10/05/2013 The One Show

Friday One Show with Miss Jones and Mr Evans. We have gone all tried and

prejudice this evening as we find out why many screen adaptations are

wrong. It is also a universal truth that the case in point is all to do

with TV sofas and shows, and us needing guests. As he is receiving

the BAFTAs highest honour this weekend, he will pass muster. Very

close have you come to looking like this in your career? Many sketches.

Tell us about a few. George the first, I think. And is it the heat,

or is it the desperate, the difficulty that it takes to achieve

a comfort break? I am never quite sure in those. Had the fly been

invented? I am trussed up for at least half an hour. I hope you will

last. I am fine, this is easy. We are going to create a Pride And

Prejudice themed ball. How is your dancing? Would you like to join in?

That kind of dancing was drummed out of me when I was young. I used to go

to a dance teacher, had it was like being arrested and taken into

custody. I do occasional things on my own. I dance in the bath.

look so cool and casual. Tell us quickly what is going on this

weekend. Well, I have been awarded a fellowship, BAFTA. I do not know

quite what it means. I will become a jolly good fellow of BAFTA. It is

very nice. They show lots of your staff and they say, you can die now.

That is the interview done excavation mark in Michael's

travels, he has been to some in hospitable places but one of the

most deadly is here in the UK. Dilger put on his wellies to see how

we are trying to fix it. The River Earth on in mid Wales is a

major tributary of the River Wye, one of Britain's's most spectacular

areas of outstanding natural beauty and a designated site of special

scientific interest. It is picture perfect, but all is not quite what

it seems. Streams like this are usually brimming with life. If I

disturb the bottom, I should catch all manner of invertebrates, like

aquatic insects and crustacea. But just looking inside here, it is

completely empty, which means to all intents and purposes, this

watercourse is biologically dead. The problem lies in the quality of

the water itself. And it is something Stephen has been

monitoring and trying to control for the last ten years. What is the

problem? Acidity. The effect is to kill off virtually all life in the

stream. Very little can survive in a pH lower than five. What are we

talking here? 4.2. Many hundreds of thousands of times more acidic than

pure water. Getting close to lemon juice or vinegar. Astonishing! The

acidification comes from the combined effects of acid rain and

the draining of natural wetlands to make way for commercial forestry.

This used to be a huge bulk but it has been trained just for the

purpose of granting more trees. you lose the wetland, you lose a

giant natural sponge that filters rainwater back into the river

system. The water rushes off at a great speed and reaches the river at

no time at all, carrying with it very low pH acidity, which in turn

kills off all of the life we would expect to find in rivers. Row native

conifers collect acid on their needles, which ends up washing into

the rivers, exacerbating the problem. Left untouched, the acidity

has an effect. No birds, mammals or frogs. It is a big trouble so

Stephen and his team are tackling it in a big way. This does not look

like your average conservation tool, but it is leading the charge in a

pioneering project to save these rivers. The team have gone back to

their chemistry books and have come up with a devastatingly simple

solution. This is the antidote to the bad effects of acid rain.

is it? Calcium carbonate, a mixture of sand and powder. Hopefully, it

should neutralise. Exact me, that is what we are aiming to achieve.

year for a decade they have dumped tonnes of this into the river system

to neutralise its acidity. You put it down on the river does the hard

work. It permeates every nook and cranny, I suppose. It gets under the

stones and that is what keeps most of it in the river system. We are at

the junction of two streams. One has been treated with lime and the other

has not. I have the indicator solution. If I take some up, the one

that is alkali should stay blue. If it is acid, it should go green. And

that is definitively green. Conclusive proof that the treatment

is working. Over the last ten years, more than 1000 tonnes of lime have

gone into these streams, breathing new life into 40 miles of waterways.

I am a few miles downstream, and when this project began, this

stretch of river was so acidic that nothing could live here at all. This

is much more like it. This is teeming with life. There are so many

aquatic insects here. This is just astonishing. And it is not just

creepy crawlies thriving. Wild salmon are once more finding their

way, swimming upstream each autumn to spawn in parts of the river that

have not seen fish for nearly 40 years. It is such a thrill to know

that salmon are repopulating this river, and that such an unusual

conservation project is working so well. Who would have thought that a

pile of old limestone gravel would have such an amazing impact on

wildlife? Thank you. Michael, you have

travelled all over the shop in your time. The counter, behind the

counter! What is the most polluted place you have visited gesture

marked Ireland a place in the desert in Mauritania which was a huge iron

ore mine in the middle of the fairly pristine Sahara Desert. It comes out

of nowhere and it is just filthy. There is dust in the Sahara anyway.

