04/10/2011 The One Show

Hello and welcome to the One Show With Alex Jones. And Matt Baker.

Tonight an actor who chose life in Trainspotting. Love in Moulin Rouge.

And was a force to be reckoned with in Star Wars. It's Ewan McGregor!

Nice DCO. It is nice to be here. Have you been watching the Great

British Bake Off? I... I haven't, I sadly haven't seen very much of it.

It is the final tonight, we are talking about cakes, what is your

favourite? The thing I have made, I seem to recall, is a Bran muffin,

it was some sort of fitness regime, so I made those. Healthy. So you

take your own? I am a bit of a baker, yeah. I am more of a market

maker, really. I have made one once, it did not go very well. Tonight is

the Grand Final on BBC Two, and we are interested in seeing him what

you have been baking at home. Send us a picture of you and your

creation, and Ewan will choose his favourite. You play a chef in your

new film, Perfect Sense. I do. we are having a word with your mum

and dad. Oh, really? If you don't mind! Anything goes on this show.

First, Home Secretary Theresa May has said that the recent riots were

about greed and criminality fuelled by a culture of irresponsibility

and entitlement. By the end of the month, she plans to publish a

strategy for dealing with gangs. One shopkeeper was stunned when he

saw the pictures from his CCTV cameras of ill actually looted his

shop. Paraic O'Brien went to meet him.

Back in August, I reported from the riots which swept across London and

other parts of the UK. Like everyone else, I couldn't believe

what I was seeing, and I saw it at very close quarters.

We have just been attacked, a rock has come through the window. They

are continuing to attack us. The riots came out of the blue, and

at times it just feels like a bad dream. Some people are taking

longer to wait from that dream than others. One broker Allen is still

reliving those events. Thanks to his CCTV cameras, we can witness

how his business was destroyed. saw a young girl with their parents

skipping along the flagstones. As they move away from my shop, it

seems that could meets evil. The next thing you see, these youths

come up, look in the window at all of the jury, the watchers. One

steps back and cakes, he takes a running kick at the window. And

then they all join in. It took them about five minutes to finally

shatter the glass. It was like... It was like animals, do you know.

He won not working the lock -- watching the footage now, but it

seems to be seared into you. Forever. Forever, until the day I

die. Thanks to his alarm system, Alan knew about the attack, but as

there were hundreds of youths in the area, the police told him in no

uncertain terms that he had to stay away. The gang helped themselves to

the shop window display, but the security rule stopped them from

getting further. After the initial onslaught, two men in a car

appeared, at first concern for the interests of neighbours. In total

contrast to the people who had come to the shop and kicked the window

in, these looked like respectable next-door neighbours. At one point,

they shake their head, as if you say, this is terrible. They shake

their head in disbelief, they looked like neighbours who were in

awe of what happened. In fact, the men appear to pocket items from the

shop window display. It has gone 10, and law and order has completely

broken down, yet someone is out and about with a young child. You see

this father or brother or uncle with what appears to be a four or

five-year-old child. Holding his And... If this is the future... I

despair, I really despair. Throughout the night, you see cars

pulling up and taking photographs with their phones out of the window,

as if it is a spectator sport almost. The looting continued into

the night, and that 2:50am, the mob actually break through into the

They break the threshold again and again and again. There is that

point where the first person steps into your shock. How did that feel?

I felt violated, I have got to say that, because I knew then that they

were into the sanctuary of the shop, my little baby, I had the best

security system, the best shutters in there, the best CCTV system.

They took my computers, they took the phones. They took absolutely

everything that was not nailed down. They even took the dustbins to put

the looked into. In all, he lost around �130,000 worth of stock. His

insurer said that because the police lost control of the streets,

he must claim from them. He will be eligible for help from the

government, but he is still not certain he will be able to claim,

and when it will be settled. The banks say they would give him a

loan, but wait for it, they want to charge more than 40% interest.

54 years of age, and for the first time in my life, I am now feeling

vulnerable. The safety net has gone. I fear for the future. I fear for

the present. And I don't know where we're going.

