James May's Man Lab (2010) s01e01 Episode Script
Episode 1
This is a plug, and last year, research revealed that eight out of ten modern men are not entirely sure how to wire it up.
This is where man finds himself these days.
10,000 years in the making, 10,000 years of endeavour in science and the arts and the humanities, and within one generation, he's been reduced to a feckless, bed-wetting, Parmesan-shaving imbecile who revels in his own uselessness.
Something has to be done.
Welcome to Man Lab, the gruelling arena in which the terminal decline of man will be arrested and possibly even reversed.
In this humble industrial building, we will revive and relearn the skills that defined man and drag them, glittering, onto a broad, sunlit upland of being a proper chap.
Well, we'll be doing some woodwork, anyway, and maybe a bit of plumbing.
MUSIC: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss 'Man Lab is an emergency service, on call to jump-start the stalled evolution of man.
HE CHUCKLES 'It's a blokes' base camp for an epic assault on the north face of Mount Muttonhead, 'a repository of ingenuity and invention from which man will emerge blinking, yet triumphant, 'armed with only a decent toolkit and a slim volume of English poetry.
'It's the modern face of the gentleman's club, 'where things get done properly and are followed by a proper pint.
' It's excellent.
'In short, this series, and this alone, 'will sweep away the confusion that has reigned since the dreadful dawn of moisturiser 'and the male makeover.
'End of mission statement.
'This week, in Man Lab, a concrete monument to the revival of formal dining' The fish finger was designed so that five would fit into a sandwich.
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music is the food of love, though slightly half-baked' You cannot come out of this badly.
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a TV celebrity comes out about his man skill' It would be awful to be really good at this, wouldn't it? '.
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we build the only integrated transport system in Britain that actually works' I haven't had to walk anywhere.
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and I take on the Nazis.
'single-handed.
'But first, and never again, a quick tour of our house.
' This is our workshop area.
This is my friend Sim, who will be helping to redefine the male species.
Mainly in plywood.
I'm afraid he's rather untidy.
Over here, we have our cement mixer, but don't let this put you off.
We are going to be making some improvements to the Man Lab, noticeably to the lavatory area, but this is not a makeover show in any way whatsoever.
We will not re-theming anything in a Mediterranean-style with terracotta.
Oh, no! This cup of tea is now empty, which means it should be a simple matter to simply walk into the kitchen and make another one, except we don't have a kitchen.
But we have allocated an area for a kitchen here and we're going to be making ourselves a very fashionable island unit, hopefully with a concrete worktop and all the modern facilities, so that we can make tea and man-wiches at will.
Finally, here is our rest and recuperation area.
Everything that a chap needs to relax.
Some trendy retro sofas, a table, mysterious unmendable motorcycle, shelves, various strange knick-knacks and a kumbaya tambourine.
Right, let's get on with something.
Something useful and relevant.
Now, the British people are very, very good at digging.
It's why we're such excellent gardeners and so good at escaping from prisoner-of-war camps.
But what if you were in your garden, digging the foundations for your new extension, and you came across an unexploded World War II German bomb? METALLIC CLUNK HE GASPS Here is our unwanted gift from Klaus.
It's a faithful copy of a 1940 Luftwaffe 250kg bomb, complete with payload, genuine World War II fuse and clockwork timing device.
Today, I'm going to show you how to defuse it, in case YOU find one.
But what are the chances of that? How likely is it that your spade of burning gold will strike the cold steel of vanquished Nazi ambition? During World War II, Germany dropped 75,000 tons of bombs on Britain.
Here is a short clip of the Luftwaffe putting paid to another of our beloved fish and chip shops.
Here is a typical Victorian London street.
Yet amongst the houses, we see things that were obviously built after the war.
There, for example, and right there.
This is where bombs fell.
We know this because of records that were kept at the time.
Now, a typical bomber in 1940 might have carried eight 250kg Bombe, and they would have been dropped in what is known as a stick - they fell at regular intervals.
Bang.
Bang.
Beyond that, bang, undoubtedly another modern building.
But here's the alarming statistic.
It's reckoned that one in ten of those bombs didn't go off.
Or, to put it another way, between September 1940 and June 1941, an average of 85 dud bombs fell on British civilian targets every day.
The plucky British were not to be cowed.
They put on ill-fitting hats and kept lookout during raids to mark the fall of dud bombs.
These were then defused, or set off in what the police at Heathrow Airport would call "a controlled explosion".
But let's be honest, counting bombs during an air raid can't have been easy.
They missed a few.
That's why they're still being found.
A few have been found at the site of the 2012 Olympics.
We must all be vigilant.
The first thing to understand is that, unlike the Olympics, bomb-disposal is not a mass participation event.
Now, I want to make it absolutely clear that I really am alone in the pit with the bomb.
All the cameras on which you are watching me, that I can address, like this one and this one, they're all completely remote.
The film crew are miles away over there.
I've got a chest camera so you can see what I'm doing.
There's a good reason for the film crew to take cover.
While our Man Lab bomb does not contain 250kg of TNT, it is fitted with a small explosive charge, and it's packed with a hideously inhumane payload - a deadly mixture of Peter Andre's new perfume, Conditional Pour Homme HE SPLUTTERS .
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and cow poo from the Garden of England.
Careful Careful! 'This bomb WILL go off if I make the slightest error.
'As a result, I'll need to know exactly what makes it tick.
' Somewhere on the sides of our Jerry bomb will be a fuse pocket like this one here.
In that fuse pocket there will be an elektrischer Aufschlag Zunder, or an electrical condenser resistance fuse, exactly like this one.
This is the extremely popular type 17 model.
At the base of the fuse is a solid plug of penthrite wax - highly explosive, known as the gaine.
When the bomb was dropped from the aeroplane, a small burst of electricity was passed to the fuse through the charging head here, and from there it was ready to fire the gaine, and with it, of course, the entire bomb.
That could happen on impact or it might happen after a delay effected by this internal clockwork mechanism.
This could run for anything between 30 seconds and 74 hours.
If we could just put aside for one moment the notion that this is all a horrible device designed to spread dreadful death and destruction, it has to be acknowledged that this bit of German engineering, as usual, is absolutely exquisite.
It's a piece of mechanical poetry in effect.
It's such a shame that it had to be used for something so terrible.
I must overcome this clockwork timer or the bomb will explode and the results will be unthinkably stinky.
Now, a statistic released a while back suggested that the average British household kitchen lasted no longer than five years before being replaced.
But here at Man Lab, we like to choose once and choose well.
So we're going to build a kitchen that will last for 1,000 years out of concrete.
The kitchen will be the first of a series of ambitious improvements to Planet Man Lab.
To achieve true millennial permanence, I'll need specialist help, and mine comes in the unshaven and loosely defined shape of Simmy, inspirational inventor, builder and architect.
"What a piece of work is a man," wrote Shakespeare.
He may have meant Sim, who is so committed he had already built the mould for our kitchen before I'd turned up.
In order to cast the worktop in concrete, we have to think of the worktop in reverse in order to make a mould, which is what Simmy's done here.
That is the drainer.
So what is normally an indentation is now proud, because when the concrete comes out, it will be an indentation.
That is where the sink will go.
- That's the sink.
- This is where the hob will go.
- Those are the rough holes for the taps.
- Yes.
This is not a proper mould.
- We're going to have to break it apart to get the top end.
- Right.
So it's a one-shot deal, this.
If it doesn't work, there'll be something else in the programme at this point next week about building some prefabricated units bought from a high-street kitchen shop.
There cannot be a more noble material for the construction of a kitchen than concrete - a self-setting soup of cement, gravel, sand and water.
Functional and refined and completely impervious to the vagaries of fashion or the weather! It is worth pointing out that the making of concrete was one of the great forgotten man skills, because the Romans of course could do it and it took us until Well, about 1860, something like that, to rediscover it.
Britain's first concrete house appeared on the Isle of Wight, and that was in 1870something? Supplementary man skill - pontificate on television only if you are in full possession of the facts.
That first concrete house was built in 1869.
Although it is fair to say that Britain has never really fallen in love with this most mouldable of building materials.
It is very true that concrete got a bad rap, especially during the '70s and '80s, as being an ugly material.
But I don't think that is true.
Used correctly, it can be rather wonderful.
It tends to be an ugly colour, but you can make it into pretty much any shape you want.
This is true.
You should never use it as the surround for a bonfire, because it explodes, because it has little bubbles of water in it, sometimes big ones, and they heat up, but they're under pressure because they're all closed, and at some point - kebang! - and you get bits of concrete flying all over the place.
For the next two hours, Simmy and I continue to fill our kitchen mould.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive".
I think you've got the idea.
You've probably seen enough of us mincing around with trowels.
So, we'll come back to this when it's set and we break it out.
In the meantime, I'm going to put a different shirt on and reappear in our sitting area for something else.
Here is the shirt, and the something else is about boiler repair or so it might seem.
Most people just 'My boiler repair lecture should have been the highlight of the Man Lab year.
' .
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60% of all boiler complaints are simply because there's no gas because the bill hasn't been paid.
You have paid the bill, you will narrow it down to the control unit, which may be this, the Z376R.
'But something was wrong with Charlie, our researcher, 'a man who normally daydreams in British thermal units.
