is turned on the lathe to get it to the right size.
It's got to be it, doesn't it?
And we'll find out if it all fits,
and by "we", I mean, you and me, viewers,
when Tony hands in his homework later on.
Now, I've asked Sim to meet me at the pub,
which is also a popular B&B.
Less popular, though, is a problem facing me
and my fellow B&B owners.
And if you're one of the 87% of adults
who eat breakfast cereal every day, you'll have come across it, too.
Mm-mm-mm.
Crunchy. Crunchy is nice.
But by the time you're about halfway through the bowl
the cereal has gone soft and soggy.
And we don't want that. So, we were wondering,
is there a way of eating breakfast cereal,
a bowl of breakfast cereal, in such a way or with such a device
that means it is always crunchy all the way until the end?
And Simmy's had a bit of an idea.
Maybe
we need to introduce the milk
at the point of entry into your mouth.
To the workshop.
So, our aim is to solve soggy cereal, and in so doing,
reduce the amount we chuck away at the pub
and in homes everywhere.
Fortunately, one of us has an idea about how we might do that.
So, I've got this plan.
So, we put a spoon onto a straw
and we mould a straw to the underside of the spoon.
You might have to flatten the end a little bit.
And then we have a flexible tube at this end
going into your bottle of milk, or your orange juice,
or whatever you fancy. Orange juice?
Indeed.
In Norway. Yes.
They think it's very weird we put cow juice on our
I've been to Norway quite a few times.
I said you were a bit weird when I was there
You'll get to put this in your mouth
and suck up the required amount of fluid
that you require.
Are we going to base it on this spoon?
I think similar.
Because it doesn't need to be dished as much as that
'cause it's not holding any liquid.
Yeah.
Oh.
How are you going to make a spoon?
Not something I've ever done either.
So, I think we should just mark out our ideal shape.
It's a very thin bit of copper. Yes.
Which, at the end of the day, when this is soldered to it,
it will give it a nice bit of strength,
'cause it'll be like a spine running down the whole thing.
It'll be very good. So I think we can mark it out.
Tin snips. Yeah.
A bit of sanding.
We'll heat it up a little bit to anneal it. Yes.
It does make it go softer.
And then we'll hammer it out. Okay.
Spoons are normally made out of stainless steel
because it's rust-proof.
But we're making our source spoon out of copper
because it's soft and malleable,
which will come in handy at the next stage.
It is like the genesis of the spoon.
They thought, "This looks useful, I'm sure we can improve it.
Maybe make it a bit dished and a bit more rigid,
but I think we're onto something."
Next, we hammer out the dished part of the spoon,
easily done with malleable copper.
There you go, James.
That is incredible.
So, it doesn't look very impressive, but it's a long process.
And what has happened here is we've started off
with a piece of soft copper,
but the process of hammering it has hardened it,
because it work-hardens, as the expression is.
It happens very quickly with copper.
So the thing we have to do next is anneal it,
which is a way of saying soften it again,
and we do that by heating it up
and then allowing it to cool naturally.
Then it'll be soft again. We'll have to do that several times
before Sim arrives at the final shape of the spoon,
which, let's be honest, is a way off.
But not for long, as Sim heats, hammers
heats again, hammers again
That's getting there, isn't it?
and again
until we're ready for stage two.
And next, we're going to join to it the copper tube
that will deliver the milk, orange juice, whatever.
So, we need to work out its length
and then shape it as close as possible to the spoon,
then we'll bind it with some fuse wire and solder it.
And then we can test it.
So, after some cutting and shaping
it's time to bind the tube to the spoon
using a small clamp and Simmy's expert soldering.
I tend to bugger up soldering, so I'm just giving it to you to do.
It's gonna happen.
So, let it warm the whole piece first.
There she blows. There it goes.
Trying to do spoon.
Yeah, you've got that bit.
And then I can do the spoon end.
A bit more at the front, that's it, gone.
It's grand.
Oh, that's filled that nicely, look at that.
Well, that's the bit going in your mouth, so
In your mouth.
It's a spoon and I think it's pretty good.
Shall I
Is it?
It tastes absolutely horrible.
I'm not so sure Bakers Fluid is that Oh, God!
And it is
highly corrosive, so it's slightly acidic.
Might be worth rinsing your mouth.
Rinse, don't swallow.
JAMES: Welcome back to Wiltshire
and my pub, where we've been tackling
the previously insurmountable problem
of soggy cereal by inventing
the source spoon.
This is its inaugural outing, let's see if it works.
I have here the other vital component,
the food-safe plastic tubing which goes into my milk.
Like so.
Is everybody ready? I'm going in.
Oh, that's a good start.
How good is that?
Wow.
That's gotta be the best thing I've ever seen.
Problem is there's nothing else I can say about that.
Every mouthful is like the first one.
Do you want to try it? I'll wipe it off for you.
Kidding. Go on, then, I'll have a quick go.
I'm intrigued.
Ah, genuinely, it works.
That is genuinely the best thing.
What's surprising is how little milk you use. Yeah.
It's truly brilliant on every level.
Saves waste, improves the breakfast dining experience,
it keeps your cereal crunchy.
There is an elephant in the room, though.
Which is
the Norwegian way.
You brought it up, I'll do it.
This is for Norway.
Honestly.
Norwegians, come on. Get a grip.
Actually, do you wanna try that? That feels wrong.
No, I don't want to try it at all.