Just extraordinary footage, that. Where were you when the riots were

going on? I was here, working in London at the time. It was an

incredible feeling, wondering when it was going to end, whether it

would keep going. I and what it was all about. It was a odd time, there

was social unrest in other parts of the world, people on the streets

for a reason, you know, for a political reason, and here it was

embarrassing, people just stealing stuff. That is all it appeared to

be. In your new film, there is a lot of unrest on the streets, isn't

there? It is an incredible story, a frightening concept. Tell us what

it is about. It is a love story, basically, a love story set against

the backdrop of the world experiencing a series of epidemics

that caused their human race to lose a sense. So Eva Green and

myself, I play a chef, she is an epidemiologist, and we reluctantly

fallen love with each other, set against the backdrop of the world

are losing its senses. So it is quite unusual. All the senses, it

goes through. I don't want to spoil the end! The first thing to go is

smell, and I played a chef, and taste is the second thing. It is

everyone in the world, they lose the senses, so has a share, that is

a problem, you know. What is food if it is not the sense of smell?

But my character, Michael, is also very optimistic, he is the

optimists in the film, and he believes that we should carry on,

that people will still need to come out and socialise, and we will find

a different way to cook, we will cook using temperature and texture.

So he is kind of an optimist. in the film, you act for the first

time alongside your uncle, Denis Lawson. I do. We have got a clip of

you are talking about losing a Life goes on. They will come back.

People will ask each other out to dinner again. They will toast each

other while we take care of their What was it like, acting with your

uncle? I love so much seeing that, I have waited all my life to do

that. My uncle has always been my hero and my inspiration, and I

wanted to be an actor since I was nine, because I wanted to be like

him. He has directed me in a short film and on the stage, but we have

never acted together until now. And I was so excited about it, and when

we got on set, we were two actors, working on scenes, and it was very

normal and lovely. I am so proud to see it, it makes me smile. We have

been rooting around the BBC archives, as we do, and we have

found a club of you from 23 years ago. Right! No, you were 23, in

Scarlet And Black. Oh, yeah. Have a I swear in the side of the Almighty

My husband has a black coat for you. He expects you to be very brave.

You don't look any different, you still look very fresh-faced. Thank

you very much! The good news? You get �81 because we showed that!

I? That is brilliant! If you want to go up, we will play it again!

is nice to say that, funny, I remember the dialogue like it was

yesterday. Is it true that he turned down the role of James Bond.

No, it is not really true. I think when they were about to change

James Bond, they talked to a lot of actors, not just me. I did talk

with them for a while, and then we stopped talking about it. It was

not that I turned it down, that sounds cooler than it is! I turned

it down, yeah! Anyway, the new film is out this Friday. Coming up:

Gyles Brandreth will be telling us about the Really useful inventions

we take for granted in everyday life. But first, have you got lots

of hair spray on? I have! Marty Jopson is in Stockton-on-Tees for a

look at the bright spark who first struck lucky with one of these.

Safety first! 200 years ago, it was fire, not electricity, which warned

our homes and LIT our way, but back then making fire was a time-

consuming business. The history of lighting fires goes way back to his

simple devices like this, but that is really quite a palaver and hard

work, too. Slightly more modern is this, the flint and steel. Whilst

it is quite good, it is still not a fire, and what was often simpler

than lighting your own fire would be to pop next door and just borrow

a burning ember. In the 1800s, the world desperately needed an easier

way to create fire. Despite harnessing buyer more than half a

million years ago, we ended the Industrial Revolution and the age

of steam without a quick, safe and portable means of making it. But

all that was to change in 1827 when a man named John Walker stumbled

upon an invention completely by accident that would change the

world forever. He was born in 1781, here in Stockton-on-Tees. The son

of a grocer's shop owner, he left school aged 15 and went to study

medicine. Shortly after graduating, he came to the conclusion that he

really did not have the stomach to be a surgeon, and instead he began

studying chemistry. Finally, at the age of 38, known locally as the

most qualified man in Stockton, he In 1827, he began selling large

amounts of combustible materials, which we think people were buying

so that they could make percussion caps, used for firing muskets. The

story goes that Walker was in his workshop late one night mixing

large quantities of these combustible chemicals into a thick

paste. He fetched a stick which she had been using the previous night

to find it covered in a heart and lung. In his attempt to remove the

lump, he accidentally invented the Chemists had been experimenting

with ways to make fire for centuries, but invariably their

methods had been a bit violent. Take, for example, phosphorus, the

key ingredient in today's safety matches. It is pure state, it is

extremely reactive to oxygen. Say what I mean? Phil is a member of

the Institute of explosive engineers. In the early 1800s, the

only thing that was rarely available to the general public was

a Promethean match. In it is potassium chlorate, and to like

this match, you did them in sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid?!