There is the iron ore dust blowing as well. And a lot of the people,

especially young kids, come to this city to find work and they can't,

and they stand around. I have never seen such a sad group of people as

in this place, right in the middle of nowhere. It is pretty grim.

could look at the audience for BAFTA on Sunday night! Let us know how

they compare. I will not look at them. The lights will block them

out. They are my family anyway. Eight p.m. On BBC One you have the

film and TV BAFTAs. You are up for the fellowship. You are just going

to get it, it is a deal. Whether you like it or not, you get it. What

does it mean to BAFTA, and what does it mean to you? I am told it is

their main tribute award. I think it means you have spent a long time in

television and have done stuff that people remember and people consider

of value. To me, it makes me feel that all those years doing silly

things, which I thoroughly enjoyed, they have added up to something.

Someone has looked back and said that as a body of work. And that is

encouraging. In return, there will be great expectations about the

speech you will deliver. Have you thought about this gesture marked

yes. I have gone through many drafts. Give us the beginning or the

end. Thank you. Thank you.Is that working so far? Have they given you

a guide on time. Row have they given new -- I hope the audience are like

that. I think they have said it is two or three minutes, but it might

be 23. Is that all you get? For a lifetime? That is enough. I will say

my name and my shoe size and get off. My phone number. It is right at

the end. Everyone is very excited and they want to get to the meal.

How do they tip you the wink? Do they say, we will give it to you if

you turn up? Do you discuss with your wife, call your friends?

just said, you have got it. They send you a letter, actually, like

exam results. It says after at the top and says you have been awarded

the Fellowship. -- it says BAFTA. Who is going to give it to you?

is somebody I know. We are going with Terry Jones. There is going to

be a Michael Palin montage, so because we are here, we would like

to see one of your classic clips but we only have time for one, so which

one would you like? Dead parrot? No-macro. Argument? No. Cheese shop?

Yes. One of my favourites. Smoked Austrian? You do have some

cheese? Yes, it is a cheese shop, so. We have... I am keen to guess.

Wensleydale? Yes, sir.I will have some of that. I thought you were

referring to me, Mr Wensleydale. it true that when you first heard

about that sketch, and you still cannot get through it again without

laughing if you have to do it live? I have never done it without

cracking up, usually towards the end. At the back there are two city

gents playing music. After a few minutes, John turns and says, will

you shut up! It usually gets me by that time. But John and I crack each

other up all the time. It could be John giving him the award. Yes.

That is Sunday at eight o'clock on BBC One. Jay is here for Friday.

Tonight, I am investigating how the cutlery with which you eat is a

matter of taste. For great tasting food, we expect

the ingredients and how we cook them to make a difference, but is there

something else we should be paying attention to? Knives, forks and

spoons do not just get food into our mouths, but influence how it feels

and even how it tastes. This doctor is a materials expert who has

studied the way cutlery affect the taste of our food. We are used to

thinking of stainless steel as not having much of a taste but it still

produces a metallic taste in the mouth. Stainless steel does not

tarnish or rust, so why would it affect the way food tastes? To find

out, I am joining the dinner ladies of Westminster Academy. We are going

to sample three dishes. Tomato soup, a Thai curry and fruit salad. To try

them, we are given three different metal spoons. First, stainless

steel. How does that taste? Like tomato soup. I was going to say the

same. Into the Thai green curry. Spicy! White macro but then we tried

the fruit salad. You get a little bit of a metallic taste. Yes.

you introduce certain foods, it heightens that taste. It is acidic

food that causes the problem. The acid strips a tiny bit of metal of

the cutlery and into our mouths. With stainless steel, the effect is

mild, but it can be a lot worse. Our next spoon is made of copper.

can taste is the aftertaste of the spoon. Like putting money in my

mouth. No mistaking the taste. Copper is more reactive and

stainless steel. Chefs cook in copper pans. Yes, that they are

lined because the copper is reactive. But eating tomato soup of

a copper spoon brings a surprising response. It tastes sweeter. That is

one of the results we found, things eat off a copper spoon can taste

sweeter. In the tomato soup, there is spice which increases the

sweetness with the copper. research has found this effect

happens with less acidic food containing herbs and spices, and

there is another metal that can improve flavours even more

This is better than stainless steel. What is going on with this gold

spoon? Gold is not reacting in the environment of your mouth. We are

tasting the food as it really is. Maybe for the first time. Really, if

you want to find out the true taste of things, you need to save up and

get a whole set of these? Zoe is working with restaurants to see how

gold can bring out subtle flavours and how reactive metals like copper

and zinc can enhance sweetness. For us at home though, stainless steel

is still our best bet for cutlery. Zoe has one fine final taste test

for us. She gives us two bowls of chilly con Carney. Can we taste any

difference? The first one has got a tangyish taste to it than this one.

Bit of a difference from the first one to the second one, more

metallic. It's not how it is eaten, it's how it is cooked. The first one

was stirred with a stainless steel spoon. The second one was stirred

with a normal wooden spoon. wooden spoon a good thing to cook

with? Yes. Especially if the food is acidic. Stainless steel might not be

the most reactive metal, leave it long enough in a hot pan you will

notice a metallic taste. Stick to wooden spoons for cooking and keep

stainless steel for eating, unless you can afford gold of course! Gold!