It's a bit weird.
So, I know a lot of you think that we fake things for television
and ham it up, but I promise you that,
that simple idea, the source spoon,
works and it works brilliantly.
That will become an essential component
of the British breakfast, along with cereal and this.
Cheers.
It's what the Victorians did, and everybody admires them.
And look at this, we started this scene just a few minutes ago,
Simmy's cornflakes,
where he put the milk on straightaway, they are now
Mush.
Whereas mine, my crispy rice things
are still perfectly dry and crunchy
and could even go back in the box if I decided I'd had enough.
Absolutely zero waste.
Soggy cereal solved.
I head back to the shed to wait for Tony,
who's hopefully been as successful
in finishing off the new inner ring for Peter's telescope.
James. And here he is. I have the ring.
Three holes in perfect position, tapped and countersunk.
That's a fabulous bit of finishing off work there, Tony.
Now we know it fits on the tube because
Oh, that's very satisfying.
When we give this telescope to Peter
and he rotates the sleeve and focusses it,
he'll say, "Oh, great, thanks." He'll have no idea
Oh, yeah.
and hard work went into this,
because it will never be seen, because it's inside.
But we will know and so will God.
This is so satisfying, my first bit of lathing work.
But will Tony's first bit of lathe work pass muster?
This is the other way around, isn't it?
So, we've got to get this the right way around.
Time to find out as we reassemble the telescope.
Very exciting.
Oh.
Poetry.
It's very good.
I think you've done an excellent job there, Tony.
Well done, you. Have the rest of the day off.
Proper team effort.
Tony can't actually have the day off,
as now the telescope's optical tube is fully rotating and expanding,
it's time to set sail to the pub
and hand it back to the captain of the ship.
PETER: Hello, hello. Hi.
Thank you very much. Wow.
Erm, here is your telescope.
It's in one piece. Only just.
It doesn't look very different.
Erm, we did consider polishing it,
but then we decided we liked the pattern reduce,
and also, Tony can be an .
So, we have, however, mended it.
I would love to.
I certainly am.
When we took it apart in front of you,
when you first brought it to the pub,
we revealed this broken inner ring.
I made the ring on the lathe.
You then calculated the position of the
Nothing is symmetrical on this thing.
So, every ring,
the screw holes were in different positions. Of course.
Are you ready? Would you like to do it yourself?
I'd love to. Just wind the
And this comes out. Yes.
Wow. Yes, it does.
Very smooth.
Thank you very much. What can I say? Okay.
Right. If you position it there
Yeah, yeah, mine's in.
Okay.
Is it in focus? We're getting there.
There we go. That's in focus.
Yeah.
I was on the tower at the top.
Good God, it's a telescope.
Look at that, it works.
It's good, isn't it?
I hope you enjoyed working on it.
Right, sir, it's yours to take away.
Thank you very much indeed, both of you.
Okay.
I'm sure she will, thank you.
Pint?
I'm happy with that.
Tony and I might be able to relax with a pint,
but over at the workshop, Simmy is still busy
grappling with the prototype for the adjustable cinema seats.
SIM: Action!
Replacing our wobbly jack contraption with a new design
that features a box inside a box
he starts by building both the internal
and external boxes from plywood.
Next, he installs a more compact ram that can be controlled remotely.
Then he cuts out a little space for the wires
before screwing on the lid that the seat will attach to
and allow the jack to push up that internal box.
Now all that remains is to find out if we've managed to put an end
to cinema-going misery for the ages.
We've returned to Salisbury, where we're back at the cinema,
installing our height-adjustable seats to see if we can improve
the visual experience for our audience,
also known as the crew.
They are still on jacks, but they now run in boxes
for stability.
They are powered up and down by electrical motors,
and I have here a suite of remote controls for adjusting them.
Now in the final version, this is a prototype, of course,
this job will be done by computers and a laser.
But for the moment, it's done with a folding ruler.
I would like to invite tonight's audience
to come into the cinema and take their places, please.
Wherever you'd like to sit, doesn't matter.
All the seats are currently set at their midway point.
They can go up and down.
Who can currently see the screen?
I can. Obviously, yes, you can.
Simmy? Tony? No.
Right, okay, so I'm going to suggest that, Ethan,
because you're very tall, you, sir, have to go down.
And here you go.
How's about that, then?
You are now at the lowest setting, sir.
And just to show you that this can all be consistent
and really quite scientific,
if I consider Tony's face, it's a horrible prospect, I know,
but his eyes are not quite high enough by
Ooh, what would we call that, two inches?
He need to go up two inches in order to see over Ethan.
So, I will now do that.
So, you, Tony, are going up, sir.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
No.
This makes a fantastic noise, doesn't it?
It adds to the tension and excitement
of going to the cinema.
You can see? So, now, Simmy.
Well, I'm gonna give you an extra inch.
No, for once, I actually can't see at the cinema
'cause he's been raised up.
so that he can see, but it's okay because I can raise you up, too.
Can everybody see? ALL: Yes.
The seats are all at different heights,
but each row of people is at the same height
and they are higher than the row in front
by the typical distance between the top of a person's head
and his or her eyes.
It's fantastic. We have solved it. Well done, everybody involved.
We can now finally sit down, relax and enjoy
one of the greatest films ever made.
Roll it, projectionist.
After all that hard work, we head home
for some rest and relaxation.
But we're not ones to waste money on expensive spas
and beauty products, oh, no.