OK... Can we try? It is a remarkable amount of effort to

light a match. It is, isn't it? wait! It starts to fizz and then

catches fire and you now have a match. So why aren't we using

these? Would you want to be walking around the streets with sulphuric

acid in your pocket? I guess not! What did Walker do? The produced a

match which only had one part and was ignited by friction. For this

type of match, we use potassium chlorate. Can I have a go at

striking one? There we go. initial burst of flame, and that

catches fire on the salt bar. really is the world's first

practical match. Walker never patented his idea, but the demand

for matches was enormous and very quickly entrepreneurs from all over

the world where manufacturing their own. But attempts to improve upon

his accidental recipe calls deadly side-effects. White phosphorus was

added to remove the undesirable odour and improve reliability.

Unfortunately, the poisonous fumes from this material caused hair and

When asked why he never took out a patterned, he simply said, I have

no doubt that his invention will benefit everyone -- took out a

patent. I will always be able to obtain sufficient for myself. It is

seen as one of the most significant inventions of the 19th century, and

to this day, the most printed phrase in the English language is

close cover before striking. Isn't it nice that John Walker

decided to share his discovery with the rest of the world. People do do

that. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and gave it to the

world, and got no money from it at all. He got a knighthood, but

nothing else. Other people can have their ideas stolen from them. There

is a great Welshman called David Edward Hughes. He was the person

who invented the carbon microphone. Our lives are built around this.

Thomas Anderson, a few years later, managed to patent it first --

Thomas Edison. There is an exhibition coming up at the Science

Museum called hidden heroes, about people who invented things like the

elastic band. This was invented by a Brit called Steve Perry. Do you

know who invented the egg box in 1911? A Canadian called Joseph coil.

You will know this one. Have you heard of an inventor called Thomas

Thomson? He invented the glass bottle thing. Didn't he?

invented the saccharometer in Crieff. Top man. What does he do?

Crieff his way you come from? should know your most famous son.

What is the saccharometer? It is a good question. It looks a bit

personal, I agree. It is to measure how much sugar is in liquids.

measures the amount of sugar in any liquid. You depict in, you see how

much sugar. You tuck this under your arm... Don't show your face in

Crieff again. You thought you were the most famous son of Crieff.

Nobody has talked about him to me. A did you go to school in Crieff?

They talk of little else! We are about to find out more about this

little gem who hails from the streets of Crieff.

I am here on a city to find out who is the real Ewan McGregor. -- I am

here on a mission. A good place to start might be at Ewan McGregor's

old school. Excuse me. I am on the trail of finding out who is the

real Ewan McGregor. Do you know who he is? Yes. Is the most famous

person to ever come from Crieff? Yes. He used to be in a choir and

he was good at singing. Tell us a naughty thing he did. He wanted to

take a tier of his other friends car. He got caught by my grandpa.

He got in big trouble. I hear that Ewan McGregor is a supporter of the

Highland Games and is something called a chieftain. It is a great

honour for your home town, to be asked to be a chieftain. It is a

history of the Games, they have been operational since 1870. His

name is on the list for ever more. Did you and compete in the Highland

Games? -- did Ewan McGregor? helped to carry the caber back on a

couple of occasions! I have had some fascinating insights, but who

better to speak to than Ewan McGregor's mum and dad? The scene

you can see behind us, looking up the valley, is his favourite view.

Every time he looks at it, he reminds -- it reminds him of home,

of Scotland, where he was when he was a small boy. One particular

Sunday, when he was eight or nine, he said, I am leaving home. I said,

we take the dog? I knew if he had the dog, he couldn't go very far.

He had to come back because the dog needed fed. Did he used to do well

this impersonations? Lipstick on Your collar was his first

I thought, gosh, he used to do that when he was four! Was he a fan of

Star Wars as a child? Oh, yes, he had a light sabre. He had to be

told to stop making the noise is with the light sabre, because he

would switch it about and I think George Lucas said, we put that on

later! It is nice to see them. look so much like your dad, you

have exactly the same eyes. Do you go home often? When I can, when I

am here. It is nice to see your mum and dad. What is the business about

the spare tyre? Did that actually happened? It must have happened,

she said there granddad caught me. I used to take the tyres... My dad

had a collection of old Dinky toys from when he was a kid. We used to

get in trouble for taking his tyres off, obviously I took someone

else's off. Your mum and dad were incredibly supportive when you

wanted to go into acting. I wasn't very happy at school when I was 16.