' It's a plug-in module, it's a sealed unit like 'Today, he was dreaming in cheesy Rachmaninov.
' ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS Charlie? Charlie Charlie! MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY 'Poor Charlie is lovesick.
' Thanks.
'He's limping around uselessly with Cupid's golden arrow lodged firmly in his trousers, 'so I have no choice but to take him to the local centre for male counselling.
' - Thanks, mate.
- Right.
Tell me all about it.
Well, I can't stop thinking about her.
She's, um Everything I do at work, I keep getting distracted just by her being there And by looking at her, I just want to be spending some alone time with her.
I just need her to see me for who I am, not just this person at work 'Oh, God! I can't listen to this snivelling about inner feelings any longer! 'It's time to instruct Charlie in the art of seduction.
' I'm wondering, because I bet no-one else is, if Charlie has ever thought of the lost art of the serenade? I'm quite well positioned to advise you on this one, Charlie, because many years ago, I was a minstrel.
I serenaded people, because back in the 1970s, it was very fashionable to have a themed banqueting hall, Restoration or Elizabethan, and I walked around singing to people, accompanying myself upon the guitar.
For example # Faire, if you expect admiring Dear, if you provoke desiring Grace dear love with kind requiting That is Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620.
The remarkable thing was, I couldn't play the guitar - I still can't - but here is a little trick for other would-be minstrels and serenaders.
Normally the guitar is tuned E, A, D, G, B, E, which makes fingering very tricky, - but I have tuned this simply - HE STRUMS GUITAR - .
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to open perfect fit.
By this simple expedient, you can play, sort of, any chord you want by simply moving your whole finger up and down the fret board - a musical technique known as cheating! I'll fly to thee again and sue for pity To renew my love's distressing.
- Got it? - Um - Have a go.
Try Thomas Campion's - 1557 to 1620 - Faire, If You Expect Admiring, - the original Elizabethan lute song, upon this cheating guitar.
- Right, OK.
HE SIGHS # Faire, if Faire No.
Faire Faire, if you expect admiring Sweet, if you provoke desiring - That one? - Yeah.
BOTH: # Grace Deere BOTH: # Love With kind requiting.
Grace What is it? Are you sure this is going to be right for what I'm doing? Thomas Campion was a renowned swordsman back in the 16th century.
And of all Cassandra's other suitors, I bet no one else has turned up outside her balcony and sung her a lute song.
OK, I'll take your word for it.
You cannot come out of this badly.
I'm not sure, but I'll have to change the words, I don't think they're relevant any more.
Faire, if you Actually, I was going to say, so you don't spoil the surprise for the viewers, - why don't you go and practise in the office? - OK.
Do you know where she lives, by the way? If you are thinking of sallying forth with lustful heart and lute, always sing Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620.
If you can't play it properly, master one-fingered guitar.
Finally, remember to find her address by means that will stand up to cross-examination in court.
Now, as a chap, I'm sure you own a stout pair of boots.
I certainly hope so.
But what sort of condition are they in? Not that good, I'd wager.
So stand by to stand by! Top tips from people who know better.
This is Platoon Sergeant Mark Buckingham of the Prince of Wales' Royal Regiment.
His boots are so shiny he can see the Queen of England's face in them.
These are a standard set of drill boots, ammo boots, we call them.
Brought especially for today.
After about 10 hours spread out over a couple of weeks .
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that's what you can achieve.
- And they're ready for Buckingham Palace.
- Fantastic.
These boots are owned by our slovenly producer, Rebecca, and they're disgusting.
Our challenge - to restore them.
It's a big job, this.
So I'm going to do the left boot and the sergeant here is going to do the right boot.
And then at the end, he can decide whether or not I've won my Man Lab boot badge.
Go.
Grab your boot brushes.
You need one on, one off.
- Polish on, polish off.
- Take your on brush.
The dark one.
All you're going to do is take a generous scoop out of there onto your brush.
Big scoops.
There's no neat circles or anything like that.
Just throw the polish on.
OK, that's enough on.
Take your off brush.
- The other brush! - Yes.
- You'll do exactly the same again, but this time you're taking the polish off.
The common mistake that people make they think they're shining the leather off.
You need to build up a substantial layer of polish and that's what becomes shiny.
What we're going to do next is, I need you to grab a cloth and with that cloth, I need you to wet it - What did you bring your mum's tea towels for? I need a proper cloth.
- Camera man? Thanks.
OK.
Chuck that in the cup of water.
Give it a good wring.
I don't want it dripping.
It needs to be damp.
Take a tiny little dot of polish on the end, make sure it's wrapped tightly around one finger.
That's just a mess, look.
Tight.
There you go.
OK.
Take the boot and what we're doing is small circles.
Too small, you'll be there all week.
Too big, you won't get the effect.
What we're looking for is a swirling effect on the polish.
And repeat the process.
Do you finish it with the brush? No, you just keep going.
It's at this point where we have one of those boards that comes up that says "some time later" What do you think? Just move that brush so I can have a proper look.
I just put that there to artfully dress it.
I'll just take a quick look.
- No.
- I missed a bit, I'm sorry.
Did you think that, after ten years in the Army, I wouldn't notice a boot brush sitting on a boot on an inspection and not think, "That must be hiding something"? I should have expected it from a civvy.
Take a fail badge.
Is that because I completely missed it, or was there something on there that stopped it? I expect you put polish on but you didn't put enough on, like I told you to.
- Oh.
- Because you're weak.
THEY SNIGGER That's the most damning thing anyone has ever said about me! PRODUCTION CREW LAUGH That really hurt.
But then, he is standing on my hair and I'm a horrible little man.
Anyway, if you're going to polish your boots, remember to do as the professionals Dismissed! Now then, this gaping void should resonate to the sound of sausages sniggering in a pan of pure joy, and will soon, but only if our concrete worktop has been a success.
Has it? If you were watching earlier on, you will have seen us cast this in Simmy's one-use home-made wooden mould.
If this doesn't work, we'll have to start again because this will be broken as it's taken apart.
It's had threenearly four days to set, hasn't it? It's looking very good on this side but this of course is the underside.
It's how it looks on the other side with the cast-in draining board - Shall we start? - Yeah.
Just so you know, by the way, there's no TV jeopardy at work here.
- This genuinely is - DRILL WHIRRS .
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the first time we've seen this, and it may be terrible.
THEY CHUCKLE Do you think we need more people? Seriously? If there were people standing around doing nothing There's the director, for example.
He's not doing anything.
THEY LAUGH Back to the end of the bench.
- That's probably enough.
- Well, we're going.
Keep going.
Keep going.
Ready? Ohhh! Not bad! That's not bad.
That's brilliant! - That is - Come on, that's great.
- That is quite good.
- That's very cool.
Right, I'm going right hand down Mind your fingers.
'With our culinary colossus in place, it remains only to drizzle it lightly with fixtures.
' It is, I believe, very cool, the cast-concrete worktop, and I think it will catch on because it's industrial, it's rustic, which people like, and it is entirely functional.
It is not in any way decorative or artistic.
'There is but one task left, failure to complete which 'will leave us back where we were at the start of this programme.
' We do have to wire up our hob, which involves putting a plug on it.
But there is a handy maxim here for you to remember - Brown is live, blue is not, green and yellow - earth the lot! It's completely useless because you can get it wrong and say, "Blue is live" Hang on, have I got it wrong? No! Brown is live, blue is not, green and yellow - earth the lot! Also, if you have some very old appliances in your house, the colours will be different.
- Then it would be Red is Black is live, red is not - Yeah.
Brownearths the lot.
- Black, as in Black Death.
- Black is death.
With brown, blue, green and yellow correctly routed, we're ready for the red glow of progress.
- Shall we give this a whirl? - Yes.
Wait for it Look at that! Looks like a sun rising.
- Hang on a minute, who bought this? - Oh.
- Colander, look at that.
It says, "Vegetables, grapes, beans, peas, fruits.
" It's idiotic.
It's wishy-washy and left wing.
Beware this sort of thing in your life.
That is an affectation, an ornamental device for the kitchen.
Our kitchen is not going to be like that.
Our kitchen only has genuinely useful, aerospace-standard equipment in it.
There is no place in our kitchen island unit for the vapid or the vacuous or thecouscous.
But there is something missing, and here's a small clue This is a truly unique kitchen.
Not only is it home cast out of attractive concrete, it also incorporates the controller for a train set.
Exactly why that is will become clear later in the programme, but you can be fairly confident that it's got something to do with the train set.
Meanwhile, out in the garden, there's still a big bomb in a hole.
'I'm alone in the pit with a replica German bomb 'packed with celebrity male fragrance and cow poo.
'The film crew are hiding at a safe distance 'and remote cameras have been positioned to capture the action.
'The bomb contains a clockwork fuse, and if it has started ticking, 'it will go off 'unless I can disable the timer first.
' The first thing you must do is scrape very carefully around the bomb to locate the fuse pocket.
Be very careful, as ever, not to disturb anything.
There you go.
There is the bomb fuse.
What you must do next is go into your shed, rummage around amongst the half-empty tins of paint and those useful offcuts of wood, and find your highly sensitive bomb-disposal stethoscope.
Here's mine.
Hold it very still and hold the probe to the fuse.