We have everything we need right here in the shed.
As men, there are places where we shouldn't go.
One of those is a woman's handbag.
If you've been bitten by a poisonous snake
and the antidote is in a woman's handbag,
you still can't go in there and get it.
You have to ask them to get it. That's just the rules.
The other one is a beauty spa.
We do know that women go there for something called a facial,
and we're suffering for not having facials,
'cause as you can see, we're haggard.
We haven't cared for our complexion.
So, after consulting some women, I've learned that a facial
consists of four essential stages.
It is cleanse, tone, exfoliate, moisturise.
And there are special potions and things,
very expensive, for doing this.
But it occurred to us that there are things in the workshop
that can achieve the same thing for us,
things that we use every day, but that we never use for a facial.
So, I think we are ready to perform
the man's workshop facial.
Yeah. Absolutely. Good.
First, we need to protect our hair.
Well, you don't need it, Tony.
Soz, Tony. Apparently, we've got to wear these goggles.
This is a safety requirement from our insurers,
because they believe we're somehow gonna shove
alcohol and hand cleaners straight in our eyeballs.
I wouldn't put it past us.
Right. There we are, ready.
First is cleanse.
This will remove grease, oil, deeply embedded dirt from your hands
when you've been working on your car or your motorcycle.
Have a bit of cleanser.
Ooh, it's refreshing.
Oh, it feels really nice.
It tastes awful.
I was just liberally applying it
and accidentally got my luscious lips.
I don't wanna admit to that.
Oh, what is that?
Good God. You're covered in filth, man.
Thank you.
LUCY: Why are you so clean, James?
'Cause he doesn't do any work.
There's a bit of gunk come off there, off my cheeks.
Yeah, it's always the cheeks. Yeah.
Now we are cleansed, we must be toned.
Our toner is 99.9% pure isopropyl alcohol.
Which we use in the workshop a lot for cleaning electrical items
and toy trains that we mend, record players and so on.
Don't put this in your mouth, Tony,
otherwise you'll be completely clattered.
This is called toning.
It stinks.
I'm getting high.
Don't breathe.
So, what is normal toner? Oh.
Here you go, do you wanna know what toner is? Yeah.
An astringent liquid applied to the skin
to reduce oiliness and improve its condition.
Yeah.
That's why we use it in soldering.
My face feels really tight.
Yeah. Mine does, too.
Right, so we've cleansed, we've toned,
now we're going to exfoliate.
So, we're going to remove the layer of dead skin.
Our exfoliant is basically a white glue
Spread it about and let it dry,
and then you have the unrivalled pleasure
Oh, this stinks.
Oh, it does! Oh, it stinks of fish.
It is.
At this point, I think in a proper spa
you would lie down and they'd probably give you
some ginger tea or something really left-wing like that.
We can sit back and we can relax and, you know, talk aboutstuff.
What about a little wax?
I hesitate to ask this, Tony,
but which bit of you did you think needed waxing?
What about a leg?
A nice, little smooth leg.
Yeah.
While we don't have the fancy hot wax machines
used in spas and salons, we do have the next best thing.
It's gaffer tape.
Feet up. Put your leg up.
When you use wax strips, there's a direction, isn't there?
Should you tear up or down? I'm tearing down.
Well, we'll experiment. Oh, great.
Tony, is there anything you need to say to your family or
Tell my children I love them.
Three, two, one.
Now that wasn't that bad.
That's rubbish.
I got two tiny, little hairs.
Ladies, stop wasting your money.
About £3.50.
We can help you. No, actually, that sounds really weird.
Right, moving swiftly on, it's time to see
how much of our faces the glue has removed.
Yes.
It's like you've suddenly come back into colour.
I've glued my goggles to my face.
Oh, it makes a great noise. Listen to that.
Ow, that actually hurts.
It's like pulling massive snots out, you know.
It's like pulling your face off.
Look at this, look at this, this is huge.
It's what it would feel like to be a brand-new refrigerator.
This is removing a microscopically thin layer of
Epidermis. of a dead you.
Your appearance has changed, Simmy. You look about 15.
Yeah. In quite a satisfying way?
This is the final stage of the facial.
The moisturising phase.
For which we're using the beeswax, which normally we put on wood.
So, I'm gonna start with my forehead.
This is what it's like being a piece of 19th-century furniture.
It does smell nice. Oh, it smells lovely.
So, I think now if we take the headbands off,
go back to normal, we can get a verdict
from the crew who have watched the entire process and are very familiar with our faces,
because obviously, they film us all the time,
unfortunately, for them. And here we are post-facial.
You actually look much better. Yeah, you do look really glowy.
Wait until you see us tomorrow and we've got piles of pustules.
If you don't turn up tomorrow, we'll know it's gone wrong.
But you actually look very good.
So I now have to point out to the viewers,
you're going to notice it, there are going to be continuity issues
because to be honest, we don't necessarily film this series in sequence.
We don't know until the edit, how we're going to order the story.
So, you might see us and think, "God, those blokes are looking old,"
and then in the next scene, you'll think,
"Wow, look at those 15-year-old boys."
And it's because of this.
Okay, so sorry about that.
Don't do any of this at home, don't use any of these things,
they're not designed as part of a facial-cleansing programme.
Nevertheless, it works.
And we'll see you next time,
if you can recognise us, now that we look ten years younger.
