16/06/2011 The One Show

Welcome to the One Show with Matt Baker. And Alex Jones. With us

tonight is a man who always knew he wanted to be a comedian. He set out

to gain all the skills necessary to be a successful stand-up.

learned how to use a microphone by becoming a bingo call. Also being a

stable boy. And how to handle pre- show nerves, he became a Bluecoat

and got drunk before going on stage. Yes, but he got the sack. It's Lee

Mack! APPLAUSE

Did we leave out any essential skills. That was such a long intro,

it's time to say good night. I like you accused me of drinking before I

went to work and I ride Red Rum. When I say road him, I don't mean

in the national or anything. I walked up and down the stables with

someone holding onto him. He had retired by this stage. He was 21,

in human years it's probably 150. He was plod ago long. Still Red Rum.

Is it true that one of your comedy rules is that you need a laugh of

15 seconds? Exactly on 15 seconds. A second before or after, you have

to walk off stage. We're in for a good show tonight then. That's been

15, so I'll see you later. That's what they say. I do gags you see. I

have quite a high turnover of stuff. You can do, you have a story that

gets a laugh after about five minutes, but it has to be a good

gag. I don't take that risk. How quick your gags are, or how good

they are, the quicker they are, you're admitting they're rubbish.

Mine are every three seconds. is on a mission to bring variety

back to our screens. Find out how you can take part later on. With

food prices rising, families are having to decide what to take out

of their shopping. Shops are responding with offers like feeding

a family of four on just �50 a week. There was a time when stretching

meals and going without was part of life. Can today's young families

learn to do the same? Meet the Hankinsons from Bury, an ordinary

family, with ordinary shopping habits. I spend about �100 a week

on shopping. I also nip out in the week for ingredients I haven't got,

particularly fresh things. I could spend about �25, to �30 in the week,

topping up on things. But can they manage on less - a lot less? Tracey,

are you ready for your challenge? Oh, yes. Your chal seng quite

simple actually. You have to feed all four members of your family for

seven days for no more than �50. We will leave you an emergency storage

cupboard. I'll try not to go into the cupboard. But it's nice to have

it. Let me give you your mb. -- money. Spend that very wisely.

going to have to. Good luck. While Tracey's at the shops, I'm going to

chill out with only �50 to spend, there's not going to be much

leftover for treats. Hi Simon, I'm home! It looks like you spent much

more than �50, did you spend �50 in the end? No. I spent �49.88. So let

the challenge begin. Remember, they've only got �1.78 per person

per day. What will Tracey kick off with? What's on the menu tonight?

I'm presuming it's potato and carrots? No, it's potato hash. It's

an all-time favourite and it's cheap. Have you got room for one

more? No. That's day one sorted. What do you think of dinner? Eurgh.

Don't like it. And what's mum cooking the rest of the week? For

breakfast, it's mainly cereal with sandwiches and biscuits for lunch.

Day two's evening male is macaroni cheese with sausages.. How's tea

tonight, George? Brilliant. Are you having seconds? Are you dumb? Yeah!

That's not very nice. Day three is a hearty chicken casserole.

Tonight's tea was chicken casserole. It was nice. I thought everyone

liked it. All supermarkets are running cut-price promotions. With

food inflation above real inflation at nearly 6%, can this carry on?

What's going on with food prices? Lower price sz great for awful us,

but it's not good for the farmers or producers. They are going to

have to start raising prices soon. The prices of the raw goods are

going up so much. The price of wheat is up 70% in the last year.

Back at the Hankinsons, the kids have caught mum and dad breaking

the rules. That's my dad cheating! They've cracked, with beer for dad

and chocolates for mum, donated by a sympathetic neighbour. It's not

really cheating because we didn't pay for it. As well as tucking into

her surprise gifts, Tracey still has three hungry mouths to feed.

Day four is fish pie. Day five, chicken fajitas and day six, spag

bol. The final day is sausage goulash. The seven days are up and

it's not gone terribly well. Even with gifts and Bartering, you admit

it's around �65 in value. Yeah. failed. Yes. How does that make you

feel? You promised me on Monday. feel really bad. It was an

impossible task, that's all I can say. Food wise, it can be done. But

unreasonable with drink included. I think the rest of it you can get by.

George, how long's it felt like? year. Feels like it was a year ago.

Do you want to do this every week? Not every week, no. Thank you for

taking our challenge, going through all this hardship and not having

any treats. We thought we'd bring you a little reward. Do you want a

reward? Yeah! Everyone close their eyes. There you go.