TICKING And I can hear ticking.
I can hear ticking very loudly, which is bad news, because that means the bomb was disturbed during be digging and the clockwork fuse has started running again.
That means I have anything between 30 minutes and 74 hours to deal with this.
So, without further ado, you must next sally forth to the local hardware shop to buy your DIY bomb-disposal kit.
Follow me.
Luckily, every self-respecting hardware shop should stock everything you need - to defuse a common or, in our case, garden bomb hazard.
- CHATTERING TICKING - Morning, sir, sorry about the wait.
Can I help? - That's all right.
Do you have pot of salt? - Yep.
A small pair of scissors.
- Yep.
- A length of plastic tubing, 6mm.
- Yeah, I've got some of that.
- A hand-operated vacuum pump.
- Yep.
- A small bicycle pump.
- A lump of putty? - Yep.
A hand drill.
A 4mm drill bit, high-speed steel.
- Titanium tipped, sir? - Mmm.
Lovely.
Now the last thing I need is, I need a small needle, self-tapping at one end in order to go into a 4mm drilled hole, but I need the opposite end to be ribbed to accept 6mm tubing.
- I'll just have a look upstairs.
- OK.
- Was it for bomb disposal? Yes, it is.
It's type 17, from 1940.
- OK.
I won't be a moment.
- It's quite urgent! TICKING 'By one of the great strokes of good fortune that attend the making 'of TV programmes, the hardware shop did have a self-tapping needle.
'Now to defeat fascism using the only language they understand - 'salty water.
' The first thing we must do, in the barrel of the pump, is make up a saturated salt solution.
The salt in the solution will jam up the clockwork mechanism, therefore stopping the clock.
OK, that's ready for use.
Taking your pot of puttyyou need to form this into two pieces.
One, a sausage shape, like so.
And then I need to make a pancake.
The reason for all this will become clear in a moment.
I'm trying to work quickly, but calmly.
I know that thing is ticking.
It's a happy noise when you hear it in your watch.
It's a sinister noise, even though it's the same, when it's part of a bomb's timing mechanism.
Now for the really tricky bit.
I have to drill into the fuse here between the locking ring and the edge of the fuse itself.
This will give me a hole leading down into the fuse pocket.
This has to be done very, very delicately, do not entertain any ideas of getting the electric drill out of the garage.
That would be disastrous.
This is actually the most hazardous part of the operation.
I'm about 3mm in.
I think I've got it stuck.
It's very important not to subject it to any sudden shocks like that.
I know it's not a real bomb and it's not going to kill me, but I still don't want it to go off in my face.
I'm not convinced I'm all the way through to the fuse pocket and, if I'm not, this will be completely useless.
Calm down.
HE SIGHS HE BLOWS That's it, I have a hole.
'Now I have to create a vacuum in the pocket where the fuse sits.
' Now the most important piece of kit - the self-tapping needle.
This must, very carefully, be screwed into this hole.
'I form the shaped putty into an airtight seal around the fuse.
'I could murder a cup of Army tea.
The film crew realise this 'and send me a completely empty gesture of support.
' Thank you.
Anyway .
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we take the hand vacuum pump, this now goes over the end of that.
Right, I'm looking to create a vacuum of around 25 inches of mercury inside the fuse pocket.
I'm nearly there already.
And, as soon as that happens, I flip the valve, introduce the salt solution into the fuse pocket.
Here we go.
Invert and move valve.
That's looking good.
We cut this off, normally, you'd pull this off.
There isn't time for that and it might introduce a shock.
Put that to one side, take my children's bicycle pump, insert it at the free end of the tube, a couple of strokes to pressurise it, and there it is.
I can see a tiny bit starting to leak out there.
The thing is full of salt solution, which means I will gum up the meticulous clockwork of the Third Reich.
'If I'd done this correctly, 'a mass of stalwart British salt crystals will form inside the fuse, 'encrusting the clockwork mechanism and seizing it up.
' There's nothing for it, but to wait 45 minutes for all that to work.
Earlier on, Charlie was preparing to serenade the cold-hearted Cassandra with Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620s, fair if you expect admiring.
He's now ready to enter the garden of earthly delights, or at least the little grassy bit just below the balcony of her flat.
- Right - HE SIGHS the thing to remember, I reckon, - is that everybody secretly wants to be serenaded.
- OK.
Unless it's in a Greek restaurant, then it's really annoying.
You've got your words, Sellotaped on your loot, are you ready? - Yes.
- Right, go.
- Good luck.
- Thank you.
'I've taught Charlie everything I know.
'He can now play the guitar convincingly with one finger.
'He knows the greatest serenade ever written.
'He knows Cassandra's address thanks to ye book of faces.
'Now it's time to see if he can bring his Juliet to the balcony.
' Fair Cassandra I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying Grace this moment just by smiling I feel like a proper Charlie I've not got hair like Bob Marley And this lute song I'm defiling If you come to lunch as I've requested 'What did I tell him? It works.
The Ice Maiden emerges 'unable to believe her luck.
'She looks down and, as requested, she smiles.
'How soft the moonlight sleeps upon this 'Charlie? 'Running away like a big Jessie is never mentioned 'in any of the verses of Thomas Campion 1567-1620.
'Surely he was supposed to fly to her again and sue for pity to renew his hopes distressed.
'In sooth, this could take a while.
' Our forefathers were the sort of chaps who could turn their hands to pretty much anything.
I wouldn't dream of calling in a professional, except as a last resort.
But what about today? I know a bloke who rang a builder to come and screw his wine rack to the wall.
Are modern men really that useless? There was a time when man would marvel at the master craftsmen at his workbench.
But today, he worships instead at the altar of celebrity, the over-tanned, the over-gelled and the downright overrated.
But we can reveal that, among them, there is a rare breed of male media personality working tirelessly and in secret to preserve a vital man skill for posterity.
One such is comedian Alexander Armstrong, who has agreed to reveal the love that dare not speak its name.
Since he was a lad, Alexander has been obsessed with the underground sport of flat-pack furniture assembly against the clock.
HORN BLOWS Right Today, he will try to beat his personal best, set at the 1998 Stockholm Championship for Malm, voted the most complex chest of drawers in the world.
'This exclusive attempt will be overseen 'by me, in the Man Lab monitoring centre, where I can offer 'tips and encouragement via a two-way intercom.
' I'll lay it all out.
- Good.
- No, I'm not going to lay it all out.
- Bad.
- I'm going to read what I should have.
- Better.
The rules are simple - he must beat his personal best time, but a five-minute time penalty applies for any schoolboy error.
He is an impassioned spokesman for this little-known sport, promoting it tirelessly around the country, in disguise.
When I started going out with the woman who's now my wife, one of the first things I did was assemble a chest of drawers for her.
I can't remember how long it took me, but I got the job done.
I'm being really good here, taking careful note of which holes these screws are meant to be going into.
- Good.
- A lesser DIY person would probably just go on in there like a bull in a china shop and they'll be paying the price later.
He's going to claim that he can't find a piece or that it's missing.
It's a very satisfying process, until you find you're missing you're missing a piece of kit, then it gets tedious.
26 minutes in, it is a superlative performance until I started nailing there without pushing this flush against this edge.
School boy error.
- It is a school boy error.
- 'Five-minute penalty.
' MUSIC: Theme from "Grandstand" But, just as the build is back on track, up rears that old enemy of flat-pack excellence - complacency.
I'm getting a giddy sense that it's all coming together.
Quite a lot of horses fall on the home straight.
Yes, thanks.
I'll bare that in mind.
Have you got that last one in the right way round? It looks from here like that you've brown inside.
James, you're a life saver.
- That would be a disaster.
- Still a school boy error, though, sorry.
I see that counts against me.
Right, yes, good.
When you first pick up a bit of kit, and it seems the wrong way round, then you notice there are two sides to the chest of drawers.
The components are, to use the technical jargon, handed.
They're handed, exactly.
That's You see 'I don't know words like that.
' JAMES LAUGHS Good.
Buzz! - Oh, look at that! - Good man.
- There we go.
- He's done it.
There we are.
Send in the butler.
Hey-hey! Look at that, job done.
Thank you.
I'll go and sew that on to my swimming trunks.
'That is a stupendous time and shaves fully five seconds off 'his previous best performance, making him a worthy recipient 'of our pro-celebrity man task badge and a great ambassador for the sport.
' CREW APPLAUDS Wow.
That was fun.
Maybe you've had fun.
If you have, why not write to us.
Send your message to manlab, all one word, at bbc - full stop - co - full stop - uk.
And remember to mark your subject line "I had fun".
Meanwhile, though, this.
Now, if you were paying attention earlier, you may recall we were threatening to do something with a train set.
Remember, the Man Lab includes a seating area, but also our kitchen, an extensive workshop, the lavatory block, my office and so on.
There will be a huge movement of goods and materials between all of these places.
I can get up and walk over there for a cup of tea, but why? Why not build a supremely efficient railway system to take screwdrivers and peanuts and whatever from place to place? So that is what we're going to do.
The railway will go in this direction.
It'll sweep round to run alongside the wall.
All the way down here, ignore the junk.
This is stuff we've inherited with our Man Lab.
As with a real railway, we deal with the world how it is.