JAMES: 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 yourselves.
who've agreed to help me rid the world of problems
Is she getting a ticket out? great
Dirty fly tippers. and small.
The cereal has gone soggy.
I'll also have to take on other people's problems.
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.
Oh!
make That feels like a terrible thing you've just done.
Not in my lifetime.
Wow. in my shedload of Ideas.
What do you think?
This is just brilliant.
Here in Wiltshire,
my mates and I spend a lot of time in my big shed
solving problems.
Simmy lends us his engineering expertise
And release it.
while Tony chips in with his top-notch carpentry skills.
Hazar!
And today we're taking our combined wisdom out of the workshop
and into a particularly pretty cinema in nearby Salisbury.
Sure.
There we are. Oh, fantastic. You're welcome.
With cinema attendance in the UK in decline,
we think we might just be able to eliminate one of the problems
that could be putting people off.
I will now demonstrate with these two and the crew.
So here you are, at the cinema with your mates.
You're about to watch one of your favourite films of all time,
and then this happens.
I mean, that is exactly in the way of the screen.
And if that's bad for me, and I'm reasonably tall,
imagine what it's like for these people entering the cinema now.
If they sit behind us
We've known about this for as long as we've had cinemas,
in fact, as long as we've had theatres,
which goes back to Nell Gwyn and people like that.
And the fact is, the cinemas have a raked floor, obviously.
This has a very typical one.
It's about four degrees, but it's nothing like good enough,
'cause if we take Ethan, if you wouldn't mind standing up.
He's the tallest member of this crew,
and then we put him next to our smallest member,
who is Lottie here.
Look at the difference in height.
It is interesting that all people, it doesn't matter
whether they are massive units, massively overfed like Ethan,
or Lottie, under-nourished and quite small,
the distance between the centre of the eyes
and the top of the head is always pretty much the same.
If you wouldn't mind turning around, Ethan.
You will see even on his enormous bonce
that distance is roughly the same.
So, cinema seats ought to be arranged
so that that distance is the distance of the next row's eyes
above the head of the person in front.
So, why not simply say,
"Small people have to sit at the front of the cinema,
and big people have to sit at the back?"
That would make sense, except, as Lottie points out,
she's got a massive boyfriend,
'cause she didn't have the decency to go out with someone her own size.
So we'd have to split them up and have Lottie at the front and her boyfriend on the back row,
and they can't have a snog like that, let's be honest.
So, I think there might be a more sophisticated solution to this,
and I think we can probably come up with it.
And in just the time it takes to watch
Battle Of Britain: The Director's Cut
and get back to the shed,
we have indeed come up with an idea for adjustable seats,
designed to equalise the cinema-viewing experience.
Now, obviously, the cinema seats have to go up and down.
We have some old cinema seats
and we have these screw jacks of a type
that you use to raise your car up before changing a wheel.
What do we think?
So, I think all we need to do is
we'll make up a little steel frame which we can weld to this.
This is our seat which will be on our frame, like so.
A couple of back supports coming up to here.
How are we supporting them?
So we've got a steel frame that'll go under here,
welded to the jack, so it's solid.
Come up to here and we'll pick up into the wood.
At the right angle and the right height.
That is.
We could put riser blocks underneath?
Well, this is the original.
So that should be our kind of set height.
So, they'll have to be on riser blocks,
therefore we have to calculate
how big a riser block we put underneath it.
105mm.
So, if we know now that that is our height of our plinth
So, riser blocks are 150mm. That's not complicated.
This is probably how the Saturn V was developed.
Somebody wrote 150mm on a bench and drew a box around it,
and then they knew, "Right, we've got it."
So, we need to make the plinths
and we need to make the steelwork at the same time, ideally.
We now know the height our riser block needs to be
for the jack to sit on to bring the seat to its correct starting height.
First, Simmy gets to work on the steel frame for the seat
while Tony and I build a box plinth
which will act as the riser block.
That's near enough for government work.
148mm.
sawing and screwing.
While Simmy sets about welding the steel frame,
which joins our old cinema seat to the jack
Nobody touch that, it's quite warm.
Tony and I do some more measuring, sawing and screwing
to make the box plinth the jack will sit on.
Now all we need to do is put it all together
It's quite heavy, that.
I hate that noise!
Right. Backrest.
To begin with, should we put somebody small
We could put somebody small. Light.
All right, all right.
Who would like to be the first person
to sit in the elevating cinema seat?
When you say "like", I mean, I will do it.
Okay.
All right. What do I hold on to?
You're not gonna be launched, it's just gonna go up a bit.
Okay. Don't be alarmed.
Yes!
Yeah, that
"What did you do at work today, darling?"
"Well I wound Lucy up and down."
Oh, I think that's too wobbly.
Yeah. I mean, it's not comfortable.
This isn't really very good, is it?
Well, we might have to have a little rethink.
So the screw jacks are a lot wobblier than we realise
when it doesn't have a car steadying it.
But what if they were the hydraulic jacks instead?
Slower to pump up
but they'd be much more stable.
Yes.
No, not at all. Just so, sorry
The other way is to make a mechanism
that stays rigid and has the jack just as the lift.
Ah, that's Yes.
It's just a lot of work.
While Simmy starts work designing the new
hydraulic jack-powered box structures,
Tony and I head to the pub.
And as usual, and because of my reputation for mending things,
we've only been there about five minutes
when a local, in this case, Peter,
turns up with some weird brass thing.
Hello. You are Peter. Hello.