Go on, mate, in you go. Proper tears there. What would make

you cry your eyes out if you left out of your shopping trolley?

live near a Waitrose, so �50 wouldn't even cover a can of tango

and wagon wheel. Other shops are available. Other shops are

available to charge you that much, yeah. What one item couldn't you

live without? Probably metholated spirits. Without that I can't stop

the screaming in my head. Only a joke! Come on kids. Healthy

vegetables, which you can grow yourself. You don't need to spend

anything on them. Just the price of seeds. I haven't grown anything in

my life ever. It's good in theory. Yeah, good in theory. But I suppose

my number one thing I couldn't live without is my pineapple ice lollies.

They sound nice. I was going to say the company name, but they told me

I wasn't allowed. If I asked him the man from this place would

probably say yes, any way. Who does the shopping in your house, you or

Mrs Mac? Mrs Macdoes the shopping, yes. That's not my real name, Mrs

Mack. Nice ring to it. Lovely. erm... I didn't say anything. I had

to bite my tongue. Mrs Mack does the shopping. We'll move on to Mr

Mack's All Star Cast, which starts on Saturday. We recorded it last

night. That's why I'm a bit hungover because of the after-show

party. How did it go? You never know do you. You're probably the

worst person to ask because you're in it. Only about half of them

walked out. That's a good sign, isn't it? We'll know on Saturday

when the general public let us know. We've had a sneak preview.

haven't seen it. There's loads in it. We saw the pilot. Is it all

right? We're going to see you in action with Tess Daly. Here's a

little bit. Lee, thanks for the chat. I better

get going. Hang on. I have a surprise for you. It's not a

surprise. I've heard it's little. Come on, it's very romantic. Can I

be blunt? Don't worry I've already got that covered...

APPLAUSE James Blunt. Were you happy with

that? Yes, very happy. It's a lot longer than that. I should point

out it's a Saturday night variety show, not a sitcom. That's one

sketch that we do at end. That's the thing, it's loaded with stuff.

You have interviews in there. of public stuff. The audience take

part. Also the people at home through internet, I feel lick a

granddad now. Have you heard of computer. When you can speak and

look at the webcam. Are you quite gentle with your public? It's a big

thing to get up there and show their talent. We're not stupid. We

don't let them off the stage, obviously. They will start taking

over. We keep them in the audience. One of the features is we ask them

who they think they look like. Some woman last night, which we're

showing on Saturday, said that her mum was next to her, and said she

thinks her mum looks like Jonny Vegas. That's a nice look for a 55-

year-old woman. Is it true the first time you did stand-up you

were gonged off? I was, yes. What happened? There's a guy in a gimp

costume that used to stand next to the gong. People in the audience

used to get up. He would gong you when the audience shouted. I went

on with a suitcase of frozen fish. I used to taict fish out, that was

the idea. I did a visual joke. I never got to it because I was

gonged. You can do it now. always keep a bag with a lobster

just in case. Just in case someone says they had a gag that they wrote

and now they can't remember. This is like why I go shopping at

Waitrose why my 50 quid doesn't go very far. I genuinely can't

remember the joke I'm afraid. I would take them out like, that I

had a lobster. I did the visual. But I never got to it. I used to

carry the suitcase round with me to the shows and never got to the

shows. It started to stink with the fish. I was a student and I

couldn't afford to buy more. People would ask why I walked round with a

suitcase of smelly fish, just in case in 15 years' time, I'm on the

one shoi and they want me to talk about something. That would be a

good feature and I would remember the joke. That's failed hasn't it.

Saturday night. We'll look forward to it. Don't be shellfish, give it

all that. Leave it to him. They make miracles happen every day. Our

nation's midwives perform a vital service for mums and babies.

the profession had a difficult birth. Historian Ruth Goodman goes

back to the early 18th century to find out why. Here's a hint - men!

Let's have a feel of the tummy. I think your little one has been the

on the same time. -- side. FINA is part of a profession which

has been delivering babies since the start. New medical advancements

saw men muscle in on the miracle of child birth. I've come to the

Wellcome Collection in London to find out more about the

controversial history of midwifery. In the days before modern pain

relief, there really wasn't much in the way of equipment. This is about

Aztec anyical as it got, a birthing chair. This is from about 1750. To

be honest, the modern ones are not dissimilar. It's gravity helping

along. If this is pretty much the only tool a midwife had, she had

other help. She had a range of birthing companions, women, and

these were known as gossips. Originally the word meant God

parent. In the birthing chamber, the gossips were the women who you

trusted to have with you. What exactly are they doing? Well, their

job was both practical and psychological. Their job was for

instance to hold you in the position you were comfortable to

give birth in. From 1550 midwives needed a license from the church to

practice, but had no formal education. Men came into the

birthing chamber when complications set in. By the mid-1600s educated

male doctors were starting to assert their authority, with new

equipment and interventions they were called man midwives. Invented

in the early 17th century, these scary looking things are a pair of

for accepts. They were designed to assist in difficult child birth.