My penultimate year at school. I was ready to leave, I wanted to be

an actor and I wasn't able to do the things I wanted to do at school,

like study music and art. I was in the car with my mum, I said -- she

said, if you want to leave school, you can. I couldn't believe it. I

never went back, that was it. From there, I was straight into the

theatre, and started training as an actor. It was a very brave decision

for them to make, but one that was absolutely right for me at the time

so I will always be grateful for that. In 20 years, you have done 46

films. Lots of variation. Trainspotting, the lovely Moulin

Rouge, we saw you singing and dancing in lipstick on Your collar.

We had to show a clip of Moulin Rouge. Oh, yeah.

# Love left us up where we belong. # Where Eagles 5, on a mountain

high. -- eagles fly. To do that on at the world stage,

what did it feel like? To be singing and dancing. It was amazing,

an amazing experience to get to act with music and song like that, it

is incredibly effective. If you sing, I love it to someone, it is

more effective than if you say it. It was wonderful -- if using, I

love you to someone. Do you want to do more of that kind of thing?

would. I was on the stage with Guys and Dolls, I would back - I really

enjoyed it. There are not that many musical scripts around, or if there

are, they are not sending them to me! Brilliant. Good luck. Thank you

very much. No location is out of bounds for

Mike Dilger when it comes to exploring endangered wildlife. He

is in a part of the country which is off-limits to mankind for the

next 300 years. Right at the very northern tip of

mainland Scotland lies the mothballed nuclear facility of

Dounreay. It is strictly out of bounds to members of the public, as

large areas of the site and the waste material stored there are

still highly radioactive. The threat from both radioactivity and

terrorism means Dounreay has been a major exclusion zone since he was

built in 1965. Despite the presence of potentially lethal contamination,

wildlife is flourishing in this far flung corner of Scotland. In the

1950s, this remote site was chosen precisely because of the threat

this new technology might pose. Britain's first power producing

radar reactor is safely housed. so they thought. But Dounreay

became notorious for unauthorised discharges into the sea during the

60s and 70s, and an explosion in a waste shaft in 19th 67. The last

reactor went offline in 1994, and the whole site has been dismantled

and cleaned up. Simon Cotton is an environmental adviser for the

organisation charged with the monumental task of making it safe.

This area is actually where the outfall pipe is. Historically,

there has been incidents where the pipe resulted in the release of

fuel particles into the ocean. We have actually implemented 80

kilometre wide fishing exclusion zone, to prevent people taking fish,

crabs, lobsters from the area that are contaminated -- a two kilometre

wide exclusion zone. That has probably led to more wildlife being

in the area than you would probably find on the coast elsewhere. Have

the nuclear particles had an impact on the health of the wildlife?

sample winkles, lobsters, crabs, fish. We analyse them in the labs

and on a no instance have we found unacceptably high level of activity

in those animals? Although fishing is forgiven -- forbidden, the

particles are lethal if ingested by humans so a clean-up project began

in 2008, using remote-controlled vehicles destroying Geiger counters.

The Shetland Islands Council have expressed reservations that some of

the particles may have washed out further than previously thought.

Anything that touches the beach, including Rs and Marek Kukula, has

to be monitored as we leave this to be monitored as we leave this

10 years ago, this land behind me was a football pitch. But the staff

realise the potential and converted it into a wild flower meadow. At

this time of year, there is a richer source of food nearby. In a

staff car park. Got one. Oh, there it goes! That is a very rare bumble

bee. The one we have been looking at is the great yellow bumble bee.

50 years ago it was quite widespread in Britain and Ireland.

It is now only found on the north coast of highland Scotland, and on

a few of the island's offshore. have travelled more than 600 miles

to get a glimpse of a great yellow, but the moment was unexpectedly

That was absolutely astonishing! Of a Wild weasel, hunting. Definitely

a one show first. I am not on a nature reserve, but I have a

nuclear reactor as a backdrop also by could spend a whole year

watching wildlife and never catch Over the next 10 years the entire

site will be demolished and 160,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste

will be placed into an underground vault. Due to the fact that

hazardous waste will still be stored here, the site will remain

strictly out of bounds for the next 300 years. Unless, of course, you

A lovely note to finish on. Earlier in the show we asked for

photographs of your baking efforts, in anticipation of the great big --

the Great British bake-off, the final is on tonight. This is Linda

Williams, a picture of her granddaughter, and Annie Nichols

with third quarter, they always have. Kids like to do this -- with

We have a picture of children taking, it is a much nicer thing to

do with your children! Sarah Bamfield says this is my giant cup

cake. We have problems with sense of scale here. This is a massive

don't up that has been sent him. There is an egg box in the