Nice to meet you. This is Tony. Nice to meet you.
It's not a cannon,
it's actually Oh, it's a telescope.
Ah, it's a beauty, isn't it?
Where did that come from?
My wife bought it on eBay a few months ago.
But it does come with a nice backstory.
It was brought back from India on a round-the-world QE2 cruise.
And I believe in the late '70s, early '80s.
Acquired.
Acquired, yes, like it.
Quite heavy, isn't it? I suppose that's why it comes with a tripod.
Erm, it doesn't seem to quite work.
Er, no.
I don't know.
It's like looking at the world without your specs on.
Do you know? That could be a micro focus. A micro adjustment.
So, the eyepiece does move out
Move your fingers further out, that bit.
Does that move that slightly?
Doesn't appear to.
So usually, there's a gear mechanism in there, like a rack and pinion.
So, my thoughts are that inside the end there,
there may be some sort of thread that connects to it,
or did once upon a time. Yes.
To try out Tony's theory, we mount Peter's telescope
on its tripod and see if we can focus on something.
Everything is still blurry.
That doesn't do anything.
Oh, wait, close things are almost in focus.
So, all the optics seem to line up.
Yes, I'm looking at that power cable, that's nice and crisp.
The trees far away are blurry, so I think you're right, Tony,
that rotating that should gear that very precisely.
Okay, tools.
Old telescopes used to unscrew, didn't they?
Ooh. Have you done this before?
There you go.
So, basically, this has to move, but quite precisely
in order for what you're looking at,
at a particular distance to be in focus.
But Peter has a concern which may scupper the whole project.
It could well be
what's known as a furniture piece.
A furniture piece.
A show scope.
This, quite possibly, was never intended to work as a telescope,
it was just meant to look cool
There is a possibility.
Be careful, there's not a pin in it. Exactly.
Shall I take it off over this slotted table over the garden?
Take it off over my hand.
So, you can see inside there, the thread.
So when you rotate that,
a pin that would locate in the thread
would be pulled one way or pushed the other way.
And Tony has just found that whatever that pin was
appears to have sheared off.
I'm pleased to hear it.
I think this does suggest that
it's a bit more than just ornamental
because someone's gone to the trouble of machining
quite a sophisticated thread in there,
which would suggest to me that this is, in fact, meant to work.
So, how the hell does it connect?
Does the eyepiece come off?
That bit unscrews, that was loose earlier.
Then we pull it through the other way.
It's here. There.
There you go, that's the culprit.
Yeah, that's what's broken.
So in order to mend it, we will have to remake this piece
with two countersunk holes to allow it to be screwed
to the movable part of the eyepiece,
and then with a pin, the exact dimensions
of which we will have to work out using a micrometre
that inserts in this hole and engages on the inside of that.
Put it all back together, mount it on the tripod,
point it out to the sea and say, "I see no ships."
Ladies and gentlemen
we have a lathe job.
So, can Tony and I and the lathe fix Peter's telescope?
Well, I, for one, can't wait to find out.
Welcome back to Wiltshire,
where we've been entrusted with the task
of repairing Peter's busted telescope.
The problem we have identified is that this ring,
which is now broken, as you can see,
sits around the middle of this tube
and has on it or did have on it a pin
which acts in an inverted worm gear
inside there that you turn with that,
and that makes the eyepiece move in and out and focuses it.
So, we've got to remake this, which is a job for the lathe.
Tony here has never used a metalworking lathe
or an engine lathe, as it's sometimes called.
I have found this old flywheel that I accidentally made
to completely the wrong dimensions many years ago,
and we can, I believe, fashion out of that the new ring.
The ratio dictated by the gear Before Tony can have a go,
he has to have a lathe tutorial.
That is the saddle which moves that way.
That is the cross slide, which moves that way,
and this is the compound slide. The way it's set up,
it moves backwards and forwards, a fine feed version of that.
But you can also set it at angles to do clever things
like screw cutting. I hope you got all that, Tony.
There are no safety features.
There isn't even an emergency stop.
You have to hit that with your knee. There's no chuck guard.
I missed then and hurt my knee,
I felt that.
MAN: Do you want to do it again, James? Not really, no.
I'm not sure who's more nervous about this, Tony or me.
Start lathe
and now turn it to ten thou. That's near enough.
We will now bear witness to the genesis of the new inner ring
for Peter's telescope
A tiny bit more.
and Tony's love affair with the lathe.
So, that's indoctrination over
and a new brass ring well on the way.
Sarah, my other half, says, "James has gone into his workshop
to make a piece of metal into a smaller piece of metal."
Because that's actually all you can do.
But now it's an exquisite piece of metal. Exactly.
Yeah, definitely.
It's addictive already. It is.
You either really get it
or you think it's the dullest thing,
which, to be honest, most of my mates do.
But I don't care.
With Tony now a card carrying member of lathe club,
I leave him to finish the ring and the pin for the telescope
under the watchful eye of Simmy.
We're gonna put these holes in and they have to line up
because these holes are pre-drilled and threaded.
We wanna be able to put the screws,
these little, tiny screws, back into those holes
once we've drilled the new holes.
To make the holes, they're using my milling machine.
That
Two of the holes will attach the ring
to the telescope tube.
And the other is for the pin
that will move the eyepiece to control the focus.
I've got clearance holes with countersunks. Yeah.
Next, Sim taps the hole for the pin, which they make from an old screw.