We must negotiate these obstacles, around here, past the cement mixer then it'll go through tunnels we'll make in the wall into the lavatory.
Next, the train will emerge from this tunnel we'll build over here, from the lavatory block into the office running behind my desk.
These are bits of the railway, what I'll use to make it.
Mmm! Yes, please.
Our train now steams out of the office through this complex series of curves.
A genuine, domestic, integrated transport solution.
Laden with consumables to sustain man and engineering materials to further his lot.
Yes! Our train continues around Sim's workshop, through a little kink, along this road and finally to the suspension bridge, where it drops off the olives and peanuts and the macadamias.
There you go, it's going to be brilliant.
We've developed a modern version of what in the early days of railways would have been called a bell signal system.
Here is the master box, there's one in the kitchen and the seating area.
Every station has a little bell push.
- You press it - BELL RINGS .
.
it goes bing-bong and that says number five, that is the number for the seating area.
No danger of forgetting - everything we need to know is written down on this handy station master's card.
So let's say it was me in the office.
I'm number three.
BELL RINGS Number three - they know James in the office wants the train.
The person in the kitchen thinks, "Off we go, set it to depart.
" And there goes the train to me in my office.
Whoever is in the kitchen can't see when the train has arrived in the office, but that's OK, because I can see it arrive - and then - BELL RINGS .
.
I know from my crib sheet that a bong when running means stop.
I bong, it stopped.
Perfect.
Now I take the little notepad from the train and I write down that I would like please a banana.
So I simply right banana and pop it back in there.
Now we can see from the instructions that, if I give one bong, it'd continue in the direction it was going in.
I don't want that.
I want to send it backwards.
The signal for that is two bongs.
The person at the other end has to listen carefully to see how many bongs there are, so I go BELL RINGS TWICE Off it goes with my request for a banana.
Here comes the train.
It's going to come into view any second.
I'm ready to stop it, bong, when running.
Stop.
BELL RINGS A bit of an abrupt stop, but never mind, there is my banana.
I haven't had to walk anywhere.
Now, I have an admission to make.
In all the excitement, I think we got carried away building our railway at the expense of other considerations.
At the moment, 'our monolithic kitchen risks becoming little more than a concrete white elephant, 'whose only culinary success to date has been the delivery of a melancholy banana 'to a melancholy bloke in his melancholy office.
' JAMES AND THE CREW LAUGH Its gleaming hob, sink and oven remain unused.
Its virgin worktop unblemished by the hearty produce of surf and soil.
'But now, with hunger raging in the bellies of our stout Man Lab yeomanry, 'it's time for our kitchen to cement - Ahem! - 'its reputation as a crucible of Cordon bleu creativity.
' I'm going to show you how to make a fish finger sandwich.
You need five fish fingers for a standard fish finger man-wich and two slices of nice, stiff, old-fashioned white bread.
So five fish fingers in the pan, they take 5-6 minutes per side, depending on how crispy you like them.
Give it a little swirl.
Whilst they're cooking, we can consider the garnish, which is going to be sauce tartar.
The ingredients for this are a healthy blob of salad cream.
'Oops!' Sort of about a tablespoon of that.
- James? - Yes, director.
- You've broken the glass.
It's only a crack.
My mum would say that harbours germs.
It will do over time, but it was only broken 40 seconds ago.
- Do you really want me to start again? - I think so, yes.
You may to throw it all away.
- It's acceptable to cook using the cracked glass, but not if it's on TV? - Yes.
- Is it OK to murder people as long as you don't do it on TV? - Depends how annoying they are.
'The kitchen is just the place for a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.
'It's like making lunch for John-Paul Sartre and all his mates.
'Sauce tartar with new unbroken glass take two.
' Whilst they're cooking, we can make the garnish, which is going to be sauce tartar.
First, you put a healthy blob of salad cream into a jar like this.
A tablespoon-full, something like that.
Then to this you add a roughly equal amount of sandwich spread.
Heaped teaspoon like that.
Stir these vigorously together, being very careful not to break the glass whilst you do it.
The fish fingers have been in for five minutes.
That's what they should look like.
Slightly browned, slightly seared as it would be if this was a piece of tuna in an expensive gastro pub.
It isn't.
It is the Man Lab kitchen, they are lightly burned.
The fish finger was designed so five would fit into a sandwich.
Four in that direction and one across the top there.
They fit exactly on to a British standard-size slice of white bread.
The fish fingers are now ready and this is how you arrange them.
Onetwo threefour and then one across the top, like that.
Tartar sauce liberally applied to the top.
Put the top piece of bread on.
Remember, four fish fingers are going that way.
One is going that way, which way do you cut it? I think the answer is that way.
You get precisely 2 1/2 fish fingers in each half of the sandwich.
'It isn't quite the feeding of the 5,000, but as the old saying goes, 'teach me to fish and I will eat for a lifetime.
'Give me a fish in the form of fingers - 'and I will eat for a lunchtime or something.
' - Mmm, hot.
I've just cooked it, you imbecile.
God, I'm exhausted.
Let's do something else.
When mowing the lawn at home, it's always a good idea to have a refreshing jug of ginger beer and some fortifying jam sandwiches to hand on your garden picnic table.
'That's fine if you have a normal-sized garden, 'but what if you have a lawn of 40 acres like we do at Man Lab?' 'This is boring.
'I think I'll have a word with my friend Simmy.
' So, James, what have we got? We've got an electric, um, wheelchair here with a joystick which controls movement back, forward, left and right.
We're going to take that and attach it to our picnic table - Right.
- .
.
so we can drive our picnic table around by remote control.
Does somebody have to sit on the picnic table to drive it? No, we'll have a hand-held transmitter.
- Actually radio controlled? - Actually radio controlled.
This could be a work of genius.
These wheelchairs are examples of exceptional electronic engineering.
The big wheels each contain an individual motor and gearbox.
We're taking these and attaching these to our picnic table.
Sim has recycled a two-channel FM transmitter and receiver.
Once this was used for a radio-controlled toy boat.
We have a higher purpose for it.
To mimic the movement of the joystick on the wheelchair, Sim has had to be rather cunning.
This is a transmitter, receiver servos.
A servo is a motor inside here, which is controlled by the receiver left and right.
What we're going to do now is attach the servos to these two sliders.
In effect, we can get it to go forward and backwards, left and right.
This is now all hooked up.
This is our original joystick.
We now have left and right and forward and reverse.
This ground-breaking technology could be applied to mundane static objects across the globe.
Beds, sofas and even bar stools could be liberated to run free like the wind.
The moment of truth.
'It's a triumph, one that will surely see Sim joining the ranks of 'Stephenson, Bell, and Logie Baird as another great British inventor.
'Now, whenever I mow the lawn, I need never be more than a few feet 'from my picnic table laden with ginger beer and jam sandwiches.
'But, like all new inventions, this one is not without its flaws.
'I can make the table follow me, but that still means I have to walk when I mow.
'Time to add my own stamp to Sim's masterful invention.
' Earlier in the show, I went head-to-head with this ticking bomb unearthed in the Man Lab garden.
This lethal device packed with a payload of cow poo and celebrity male fragrance has been ticking for the last three hours.
I've attempted to stop the timer by pumping salty water into the fuse to gum up the clockwork mechanism.
'Now, as I return to the pit, I have no idea if the process has been successful.
' Here's a very sobering thought.
I've read this process in an old book from the 1940s, put together by a bomb disposal expert, who originally learnt this sequence of operations by trial and error and getting it right probably cost several lives.
Several people became what they call "the pink mist".
So, those people were unspeakably brave to do this.
It's quite frightening knowing it's just full of perfume and poo, but if it was a real 500kg high-explosive bomb, it's unthinkable.
This is the moment of truth.
TICKING The stethoscope is working.
I can hear my own watch.
It's stopped! It's stopped.
That's fantastic.
Salt water has defeated the enemy.
That's just brilliant.
All I've got to do is get it out and, once the fuse is out, this is simply a barrel of explosives.
Completely inert.
Without a trigger, it can't do anything.
So here we go.
HE LAUGHS All clear, everyone.
All clear! How about that? Go, go, go! 'So, what can possibly have gone wrong? 'How can I be covered in cow poo and Conditional - 'the latest male fragrance from Peter Andre? 'For an answer, I invite you back to Man Lab.
' Now, I do wish to boast that I did successfully disable the clockwork mechanism.
You can see here, look, that there's plenty of salt in there gumming up the clockwork, so that the charge can't be used to fire the fuse.
Bu, what I didn't know, you see, was that the bomb also included the very fiendish ZUS40 booby-trap fuse and it's designed to be triggered when you remove the original fuse.
That little spring is released and sets the bomb off.
That is why I'm obliged by our lawyers to say this.
You must never, ever try this at home.
Good night.
Next week on Man Lab 'We sail the English Channel using a dog to guide us '.
.
and build our very own pub' Is it coming out all over the floor? '.
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encourage today's downtrodden male to blow his own trumpet.
' TUNELESS PLAYING JAMES SNIGGERS - Take aim.
- 'I challenge a television executive to a dual 'and John Sergeant is in danger of damaging his nuts.
' No, we can't do it.
This doesn't fit on.
- John, are you familiar with locking wheel nuts? - No, I'm not.