But very soon they came to challenge the position of women

within the birth room, a symbol of the battle between men and women

about exactly how a baby ought to be born.

At a time when giving birth was dangerous, the for accepts could

save lives by drawing the baby out quickly. Their increased use by man

midwives pushed women out of the birthing room. If midwives were to

retain any credibility they needed their own special tool, knowledge.

In 1671 Jane Sharp wrote this book, the first ever midwifery man you'll,

written by an English midwife. There are pictures of babies who

are coming the wrong way round. And she explains what needs to be done

to turn the babies. It's a coming together of the practical knowledge

with the academic knowledge. Yeah, exactly. For instance, this is how

she explains what should happen in a normal labour when it starts,

"When the patient feels her throws coming, she should walk easily in

her chamber and then again lie down, keep herself warm, rest herself and

then stir again, till she feel the waters coming down and the womb to

o. "Most of it is just wanting women to understand how to do this

job professionally. But the battle for recognition and professional

status was going to be a long one. It wasn't until 1902 that female

midwives got the recognition they deserved. The passing of the

midwifery act brought proper regulation and training to the

industry. 231 years after Jane Sharp published her book.

We're coming to see a baby today. Today there are over 39,000 highly

qualified male and female midwives in the UK. First and foremost

midwives are trained. It's fairly intense, three years. I come

equipped. I have drugs in my bag and bits of machinery I can use

even at home. Most of us work in hospital. Are there any of the

skills of old midwifery that you use in the modern practice?

hands, my senses. I rely very much on my eyes, ears, sense of smell

and touch. I was determined when I qualified, to be able to use all of

those before technology. Advances in medical science mean that many

less than 1% of children die in child birth these days. Though it's

been a long and controversial journey for midwifery, it has all

been worth it. What wonderful work they do. An

aawww has gone round. Do you remember the name of your midwife,

not yours, your wife's. You don't get equal rights as a man. It is as

painful for the man as the woman. Really? With our second child we

had a home birth. We had the inflatible pool thing. The water

birth, that's the phrase. Was it down stairs or upstairs the pool?

Not important to the anecdote, Matt. This is just padding, if I tell you

where it was. It was on the middle floor next to the younger boy's

bedroom. Just had it painted in blue. It's not adding anything.

We're nearly at the end. We're all panicking, she gets in the pool,

she has the baby and everything is fantastic. There's a knock on the

door. A woman's there. I said "Who are you?" She said I'm the midwife.

I asked who the woman was in the house. She said "I don't know. We

went upstairs and there she was. I she was the trainee. I should have

known, she was 13. Her jacket said Gregg's the bakers. You and your

grand names. Or any other major bakeries. We have to gag you.

was a cracking memory indeed. We're going to move on. How would you

like to have your favourite memory brought to life? We want do that

for you. By working with an amazing team of animator we can make it

happen. We will tell you how to get involved shortly. Here's an example

of what we're looking for. Gerry Ray tells us about the best present

It was 1975. There wasn't a lot of money about. You knew there wasn't

a lot of money about. The word "poor" wasn't mentioned, but you

knew you hadn't got a lot. I was in from school, come down the stairs

and all I could hear was "There's somebody at the door." There was a

mate of mine standing at the gate. There was this brand new Raleigh

bike, gold in colour. He was throwing his leg over the bike.

First thing out of your mouth is "Give us a go." He says "No, my dad

says nobody's allowed on this bike." Away he went. I'm looking

down the street after him. Little did I know that my eldest brother

had been watching the whole thing from the kitchen window. He was

sort of like a father figure at the time. My brother came into the room

and he said "Come in and see." I went into his room. I remember him

pulling out this thing and put it on his bed, and in this ten were

notes. He started to count it out properly. He says come on, we're

going into the town. There was a place in the town where you could

buy anything. We went into the shop and he turns round and says "Have a

lock at that." All these Raleigh bikes on the right-hand side, all

the Raleigh choppers on the other side. We are standing there and he

says to me, "If you had a choice about any one of those bikes, what

one would you take?" I remember scanning them all down. There was

every colour imaginable. I pointed to a blue Raleigh chopper bike. It

was the bike to have. The next thing he turned round and says to

me "I'm going to buy that blue one for you today." I remember thinking

"oh, he's the best brother in the world". So I gets the bike onto the

bus. As soon as the bus stops, I'm out, down past my house, into the

cul-de-sac, stopped outside my mate's house, the one that had the

Raleigh Tomahawk. I bounced in through the gate. I ran back out to

get to the bike again. I didn't want to leave it for two seconds.