Do you wanna just do it freehand?
Which in turn is turned on the lathe to get it to the right size.
It's got to be it, doesn't it?
And we'll find out if it all fits,
and by "we", I mean, you and me, viewers,
when Tony hands in his homework later on.
Now, I've asked Sim to meet me at the pub,
which is also a popular B&B.
Less popular, though, is a problem facing me
and my fellow B&B owners.
And if you're one of the 87% of adults
who eat breakfast cereal every day, you'll have come across it, too.
Mm-mm-mm.
Crunchy. Crunchy is nice.
But by the time you're about halfway through the bowl
the cereal has gone soft and soggy.
And we don't want that. So, we were wondering,
is there a way of eating breakfast cereal,
a bowl of breakfast cereal, in such a way or with such a device
that means it is always crunchy all the way until the end?
And Simmy's had a bit of an idea.
Maybe
we need to introduce the milk
at the point of entry into your mouth.
To the workshop.
So, our aim is to solve soggy cereal, and in so doing,
reduce the amount we chuck away at the pub
and in homes everywhere.
Fortunately, one of us has an idea about how we might do that.
So, I've got this plan.
So, we put a spoon onto a straw
and we mould a straw to the underside of the spoon.
You might have to flatten the end a little bit.
And then we have a flexible tube at this end
going into your bottle of milk, or your orange juice,
or whatever you fancy. Orange juice?
Indeed.
In Norway. Yes.
They think it's very weird we put cow juice on our
I've been to Norway quite a few times.
I said you were a bit weird when I was there
You'll get to put this in your mouth
and suck up the required amount of fluid
that you require.
Are we going to base it on this spoon?
I think similar.
Because it doesn't need to be dished as much as that
'cause it's not holding any liquid.
Yeah.
Oh.
How are you going to make a spoon?
Not something I've ever done either.
So, I think we should just mark out our ideal shape.
It's a very thin bit of copper. Yes.
Which, at the end of the day, when this is soldered to it,
it will give it a nice bit of strength,
'cause it'll be like a spine running down the whole thing.
It'll be very good. So I think we can mark it out.
Tin snips. Yeah.
A bit of sanding.
We'll heat it up a little bit to anneal it. Yes.
It does make it go softer.
And then we'll hammer it out. Okay.
Spoons are normally made out of stainless steel
because it's rust-proof.
But we're making our source spoon out of copper
because it's soft and malleable,
which will come in handy at the next stage.
It is like the genesis of the spoon.
They thought, "This looks useful, I'm sure we can improve it.
Maybe make it a bit dished and a bit more rigid,
but I think we're onto something."
Next, we hammer out the dished part of the spoon,
easily done with malleable copper.
There you go, James.
That is incredible.
So, it doesn't look very impressive, but it's a long process.
And what has happened here is we've started off
with a piece of soft copper,
but the process of hammering it has hardened it,
because it work-hardens, as the expression is.
It happens very quickly with copper.
So the thing we have to do next is anneal it,
which is a way of saying soften it again,
and we do that by heating it up
and then allowing it to cool naturally.
Then it'll be soft again. We'll have to do that several times
before Sim arrives at the final shape of the spoon,
which, let's be honest, is a way off.
But not for long, as Sim heats, hammers
heats again, hammers again
That's getting there, isn't it?
and again
until we're ready for stage two.
And next, we're going to join to it the copper tube
that will deliver the milk, orange juice, whatever.
So, we need to work out its length
and then shape it as close as possible to the spoon,
then we'll bind it with some fuse wire and solder it.
And then we can test it.
So, after some cutting and shaping
it's time to bind the tube to the spoon
using a small clamp and Simmy's expert soldering.
I tend to bugger up soldering, so I'm just giving it to you to do.
It's gonna happen.
So, let it warm the whole piece first.
There she blows. There it goes.
Trying to do spoon.
Yeah, you've got that bit.
And then I can do the spoon end.
A bit more at the front, that's it, gone.
It's grand.
Oh, that's filled that nicely, look at that.
Well, that's the bit going in your mouth, so
In your mouth.
It's a spoon and I think it's pretty good.
Shall I
Is it?
It tastes absolutely horrible.
I'm not so sure Bakers Fluid is that Oh, God!
And it is
highly corrosive, so it's slightly acidic.
Might be worth rinsing your mouth.
Rinse, don't swallow.
JAMES: Welcome back to Wiltshire
and my pub, where we've been tackling
the previously insurmountable problem
of soggy cereal by inventing
the source spoon.
This is its inaugural outing, let's see if it works.
I have here the other vital component,
the food-safe plastic tubing which goes into my milk.
Like so.
Is everybody ready? I'm going in.
Oh, that's a good start.
How good is that?
Wow.
That's gotta be the best thing I've ever seen.
Problem is there's nothing else I can say about that.
Every mouthful is like the first one.
Do you want to try it? I'll wipe it off for you.
Kidding. Go on, then, I'll have a quick go.
I'm intrigued.
Ah, genuinely, it works.
That is genuinely the best thing.
What's surprising is how little milk you use. Yeah.
It's truly brilliant on every level.
Saves waste, improves the breakfast dining experience,
it keeps your cereal crunchy.
There is an elephant in the room, though.
Which is
the Norwegian way.
You brought it up, I'll do it.
This is for Norway.
Honestly.
Norwegians, come on. Get a grip.
Actually, do you wanna try that? That feels wrong.