This is where man finds himself these days.
10,000 years in the making, 10,000 years of endeavour in science and the arts and the humanities, and within one generation, he's been reduced to a feckless, bed-wetting, Parmesan-shaving imbecile who revels in his own uselessness.
Something has to be done.
Welcome to Man Lab, the gruelling arena in which the terminal decline of man will be arrested and possibly even reversed.
In this humble industrial building, we will revive and relearn the skills that defined man and drag them, glittering, onto a broad, sunlit upland of being a proper chap.
Well, we'll be doing some woodwork, anyway, and maybe a bit of plumbing.
MUSIC: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss 'Man Lab is an emergency service, on call to jump-start the stalled evolution of man.
HE CHUCKLES 'It's a blokes' base camp for an epic assault on the north face of Mount Muttonhead, 'a repository of ingenuity and invention from which man will emerge blinking, yet triumphant, 'armed with only a decent toolkit and a slim volume of English poetry.
'It's the modern face of the gentleman's club, 'where things get done properly and are followed by a proper pint.
' It's excellent.
'In short, this series, and this alone, 'will sweep away the confusion that has reigned since the dreadful dawn of moisturiser 'and the male makeover.
'End of mission statement.
'This week, in Man Lab, a concrete monument to the revival of formal dining' The fish finger was designed so that five would fit into a sandwich.
'.
.
music is the food of love, though slightly half-baked' You cannot come out of this badly.
'.
.
a TV celebrity comes out about his man skill' It would be awful to be really good at this, wouldn't it? '.
.
we build the only integrated transport system in Britain that actually works' I haven't had to walk anywhere.
'.
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and I take on the Nazis.
'single-handed.
'But first, and never again, a quick tour of our house.
' This is our workshop area.
This is my friend Sim, who will be helping to redefine the male species.
Mainly in plywood.
I'm afraid he's rather untidy.
Over here, we have our cement mixer, but don't let this put you off.
We are going to be making some improvements to the Man Lab, noticeably to the lavatory area, but this is not a makeover show in any way whatsoever.
We will not re-theming anything in a Mediterranean-style with terracotta.
Oh, no! This cup of tea is now empty, which means it should be a simple matter to simply walk into the kitchen and make another one, except we don't have a kitchen.
But we have allocated an area for a kitchen here and we're going to be making ourselves a very fashionable island unit, hopefully with a concrete worktop and all the modern facilities, so that we can make tea and man-wiches at will.
Finally, here is our rest and recuperation area.
Everything that a chap needs to relax.
Some trendy retro sofas, a table, mysterious unmendable motorcycle, shelves, various strange knick-knacks and a kumbaya tambourine.
Right, let's get on with something.
Something useful and relevant.
Now, the British people are very, very good at digging.
It's why we're such excellent gardeners and so good at escaping from prisoner-of-war camps.
But what if you were in your garden, digging the foundations for your new extension, and you came across an unexploded World War II German bomb? METALLIC CLUNK HE GASPS Here is our unwanted gift from Klaus.
It's a faithful copy of a 1940 Luftwaffe 250kg bomb, complete with payload, genuine World War II fuse and clockwork timing device.
Today, I'm going to show you how to defuse it, in case YOU find one.
But what are the chances of that? How likely is it that your spade of burning gold will strike the cold steel of vanquished Nazi ambition? During World War II, Germany dropped 75,000 tons of bombs on Britain.
Here is a short clip of the Luftwaffe putting paid to another of our beloved fish and chip shops.
Here is a typical Victorian London street.
Yet amongst the houses, we see things that were obviously built after the war.
There, for example, and right there.
This is where bombs fell.
We know this because of records that were kept at the time.
Now, a typical bomber in 1940 might have carried eight 250kg Bombe, and they would have been dropped in what is known as a stick - they fell at regular intervals.
Bang.
Bang.
Beyond that, bang, undoubtedly another modern building.
But here's the alarming statistic.
It's reckoned that one in ten of those bombs didn't go off.
Or, to put it another way, between September 1940 and June 1941, an average of 85 dud bombs fell on British civilian targets every day.
The plucky British were not to be cowed.
They put on ill-fitting hats and kept lookout during raids to mark the fall of dud bombs.
These were then defused, or set off in what the police at Heathrow Airport would call "a controlled explosion".
But let's be honest, counting bombs during an air raid can't have been easy.
They missed a few.
That's why they're still being found.
A few have been found at the site of the 2012 Olympics.
We must all be vigilant.
The first thing to understand is that, unlike the Olympics, bomb-disposal is not a mass participation event.
Now, I want to make it absolutely clear that I really am alone in the pit with the bomb.
All the cameras on which you are watching me, that I can address, like this one and this one, they're all completely remote.
The film crew are miles away over there.
I've got a chest camera so you can see what I'm doing.
There's a good reason for the film crew to take cover.
While our Man Lab bomb does not contain 250kg of TNT, it is fitted with a small explosive charge, and it's packed with a hideously inhumane payload - a deadly mixture of Peter Andre's new perfume, Conditional Pour Homme HE SPLUTTERS .
.
and cow poo from the Garden of England.
Careful Careful! 'This bomb WILL go off if I make the slightest error.
'As a result, I'll need to know exactly what makes it tick.
' Somewhere on the sides of our Jerry bomb will be a fuse pocket like this one here.
In that fuse pocket there will be an elektrischer Aufschlag Zunder, or an electrical condenser resistance fuse, exactly like this one.
This is the extremely popular type 17 model.
At the base of the fuse is a solid plug of penthrite wax - highly explosive, known as the gaine.
When the bomb was dropped from the aeroplane, a small burst of electricity was passed to the fuse through the charging head here, and from there it was ready to fire the gaine, and with it, of course, the entire bomb.
That could happen on impact or it might happen after a delay effected by this internal clockwork mechanism.
This could run for anything between 30 seconds and 74 hours.
If we could just put aside for one moment the notion that this is all a horrible device designed to spread dreadful death and destruction, it has to be acknowledged that this bit of German engineering, as usual, is absolutely exquisite.
It's a piece of mechanical poetry in effect.
It's such a shame that it had to be used for something so terrible.
I must overcome this clockwork timer or the bomb will explode and the results will be unthinkably stinky.
Now, a statistic released a while back suggested that the average British household kitchen lasted no longer than five years before being replaced.
But here at Man Lab, we like to choose once and choose well.
So we're going to build a kitchen that will last for 1,000 years out of concrete.
The kitchen will be the first of a series of ambitious improvements to Planet Man Lab.
To achieve true millennial permanence, I'll need specialist help, and mine comes in the unshaven and loosely defined shape of Simmy, inspirational inventor, builder and architect.
"What a piece of work is a man," wrote Shakespeare.
He may have meant Sim, who is so committed he had already built the mould for our kitchen before I'd turned up.
In order to cast the worktop in concrete, we have to think of the worktop in reverse in order to make a mould, which is what Simmy's done here.
That is the drainer.
So what is normally an indentation is now proud, because when the concrete comes out, it will be an indentation.
That is where the sink will go.
- That's the sink.
- This is where the hob will go.
- Those are the rough holes for the taps.
- Yes.
This is not a proper mould.
- We're going to have to break it apart to get the top end.
- Right.
So it's a one-shot deal, this.
If it doesn't work, there'll be something else in the programme at this point next week about building some prefabricated units bought from a high-street kitchen shop.
There cannot be a more noble material for the construction of a kitchen than concrete - a self-setting soup of cement, gravel, sand and water.
Functional and refined and completely impervious to the vagaries of fashion or the weather! It is worth pointing out that the making of concrete was one of the great forgotten man skills, because the Romans of course could do it and it took us until Well, about 1860, something like that, to rediscover it.
Britain's first concrete house appeared on the Isle of Wight, and that was in 1870something? Supplementary man skill - pontificate on television only if you are in full possession of the facts.
That first concrete house was built in 1869.
Although it is fair to say that Britain has never really fallen in love with this most mouldable of building materials.
It is very true that concrete got a bad rap, especially during the '70s and '80s, as being an ugly material.
But I don't think that is true.
Used correctly, it can be rather wonderful.
It tends to be an ugly colour, but you can make it into pretty much any shape you want.
This is true.
You should never use it as the surround for a bonfire, because it explodes, because it has little bubbles of water in it, sometimes big ones, and they heat up, but they're under pressure because they're all closed, and at some point - kebang! - and you get bits of concrete flying all over the place.
For the next two hours, Simmy and I continue to fill our kitchen mould.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive".
I think you've got the idea.
You've probably seen enough of us mincing around with trowels.
So, we'll come back to this when it's set and we break it out.
In the meantime, I'm going to put a different shirt on and reappear in our sitting area for something else.
Here is the shirt, and the something else is about boiler repair or so it might seem.
Most people just 'My boiler repair lecture should have been the highlight of the Man Lab year.
' .
.
60% of all boiler complaints are simply because there's no gas because the bill hasn't been paid.
You have paid the bill, you will narrow it down to the control unit, which may be this, the Z376R.
'But something was wrong with Charlie, our researcher, 'a man who normally daydreams in British thermal units.
' It's a plug-in module, it's a sealed unit like 'Today, he was dreaming in cheesy Rachmaninov.