He comes out. He says to me, "Where did you get that?" I says "My

brother bought it today for me." He said to me, the same I said to him

"Give us a go." I said no, "My brother said I'm not allowed to get

anybody on this bike." He didn't just buy me a bike. He gave me

everything he had. Delightful animation, beautiful.

Very nice. Remember, we are looking to create more of those fantastic

animations. If you have a story of a day that changed you or treasure,

Quite old school that, post. There you go. Speaking of old school,

that bike, did you have a chopper? I see you more as a grister. I was

a grister. -- Griff ter. You weren't allowed to have anyone on

the back. So what's about the long seat? It's probably too late 30

years later to complain about this. I was grifter. Was BMX before your

time or after? BMX was way, way after my time. I had a bike as a

kid. I was so proud of it, this is true. My mum and dad gave me a bike.

They'd customised it. Three days after I had my bike, my brother

went to the shed to get his bike and says "Where's my bike." My

parents had nicked his bike and turned it into my bike without

telling him. They resprayed his bike and gave it to me. Shouldn't

laugh. We're getting loads of e- mails on that saying they can

survive on less than �50 a week. The Who are one of Britain's

biggest bands and can pack in the crowds. It was one particular gig

that cemented their reputation, the concert that became the legendary

Live at Leeds album. As Joel Grant finds out, it almost didn't --

Carrie Grant finds out, it almost didn't happen. This is an extension

lead and this is the best live album ever made. Without this, we

may never have had this. In the late 60s The Who reflected the

revolutionary spirit of the times, with a stage show that was exciting,

The band wanted to capture their explosive live sound on record.

They chose to record a concert in Leeds. Dr Simon Warner, Leeds

University's lecturer in rock takes up the story. The Beatles had done

extraordinary work. It was a wieldy affair to take gear on the road and

record. It it was around this time that the scale of the equipment was

about right to move it around and capture the sound faithfully.

Roger Daltry, Keith Moon, Pete Townsend and John Entwhistle were

at the height of their powers and ready to record. The students who

organised the concert weren't sure they could cope. It quickly became

clear that the venue didn't have enough power. The complications

started on the Friday afternoon, when the recording equipment

arrived. They asked for an additional supply of about 30amps.

We didn't have it. The band had the biggest speaker rig the organisers

had ever seen. So the recording gear had to move down stairs next

to the kitchens. The only place with a separate power supply. I

can't imagine them liking that very much. If they hadn't have done it,

they wouldn't have had the recording. There wasn't the power

available on the upper level. They tapped into the supply for the

ovens. The Who made their album plugging into where they make the

pizza. What a great thought. don't think we had pizza in 1970.

The concert took place on Valentine's Day 1970. It all

happened here. There were a thousand students who didn't have

tickets. They had to climb onto the roof to feel the gig. Local people

said the music was so loud, that you could hear it throughout the

city centre. In the crowd was Nigel Abbot a

geography student who found himself with a VIP access because of a

cheap camera around his neck. was a passport to go to front and

go into that area in front of the stage to wonder up and down and no-

one questioned you. Wow! That really captures the atmosphere,

accidents it? This was Roger Daltry. It was a very hot and sweaty night.

They were on song that night. band they performed fantastically.

It was one of those nights that just worked. It was just a

fantastic night. Were your ears ringing after gig? Yes. When the

record was released it came in this plain brown wrapper. The Who

maintained they wanted the packaging to look like a boot

legged copy. They wanted it to reflect the raw and powerful sound

of the record inside the sleeve. The final twist in the Live at

Leeds story is that it should have been live at Hull, where The Who

recorded the following night's gig. They preferred the acoustics of the

City Hall in Hull, but when they listened to the tapes they found

that John Entwhistle's bass guitar hadn't been recorded. Who knows

whether it would have been better if Hull had been released. We

wouldn't have had Live at Leeds, in many ways I think that particular

accident of history worked in The Who's favour, worked in the all

bum's -- album's favour. Thanks to an extension cable, The Who put

Leeds on the map. After The Who did it live albums became the in thing.

The rolling stones tried to capture the same feeling. Nothing was as

influential as Live at Leeds. Has anything gone wrong at your

live gigs? Someone gave me the the -- the ultimate heckle. This

drunken person was mouthing off. He drifted off. I thought that's the

end of him. He found a Powerpoint at the back of the theatre and he

pulled this thing out of the wall and the whole thing went to

blackout. He managed to find the one thing if you pull out it fuses

everything. I had to just shout in the darkness, the gig for the next

ten mib its, until it came back on. I would like to tell you how I won

it round, but I didn't. To be honest, we haven't got time Lee.

That's it. Thank you for coming on. Lee Mack's All Star Cast is on