No, I don't want to try it at all.
It's a bit weird.
So, I know a lot of you think that we fake things for television
and ham it up, but I promise you that,
that simple idea, the source spoon,
works and it works brilliantly.
That will become an essential component
of the British breakfast, along with cereal and this.
Cheers.
It's what the Victorians did, and everybody admires them.
And look at this, we started this scene just a few minutes ago,
Simmy's cornflakes,
where he put the milk on straightaway, they are now
Mush.
Whereas mine, my crispy rice things
are still perfectly dry and crunchy
and could even go back in the box if I decided I'd had enough.
Absolutely zero waste.
Soggy cereal solved.
I head back to the shed to wait for Tony,
who's hopefully been as successful
in finishing off the new inner ring for Peter's telescope.
James. And here he is. I have the ring.
Three holes in perfect position, tapped and countersunk.
That's a fabulous bit of finishing off work there, Tony.
Now we know it fits on the tube because
Oh, that's very satisfying.
When we give this telescope to Peter
and he rotates the sleeve and focusses it,
he'll say, "Oh, great, thanks." He'll have no idea
Oh, yeah.
and hard work went into this,
because it will never be seen, because it's inside.
But we will know and so will God.
This is so satisfying, my first bit of lathing work.
But will Tony's first bit of lathe work pass muster?
This is the other way around, isn't it?
So, we've got to get this the right way around.
Time to find out as we reassemble the telescope.
Very exciting.
Oh.
Poetry.
It's very good.
I think you've done an excellent job there, Tony.
Well done, you. Have the rest of the day off.
Proper team effort.
Tony can't actually have the day off,
as now the telescope's optical tube is fully rotating and expanding,
it's time to set sail to the pub
and hand it back to the captain of the ship.
PETER: Hello, hello. Hi.
Thank you very much. Wow.
Erm, here is your telescope.
It's in one piece. Only just.
It doesn't look very different.
Erm, we did consider polishing it,
but then we decided we liked the pattern reduce,
and also, Tony can be an .
So, we have, however, mended it.
I would love to.
I certainly am.
When we took it apart in front of you,
when you first brought it to the pub,
we revealed this broken inner ring.
I made the ring on the lathe.
You then calculated the position of the
Nothing is symmetrical on this thing.
So, every ring,
the screw holes were in different positions. Of course.
Are you ready? Would you like to do it yourself?
I'd love to. Just wind the
And this comes out. Yes.
Wow. Yes, it does.
Very smooth.
Thank you very much. What can I say? Okay.
Right. If you position it there
Yeah, yeah, mine's in.
Okay.
Is it in focus? We're getting there.
There we go. That's in focus.
Yeah.
I was on the tower at the top.
Good God, it's a telescope.
Look at that, it works.
It's good, isn't it?
I hope you enjoyed working on it.
Right, sir, it's yours to take away.
Thank you very much indeed, both of you.
Okay.
I'm sure she will, thank you.
Pint?
I'm happy with that.
Tony and I might be able to relax with a pint,
but over at the workshop, Simmy is still busy
grappling with the prototype for the adjustable cinema seats.
SIM: Action!
Replacing our wobbly jack contraption with a new design
that features a box inside a box
he starts by building both the internal
and external boxes from plywood.
Next, he installs a more compact ram that can be controlled remotely.
Then he cuts out a little space for the wires
before screwing on the lid that the seat will attach to
and allow the jack to push up that internal box.
Now all that remains is to find out if we've managed to put an end
to cinema-going misery for the ages.
We've returned to Salisbury, where we're back at the cinema,
installing our height-adjustable seats to see if we can improve
the visual experience for our audience,
also known as the crew.
They are still on jacks, but they now run in boxes
for stability.
They are powered up and down by electrical motors,
and I have here a suite of remote controls for adjusting them.
Now in the final version, this is a prototype, of course,
this job will be done by computers and a laser.
But for the moment, it's done with a folding ruler.
I would like to invite tonight's audience
to come into the cinema and take their places, please.
Wherever you'd like to sit, doesn't matter.
All the seats are currently set at their midway point.
They can go up and down.
Who can currently see the screen?
I can. Obviously, yes, you can.
Simmy? Tony? No.
Right, okay, so I'm going to suggest that, Ethan,
because you're very tall, you, sir, have to go down.
And here you go.
How's about that, then?
You are now at the lowest setting, sir.
And just to show you that this can all be consistent
and really quite scientific,
if I consider Tony's face, it's a horrible prospect, I know,
but his eyes are not quite high enough by
Ooh, what would we call that, two inches?
He need to go up two inches in order to see over Ethan.
So, I will now do that.
So, you, Tony, are going up, sir.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
No.
This makes a fantastic noise, doesn't it?
It adds to the tension and excitement
of going to the cinema.
You can see? So, now, Simmy.
Well, I'm gonna give you an extra inch.
No, for once, I actually can't see at the cinema
'cause he's been raised up.
so that he can see, but it's okay because I can raise you up, too.
Can everybody see? ALL: Yes.
The seats are all at different heights,
but each row of people is at the same height
and they are higher than the row in front
by the typical distance between the top of a person's head
and his or her eyes.
It's fantastic. We have solved it. Well done, everybody involved.
We can now finally sit down, relax and enjoy
one of the greatest films ever made.
Roll it, projectionist.
After all that hard work, we head home
for some rest and relaxation.