' ROMANTIC MUSIC PLAYS Charlie? Charlie Charlie! MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY 'Poor Charlie is lovesick.
' Thanks.
'He's limping around uselessly with Cupid's golden arrow lodged firmly in his trousers, 'so I have no choice but to take him to the local centre for male counselling.
' - Thanks, mate.
- Right.
Tell me all about it.
Well, I can't stop thinking about her.
She's, um Everything I do at work, I keep getting distracted just by her being there And by looking at her, I just want to be spending some alone time with her.
I just need her to see me for who I am, not just this person at work 'Oh, God! I can't listen to this snivelling about inner feelings any longer! 'It's time to instruct Charlie in the art of seduction.
' I'm wondering, because I bet no-one else is, if Charlie has ever thought of the lost art of the serenade? I'm quite well positioned to advise you on this one, Charlie, because many years ago, I was a minstrel.
I serenaded people, because back in the 1970s, it was very fashionable to have a themed banqueting hall, Restoration or Elizabethan, and I walked around singing to people, accompanying myself upon the guitar.
For example # Faire, if you expect admiring Dear, if you provoke desiring Grace dear love with kind requiting That is Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620.
The remarkable thing was, I couldn't play the guitar - I still can't - but here is a little trick for other would-be minstrels and serenaders.
Normally the guitar is tuned E, A, D, G, B, E, which makes fingering very tricky, - but I have tuned this simply - HE STRUMS GUITAR - .
.
to open perfect fit.
By this simple expedient, you can play, sort of, any chord you want by simply moving your whole finger up and down the fret board - a musical technique known as cheating! I'll fly to thee again and sue for pity To renew my love's distressing.
- Got it? - Um - Have a go.
Try Thomas Campion's - 1557 to 1620 - Faire, If You Expect Admiring, - the original Elizabethan lute song, upon this cheating guitar.
- Right, OK.
HE SIGHS # Faire, if Faire No.
Faire Faire, if you expect admiring Sweet, if you provoke desiring - That one? - Yeah.
BOTH: # Grace Deere BOTH: # Love With kind requiting.
Grace What is it? Are you sure this is going to be right for what I'm doing? Thomas Campion was a renowned swordsman back in the 16th century.
And of all Cassandra's other suitors, I bet no one else has turned up outside her balcony and sung her a lute song.
OK, I'll take your word for it.
You cannot come out of this badly.
I'm not sure, but I'll have to change the words, I don't think they're relevant any more.
Faire, if you Actually, I was going to say, so you don't spoil the surprise for the viewers, - why don't you go and practise in the office? - OK.
Do you know where she lives, by the way? If you are thinking of sallying forth with lustful heart and lute, always sing Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620.
If you can't play it properly, master one-fingered guitar.
Finally, remember to find her address by means that will stand up to cross-examination in court.
Now, as a chap, I'm sure you own a stout pair of boots.
I certainly hope so.
But what sort of condition are they in? Not that good, I'd wager.
So stand by to stand by! Top tips from people who know better.
This is Platoon Sergeant Mark Buckingham of the Prince of Wales' Royal Regiment.
His boots are so shiny he can see the Queen of England's face in them.
These are a standard set of drill boots, ammo boots, we call them.
Brought especially for today.
After about 10 hours spread out over a couple of weeks .
.
that's what you can achieve.
- And they're ready for Buckingham Palace.
- Fantastic.
These boots are owned by our slovenly producer, Rebecca, and they're disgusting.
Our challenge - to restore them.
It's a big job, this.
So I'm going to do the left boot and the sergeant here is going to do the right boot.
And then at the end, he can decide whether or not I've won my Man Lab boot badge.
Go.
Grab your boot brushes.
You need one on, one off.
- Polish on, polish off.
- Take your on brush.
The dark one.
All you're going to do is take a generous scoop out of there onto your brush.
Big scoops.
There's no neat circles or anything like that.
Just throw the polish on.
OK, that's enough on.
Take your off brush.
- The other brush! - Yes.
- You'll do exactly the same again, but this time you're taking the polish off.
The common mistake that people make they think they're shining the leather off.
You need to build up a substantial layer of polish and that's what becomes shiny.
What we're going to do next is, I need you to grab a cloth and with that cloth, I need you to wet it - What did you bring your mum's tea towels for? I need a proper cloth.
- Camera man? Thanks.
OK.
Chuck that in the cup of water.
Give it a good wring.
I don't want it dripping.
It needs to be damp.
Take a tiny little dot of polish on the end, make sure it's wrapped tightly around one finger.
That's just a mess, look.
Tight.
There you go.
OK.
Take the boot and what we're doing is small circles.
Too small, you'll be there all week.
Too big, you won't get the effect.
What we're looking for is a swirling effect on the polish.
And repeat the process.
Do you finish it with the brush? No, you just keep going.
It's at this point where we have one of those boards that comes up that says "some time later" What do you think? Just move that brush so I can have a proper look.
I just put that there to artfully dress it.
I'll just take a quick look.
- No.
- I missed a bit, I'm sorry.
Did you think that, after ten years in the Army, I wouldn't notice a boot brush sitting on a boot on an inspection and not think, "That must be hiding something"? I should have expected it from a civvy.
Take a fail badge.
Is that because I completely missed it, or was there something on there that stopped it? I expect you put polish on but you didn't put enough on, like I told you to.
- Oh.
- Because you're weak.
THEY SNIGGER That's the most damning thing anyone has ever said about me! PRODUCTION CREW LAUGH That really hurt.
But then, he is standing on my hair and I'm a horrible little man.
Anyway, if you're going to polish your boots, remember to do as the professionals Dismissed! Now then, this gaping void should resonate to the sound of sausages sniggering in a pan of pure joy, and will soon, but only if our concrete worktop has been a success.
Has it? If you were watching earlier on, you will have seen us cast this in Simmy's one-use home-made wooden mould.
If this doesn't work, we'll have to start again because this will be broken as it's taken apart.
It's had threenearly four days to set, hasn't it? It's looking very good on this side but this of course is the underside.
It's how it looks on the other side with the cast-in draining board - Shall we start? - Yeah.
Just so you know, by the way, there's no TV jeopardy at work here.
- This genuinely is - DRILL WHIRRS .
.
the first time we've seen this, and it may be terrible.
THEY CHUCKLE Do you think we need more people? Seriously? If there were people standing around doing nothing There's the director, for example.
He's not doing anything.
THEY LAUGH Back to the end of the bench.
- That's probably enough.
- Well, we're going.
Keep going.
Keep going.
Ready? Ohhh! Not bad! That's not bad.
That's brilliant! - That is - Come on, that's great.
- That is quite good.
- That's very cool.
Right, I'm going right hand down Mind your fingers.
'With our culinary colossus in place, it remains only to drizzle it lightly with fixtures.
' It is, I believe, very cool, the cast-concrete worktop, and I think it will catch on because it's industrial, it's rustic, which people like, and it is entirely functional.
It is not in any way decorative or artistic.
'There is but one task left, failure to complete which 'will leave us back where we were at the start of this programme.
' We do have to wire up our hob, which involves putting a plug on it.
But there is a handy maxim here for you to remember - Brown is live, blue is not, green and yellow - earth the lot! It's completely useless because you can get it wrong and say, "Blue is live" Hang on, have I got it wrong? No! Brown is live, blue is not, green and yellow - earth the lot! Also, if you have some very old appliances in your house, the colours will be different.
- Then it would be Red is Black is live, red is not - Yeah.
Brownearths the lot.
- Black, as in Black Death.
- Black is death.
With brown, blue, green and yellow correctly routed, we're ready for the red glow of progress.
- Shall we give this a whirl? - Yes.
Wait for it Look at that! Looks like a sun rising.
- Hang on a minute, who bought this? - Oh.
- Colander, look at that.
It says, "Vegetables, grapes, beans, peas, fruits.
" It's idiotic.
It's wishy-washy and left wing.
Beware this sort of thing in your life.
That is an affectation, an ornamental device for the kitchen.
Our kitchen is not going to be like that.
Our kitchen only has genuinely useful, aerospace-standard equipment in it.
There is no place in our kitchen island unit for the vapid or the vacuous or thecouscous.
But there is something missing, and here's a small clue This is a truly unique kitchen.
Not only is it home cast out of attractive concrete, it also incorporates the controller for a train set.
Exactly why that is will become clear later in the programme, but you can be fairly confident that it's got something to do with the train set.
Meanwhile, out in the garden, there's still a big bomb in a hole.
'I'm alone in the pit with a replica German bomb 'packed with celebrity male fragrance and cow poo.
'The film crew are hiding at a safe distance 'and remote cameras have been positioned to capture the action.
'The bomb contains a clockwork fuse, and if it has started ticking, 'it will go off 'unless I can disable the timer first.
' The first thing you must do is scrape very carefully around the bomb to locate the fuse pocket.
Be very careful, as ever, not to disturb anything.
There you go.
There is the bomb fuse.
What you must do next is go into your shed, rummage around amongst the half-empty tins of paint and those useful offcuts of wood, and find your highly sensitive bomb-disposal stethoscope.
Here's mine.
Hold it very still and hold the probe to the fuse.
TICKING And I can hear ticking.