But we're not ones to waste money on expensive spas
and beauty products, oh, no.
We have everything we need right here in the shed.
As men, there are places where we shouldn't go.
One of those is a woman's handbag.
If you've been bitten by a poisonous snake
and the antidote is in a woman's handbag,
you still can't go in there and get it.
You have to ask them to get it. That's just the rules.
The other one is a beauty spa.
We do know that women go there for something called a facial,
and we're suffering for not having facials,
'cause as you can see, we're haggard.
We haven't cared for our complexion.
So, after consulting some women, I've learned that a facial
consists of four essential stages.
It is cleanse, tone, exfoliate, moisturise.
And there are special potions and things,
very expensive, for doing this.
But it occurred to us that there are things in the workshop
that can achieve the same thing for us,
things that we use every day, but that we never use for a facial.
So, I think we are ready to perform
the man's workshop facial.
Yeah. Absolutely. Good.
First, we need to protect our hair.
Well, you don't need it, Tony.
Soz, Tony. Apparently, we've got to wear these goggles.
This is a safety requirement from our insurers,
because they believe we're somehow gonna shove
alcohol and hand cleaners straight in our eyeballs.
I wouldn't put it past us.
Right. There we are, ready.
First is cleanse.
This will remove grease, oil, deeply embedded dirt from your hands
when you've been working on your car or your motorcycle.
Have a bit of cleanser.
Ooh, it's refreshing.
Oh, it feels really nice.
It tastes awful.
I was just liberally applying it
and accidentally got my luscious lips.
I don't wanna admit to that.
Oh, what is that?
Good God. You're covered in filth, man.
Thank you.
LUCY: Why are you so clean, James?
'Cause he doesn't do any work.
There's a bit of gunk come off there, off my cheeks.
Yeah, it's always the cheeks. Yeah.
Now we are cleansed, we must be toned.
Our toner is 99.9% pure isopropyl alcohol.
Which we use in the workshop a lot for cleaning electrical items
and toy trains that we mend, record players and so on.
Don't put this in your mouth, Tony,
otherwise you'll be completely clattered.
This is called toning.
It stinks.
I'm getting high.
Don't breathe.
So, what is normal toner? Oh.
Here you go, do you wanna know what toner is? Yeah.
An astringent liquid applied to the skin
to reduce oiliness and improve its condition.
Yeah.
That's why we use it in soldering.
My face feels really tight.
Yeah. Mine does, too.
Right, so we've cleansed, we've toned,
now we're going to exfoliate.
So, we're going to remove the layer of dead skin.
Our exfoliant is basically a white glue
Spread it about and let it dry,
and then you have the unrivalled pleasure
Oh, this stinks.
Oh, it does! Oh, it stinks of fish.
It is.
At this point, I think in a proper spa
you would lie down and they'd probably give you
some ginger tea or something really left-wing like that.
We can sit back and we can relax and, you know, talk aboutstuff.
What about a little wax?
I hesitate to ask this, Tony,
but which bit of you did you think needed waxing?
What about a leg?
A nice, little smooth leg.
Yeah.
While we don't have the fancy hot wax machines
used in spas and salons, we do have the next best thing.
It's gaffer tape.
Feet up. Put your leg up.
When you use wax strips, there's a direction, isn't there?
Should you tear up or down? I'm tearing down.
Well, we'll experiment. Oh, great.
Tony, is there anything you need to say to your family or
Tell my children I love them.
Three, two, one.
Now that wasn't that bad.
That's rubbish.
I got two tiny, little hairs.
Ladies, stop wasting your money.
About £3.50.
We can help you. No, actually, that sounds really weird.
Right, moving swiftly on, it's time to see
how much of our faces the glue has removed.
Yes.
It's like you've suddenly come back into colour.
I've glued my goggles to my face.
Oh, it makes a great noise. Listen to that.
Ow, that actually hurts.
It's like pulling massive snots out, you know.
It's like pulling your face off.
Look at this, look at this, this is huge.
It's what it would feel like to be a brand-new refrigerator.
This is removing a microscopically thin layer of
Epidermis. of a dead you.
Your appearance has changed, Simmy. You look about 15.
Yeah. In quite a satisfying way?
This is the final stage of the facial.
The moisturising phase.
For which we're using the beeswax, which normally we put on wood.
So, I'm gonna start with my forehead.
This is what it's like being a piece of 19th-century furniture.
It does smell nice. Oh, it smells lovely.
So, I think now if we take the headbands off,
go back to normal, we can get a verdict
from the crew who have watched the entire process and are very familiar with our faces,
because obviously, they film us all the time,
unfortunately, for them. And here we are post-facial.
You actually look much better. Yeah, you do look really glowy.
Wait until you see us tomorrow and we've got piles of pustules.
If you don't turn up tomorrow, we'll know it's gone wrong.
But you actually look very good.
So I now have to point out to the viewers,
you're going to notice it, there are going to be continuity issues
because to be honest, we don't necessarily film this series in sequence.
We don't know until the edit, how we're going to order the story.
So, you might see us and think, "God, those blokes are looking old,"
and then in the next scene, you'll think,
"Wow, look at those 15-year-old boys."
And it's because of this.
Okay, so sorry about that.
Don't do any of this at home, don't use any of these things,
they're not designed as part of a facial-cleansing programme.
Nevertheless, it works.
And we'll see you next time,
if you can recognise us, now that we look ten years younger.