I can hear ticking very loudly, which is bad news, because that means the bomb was disturbed during be digging and the clockwork fuse has started running again.
That means I have anything between 30 minutes and 74 hours to deal with this.
So, without further ado, you must next sally forth to the local hardware shop to buy your DIY bomb-disposal kit.
Follow me.
Luckily, every self-respecting hardware shop should stock everything you need - to defuse a common or, in our case, garden bomb hazard.
- CHATTERING TICKING - Morning, sir, sorry about the wait.
Can I help? - That's all right.
Do you have pot of salt? - Yep.
A small pair of scissors.
- Yep.
- A length of plastic tubing, 6mm.
- Yeah, I've got some of that.
- A hand-operated vacuum pump.
- Yep.
- A small bicycle pump.
- A lump of putty? - Yep.
A hand drill.
A 4mm drill bit, high-speed steel.
- Titanium tipped, sir? - Mmm.
Lovely.
Now the last thing I need is, I need a small needle, self-tapping at one end in order to go into a 4mm drilled hole, but I need the opposite end to be ribbed to accept 6mm tubing.
- I'll just have a look upstairs.
- OK.
- Was it for bomb disposal? Yes, it is.
It's type 17, from 1940.
- OK.
I won't be a moment.
- It's quite urgent! TICKING 'By one of the great strokes of good fortune that attend the making 'of TV programmes, the hardware shop did have a self-tapping needle.
'Now to defeat fascism using the only language they understand - 'salty water.
' The first thing we must do, in the barrel of the pump, is make up a saturated salt solution.
The salt in the solution will jam up the clockwork mechanism, therefore stopping the clock.
OK, that's ready for use.
Taking your pot of puttyyou need to form this into two pieces.
One, a sausage shape, like so.
And then I need to make a pancake.
The reason for all this will become clear in a moment.
I'm trying to work quickly, but calmly.
I know that thing is ticking.
It's a happy noise when you hear it in your watch.
It's a sinister noise, even though it's the same, when it's part of a bomb's timing mechanism.
Now for the really tricky bit.
I have to drill into the fuse here between the locking ring and the edge of the fuse itself.
This will give me a hole leading down into the fuse pocket.
This has to be done very, very delicately, do not entertain any ideas of getting the electric drill out of the garage.
That would be disastrous.
This is actually the most hazardous part of the operation.
I'm about 3mm in.
I think I've got it stuck.
It's very important not to subject it to any sudden shocks like that.
I know it's not a real bomb and it's not going to kill me, but I still don't want it to go off in my face.
I'm not convinced I'm all the way through to the fuse pocket and, if I'm not, this will be completely useless.
Calm down.
HE SIGHS HE BLOWS That's it, I have a hole.
'Now I have to create a vacuum in the pocket where the fuse sits.
' Now the most important piece of kit - the self-tapping needle.
This must, very carefully, be screwed into this hole.
'I form the shaped putty into an airtight seal around the fuse.
'I could murder a cup of Army tea.
The film crew realise this 'and send me a completely empty gesture of support.
' Thank you.
Anyway .
.
we take the hand vacuum pump, this now goes over the end of that.
Right, I'm looking to create a vacuum of around 25 inches of mercury inside the fuse pocket.
I'm nearly there already.
And, as soon as that happens, I flip the valve, introduce the salt solution into the fuse pocket.
Here we go.
Invert and move valve.
That's looking good.
We cut this off, normally, you'd pull this off.
There isn't time for that and it might introduce a shock.
Put that to one side, take my children's bicycle pump, insert it at the free end of the tube, a couple of strokes to pressurise it, and there it is.
I can see a tiny bit starting to leak out there.
The thing is full of salt solution, which means I will gum up the meticulous clockwork of the Third Reich.
'If I'd done this correctly, 'a mass of stalwart British salt crystals will form inside the fuse, 'encrusting the clockwork mechanism and seizing it up.
' There's nothing for it, but to wait 45 minutes for all that to work.
Earlier on, Charlie was preparing to serenade the cold-hearted Cassandra with Thomas Campion, 1567 to 1620s, fair if you expect admiring.
He's now ready to enter the garden of earthly delights, or at least the little grassy bit just below the balcony of her flat.
- Right - HE SIGHS the thing to remember, I reckon, - is that everybody secretly wants to be serenaded.
- OK.
Unless it's in a Greek restaurant, then it's really annoying.
You've got your words, Sellotaped on your loot, are you ready? - Yes.
- Right, go.
- Good luck.
- Thank you.
'I've taught Charlie everything I know.
'He can now play the guitar convincingly with one finger.
'He knows the greatest serenade ever written.
'He knows Cassandra's address thanks to ye book of faces.
'Now it's time to see if he can bring his Juliet to the balcony.
' Fair Cassandra I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trying Grace this moment just by smiling I feel like a proper Charlie I've not got hair like Bob Marley And this lute song I'm defiling If you come to lunch as I've requested 'What did I tell him? It works.
The Ice Maiden emerges 'unable to believe her luck.
'She looks down and, as requested, she smiles.
'How soft the moonlight sleeps upon this 'Charlie? 'Running away like a big Jessie is never mentioned 'in any of the verses of Thomas Campion 1567-1620.
'Surely he was supposed to fly to her again and sue for pity to renew his hopes distressed.
'In sooth, this could take a while.
' Our forefathers were the sort of chaps who could turn their hands to pretty much anything.
I wouldn't dream of calling in a professional, except as a last resort.
But what about today? I know a bloke who rang a builder to come and screw his wine rack to the wall.
Are modern men really that useless? There was a time when man would marvel at the master craftsmen at his workbench.
But today, he worships instead at the altar of celebrity, the over-tanned, the over-gelled and the downright overrated.
But we can reveal that, among them, there is a rare breed of male media personality working tirelessly and in secret to preserve a vital man skill for posterity.
One such is comedian Alexander Armstrong, who has agreed to reveal the love that dare not speak its name.
Since he was a lad, Alexander has been obsessed with the underground sport of flat-pack furniture assembly against the clock.
HORN BLOWS Right Today, he will try to beat his personal best, set at the 1998 Stockholm Championship for Malm, voted the most complex chest of drawers in the world.
'This exclusive attempt will be overseen 'by me, in the Man Lab monitoring centre, where I can offer 'tips and encouragement via a two-way intercom.
' I'll lay it all out.
- Good.
- No, I'm not going to lay it all out.
- Bad.
- I'm going to read what I should have.
- Better.
The rules are simple - he must beat his personal best time, but a five-minute time penalty applies for any schoolboy error.
He is an impassioned spokesman for this little-known sport, promoting it tirelessly around the country, in disguise.
When I started going out with the woman who's now my wife, one of the first things I did was assemble a chest of drawers for her.
I can't remember how long it took me, but I got the job done.
I'm being really good here, taking careful note of which holes these screws are meant to be going into.
- Good.
- A lesser DIY person would probably just go on in there like a bull in a china shop and they'll be paying the price later.
He's going to claim that he can't find a piece or that it's missing.
It's a very satisfying process, until you find you're missing you're missing a piece of kit, then it gets tedious.
26 minutes in, it is a superlative performance until I started nailing there without pushing this flush against this edge.
School boy error.
- It is a school boy error.
- 'Five-minute penalty.
' MUSIC: Theme from "Grandstand" But, just as the build is back on track, up rears that old enemy of flat-pack excellence - complacency.
I'm getting a giddy sense that it's all coming together.
Quite a lot of horses fall on the home straight.
Yes, thanks.
I'll bare that in mind.
Have you got that last one in the right way round? It looks from here like that you've brown inside.
James, you're a life saver.
- That would be a disaster.
- Still a school boy error, though, sorry.
I see that counts against me.
Right, yes, good.
When you first pick up a bit of kit, and it seems the wrong way round, then you notice there are two sides to the chest of drawers.
The components are, to use the technical jargon, handed.
They're handed, exactly.
That's You see 'I don't know words like that.
' JAMES LAUGHS Good.
Buzz! - Oh, look at that! - Good man.
- There we go.
- He's done it.
There we are.
Send in the butler.
Hey-hey! Look at that, job done.
Thank you.
I'll go and sew that on to my swimming trunks.
'That is a stupendous time and shaves fully five seconds off 'his previous best performance, making him a worthy recipient 'of our pro-celebrity man task badge and a great ambassador for the sport.
' CREW APPLAUDS Wow.
That was fun.
Maybe you've had fun.
If you have, why not write to us.
Send your message to manlab, all one word, at bbc - full stop - co - full stop - uk.
And remember to mark your subject line "I had fun".
Meanwhile, though, this.
Now, if you were paying attention earlier, you may recall we were threatening to do something with a train set.
Remember, the Man Lab includes a seating area, but also our kitchen, an extensive workshop, the lavatory block, my office and so on.
There will be a huge movement of goods and materials between all of these places.
I can get up and walk over there for a cup of tea, but why? Why not build a supremely efficient railway system to take screwdrivers and peanuts and whatever from place to place? So that is what we're going to do.
The railway will go in this direction.
It'll sweep round to run alongside the wall.
All the way down here, ignore the junk.
This is stuff we've inherited with our Man Lab.
As with a real railway, we deal with the world how it is.
We must negotiate these obstacles, around here, past the cement mixer then it'll go through tunnels we'll make in the wall into the lavatory.
Next, the train will emerge from this tunnel we'll build over here, from the lavatory block into the office running behind my desk.
These are bits of the railway, what I'll use to make it.
Mmm! Yes, please.
Our train now steams out of the office through this complex series of curves.
A genuine, domestic, integrated transport solution.
Laden with consumables to sustain man and engineering materials to further his lot.
Yes! Our train continues around Sim's workshop, through a little kink, along this road and finally to the suspension bridge, where it drops off the olives and peanuts and the macadamias.
There you go, it's going to be brilliant.
We've developed a modern version of what in the early days of railways would have been called a bell signal system.
Here is the master box, there's one in the kitchen and the seating area.
Every station has a little bell push.
- You press it - BELL RINGS .
.
it goes bing-bong and that says number five, that is the number for the seating area.
No danger of forgetting - everything we need to know is written down on this handy station master's card.
So let's say it was me in the office.
I'm number three.
BELL RINGS Number three - they know James in the office wants the train.
The person in the kitchen thinks, "Off we go, set it to depart.
" And there goes the train to me in my office.
Whoever is in the kitchen can't see when the train has arrived in the office, but that's OK, because I can see it arrive - and then - BELL RINGS .
.
I know from my crib sheet that a bong when running means stop.
I bong, it stopped.
Perfect.
Now I take the little notepad from the train and I write down that I would like please a banana.
So I simply right banana and pop it back in there.
Now we can see from the instructions that, if I give one bong, it'd continue in the direction it was going in.
I don't want that.
I want to send it backwards.
The signal for that is two bongs.
The person at the other end has to listen carefully to see how many bongs there are, so I go BELL RINGS TWICE Off it goes with my request for a banana.
Here comes the train.
It's going to come into view any second.
I'm ready to stop it, bong, when running.
Stop.
BELL RINGS A bit of an abrupt stop, but never mind, there is my banana.
I haven't had to walk anywhere.
Now, I have an admission to make.
In all the excitement, I think we got carried away building our railway at the expense of other considerations.
At the moment, 'our monolithic kitchen risks becoming little more than a concrete white elephant, 'whose only culinary success to date has been the delivery of a melancholy banana 'to a melancholy bloke in his melancholy office.
' JAMES AND THE CREW LAUGH Its gleaming hob, sink and oven remain unused.
Its virgin worktop unblemished by the hearty produce of surf and soil.
'But now, with hunger raging in the bellies of our stout Man Lab yeomanry, 'it's time for our kitchen to cement - Ahem! - 'its reputation as a crucible of Cordon bleu creativity.
' I'm going to show you how to make a fish finger sandwich.
You need five fish fingers for a standard fish finger man-wich and two slices of nice, stiff, old-fashioned white bread.
So five fish fingers in the pan, they take 5-6 minutes per side, depending on how crispy you like them.
Give it a little swirl.
Whilst they're cooking, we can consider the garnish, which is going to be sauce tartar.
The ingredients for this are a healthy blob of salad cream.
'Oops!' Sort of about a tablespoon of that.
- James? - Yes, director.
- You've broken the glass.
It's only a crack.
My mum would say that harbours germs.
It will do over time, but it was only broken 40 seconds ago.
- Do you really want me to start again? - I think so, yes.
You may to throw it all away.
- It's acceptable to cook using the cracked glass, but not if it's on TV? - Yes.
- Is it OK to murder people as long as you don't do it on TV? - Depends how annoying they are.
'The kitchen is just the place for a philosophical debate about the nature of reality.
'It's like making lunch for John-Paul Sartre and all his mates.
'Sauce tartar with new unbroken glass take two.
' Whilst they're cooking, we can make the garnish, which is going to be sauce tartar.
First, you put a healthy blob of salad cream into a jar like this.
A tablespoon-full, something like that.
Then to this you add a roughly equal amount of sandwich spread.
Heaped teaspoon like that.
Stir these vigorously together, being very careful not to break the glass whilst you do it.
The fish fingers have been in for five minutes.
That's what they should look like.
Slightly browned, slightly seared as it would be if this was a piece of tuna in an expensive gastro pub.
It isn't.
It is the Man Lab kitchen, they are lightly burned.
The fish finger was designed so five would fit into a sandwich.
Four in that direction and one across the top there.
They fit exactly on to a British standard-size slice of white bread.
The fish fingers are now ready and this is how you arrange them.
Onetwo threefour and then one across the top, like that.
Tartar sauce liberally applied to the top.
Put the top piece of bread on.
Remember, four fish fingers are going that way.
One is going that way, which way do you cut it? I think the answer is that way.
You get precisely 2 1/2 fish fingers in each half of the sandwich.
'It isn't quite the feeding of the 5,000, but as the old saying goes, 'teach me to fish and I will eat for a lifetime.
'Give me a fish in the form of fingers - 'and I will eat for a lunchtime or something.
' - Mmm, hot.
I've just cooked it, you imbecile.
God, I'm exhausted.
Let's do something else.
When mowing the lawn at home, it's always a good idea to have a refreshing jug of ginger beer and some fortifying jam sandwiches to hand on your garden picnic table.
'That's fine if you have a normal-sized garden, 'but what if you have a lawn of 40 acres like we do at Man Lab?' 'This is boring.
'I think I'll have a word with my friend Simmy.
' So, James, what have we got? We've got an electric, um, wheelchair here with a joystick which controls movement back, forward, left and right.
We're going to take that and attach it to our picnic table - Right.
- .
.
so we can drive our picnic table around by remote control.
Does somebody have to sit on the picnic table to drive it? No, we'll have a hand-held transmitter.
- Actually radio controlled? - Actually radio controlled.
This could be a work of genius.
These wheelchairs are examples of exceptional electronic engineering.
The big wheels each contain an individual motor and gearbox.
We're taking these and attaching these to our picnic table.
Sim has recycled a two-channel FM transmitter and receiver.
Once this was used for a radio-controlled toy boat.
We have a higher purpose for it.
To mimic the movement of the joystick on the wheelchair, Sim has had to be rather cunning.
This is a transmitter, receiver servos.
A servo is a motor inside here, which is controlled by the receiver left and right.
What we're going to do now is attach the servos to these two sliders.
In effect, we can get it to go forward and backwards, left and right.
This is now all hooked up.
This is our original joystick.
We now have left and right and forward and reverse.
This ground-breaking technology could be applied to mundane static objects across the globe.
Beds, sofas and even bar stools could be liberated to run free like the wind.
The moment of truth.
'It's a triumph, one that will surely see Sim joining the ranks of 'Stephenson, Bell, and Logie Baird as another great British inventor.
'Now, whenever I mow the lawn, I need never be more than a few feet 'from my picnic table laden with ginger beer and jam sandwiches.
'But, like all new inventions, this one is not without its flaws.
'I can make the table follow me, but that still means I have to walk when I mow.
'Time to add my own stamp to Sim's masterful invention.
' Earlier in the show, I went head-to-head with this ticking bomb unearthed in the Man Lab garden.
This lethal device packed with a payload of cow poo and celebrity male fragrance has been ticking for the last three hours.
I've attempted to stop the timer by pumping salty water into the fuse to gum up the clockwork mechanism.
'Now, as I return to the pit, I have no idea if the process has been successful.
' Here's a very sobering thought.
I've read this process in an old book from the 1940s, put together by a bomb disposal expert, who originally learnt this sequence of operations by trial and error and getting it right probably cost several lives.
Several people became what they call "the pink mist".
So, those people were unspeakably brave to do this.
It's quite frightening knowing it's just full of perfume and poo, but if it was a real 500kg high-explosive bomb, it's unthinkable.
This is the moment of truth.
TICKING The stethoscope is working.
I can hear my own watch.
It's stopped! It's stopped.
That's fantastic.
Salt water has defeated the enemy.
That's just brilliant.
All I've got to do is get it out and, once the fuse is out, this is simply a barrel of explosives.
Completely inert.
Without a trigger, it can't do anything.
So here we go.
HE LAUGHS All clear, everyone.
All clear! How about that? Go, go, go! 'So, what can possibly have gone wrong? 'How can I be covered in cow poo and Conditional - 'the latest male fragrance from Peter Andre? 'For an answer, I invite you back to Man Lab.
' Now, I do wish to boast that I did successfully disable the clockwork mechanism.
You can see here, look, that there's plenty of salt in there gumming up the clockwork, so that the charge can't be used to fire the fuse.
Bu, what I didn't know, you see, was that the bomb also included the very fiendish ZUS40 booby-trap fuse and it's designed to be triggered when you remove the original fuse.
That little spring is released and sets the bomb off.
That is why I'm obliged by our lawyers to say this.
You must never, ever try this at home.
Good night.
Next week on Man Lab 'We sail the English Channel using a dog to guide us '.
.
and build our very own pub' Is it coming out all over the floor? '.
.
encourage today's downtrodden male to blow his own trumpet.
' TUNELESS PLAYING JAMES SNIGGERS - Take aim.
- 'I challenge a television executive to a dual 'and John Sergeant is in danger of damaging his nuts.
' No, we can't do it.
This doesn't fit on.
- John, are you familiar with locking wheel nuts? - No, I'm not.