Gold! Jay is here minus Pride and Prejudice and outfit, but you have

brought dishes. I have sideburns. They are real. We have a gold spoon

for you. Gold spoons and a BAFTA?We have parmesan ice-cream. What is

wrong with that? Try it. Tell us what you think. Tell us about the

Heston link? We think that savoury ice-creams is a modern thing, it was

going on in Regency times this is the sort of thing you would eat late

during one of your parties when you needed a refresher. Alex doesn't

like any thing. I don't like cheese ice-cream. We are eating with the

wrong spoons. They are in the cheap seats. Oh, my spoon is gone! I lost

my spoon! Terrible, have you lost it. In Pride and Prejudice they

would have drunk rum punch? They would. It is made with lemon grneata

it has champagne and rum. What do you think of that? Why hasn't it got

parmesan? It ran out. Not for me, I'm afraid... You are so smug.I'm

desperate. Anything but smug. would drink this at the end of the

party to freshen things up. That would get things going. Early cheers

to Michael's BAFTA. Tonight, a new documentary on BBC Two puts to the

test years of assumptions about what pivotal moments in Pride and

Prejudice really looked like. Experts from all over the country

were brought together to put on a ball worthy of the real Mr Darcy

lipself. Everything that happens, all the romances, a lot of the

misunderstandings start at the ball. In a way, Jane Austen is making

fictional use of something which must have been in a case in a small

town, this is simply the biggest event of the year. It's the moment

that lights the blue touch paper. I love it when we play those short

films? Art historian Alastair Sooke presents Having a Ball. . Welcome.

Good to be here. What are the main misconceptions about that era? I

think that we, all of us, don't quite understand Pride and Prejudice

as we could. Tonight, we are doing what we think is a groundbreaking

experiment, it has never been done, we are restaging the ball thrown by

Mr Bingley, we are paying attention to detail. We can then understand

the texture, what they smelt like and sounded like which modern

readers of the novel don't know about. That is lost on us because

Austen doesn't include this stuff in the book. She writes with quite a

terse precision. We tried to reconstruct all the detail that is

missing which she assumes people will get. She was getting on with

the plot leaving us 200 years later to imagine what was going on. We are

getting it wrong. It was quite raunchy? It was. You think of the

costume dramas. Everything seems elegant. Women floating around

ballrooms. Perfect recipe- I say, Michael! It was much more. It was

animal spirits, robust, it was quite vigorous. We have the Danners in the

studio. It was sexy. Add rum punch to the mixture. Are you saying, live

on BBC One, ahead of your big show tonight on BBC Two the recreation of

how it would have been from your piecing together from different

experts from over the country and world and different books you have

read it's more Carry On than the BBC Drama department? It was fun. It was

sweaty. It was quite raunchy. Strictly Come Dancing. More Sid

James than Hugh Boneefeild. Our ex- Star has been in training this

afternoon, not that she needed it, obviously, it all stays with you,

never leaves you. Yes. It still could go very wrong. Thank you to a

Brit called John Shaw at least the music will be in tune. An orchestra

tunes up, it's part of the excitement and anticipation of the

performance to come. There is a humble device without which

musicians risk being totally out of tune, and it's this, the tuning

fork. John Shaw was a trumpeter, when he split his lip and couldn't

play any more, he took up the loot. The instrument was hard to tune. He

fashion a device from steel to assist him, inventing the first ever

tuning fork. How does it work? we strike the tuning fork, it

vibrates, often hundreds of times per second. These vibrations

determine the pitch we hear. If I strike it, it's vibrating 523 times

per second which gives us C. What makes the steel tuning fork

revolutionary? When we strike any object and allow it to vibrate, we

often have multiple vibrations occurring stim taniously. Here is a

computer representation of a cymbol being struck. There is not one

frequency, there are lots and lots of frequencies. The same

representation of a tuning fork you can see something remarkably

different. Makes it special is the clean tone? Exactly.What did it

mean for musicians? Before tuning forks an instrument like a violin

had to tune with an instrument with a fixed pitch, perhaps a trumpet. No

trumpet, well then you are left guessing, times with rather

displeasing results. The tuning fork brought unity. Musicians embraced

this new invention, including, it is said, the great 18th century

composer, Handel. The story goes that is he gave one of his tuning

forks to the hospital in 167 51 following a performance of the

Massiah. Today, a very special package is on its way to me. --

1751. This is the fork, I'm excited to be holding it. This is Handel,

cool, contemporary, embracing modern technology. I have been given

permission to sound it. Beautiful. Has this device changed since the

days of Handel? This company have been making them since 1846. It's

the same shape, same style and made with the same materials. They create

a frequency. For the first time across the world, musicians were

tuning to the same pitch. In honour of this simple but ingenious

invention we will try something unique. The Sheffield Chamber

Orchestra is attempting to perform a special piece of music, for one

night only, they are the One Show forkestra. Time for me to slip into

brilliant. So at 9. 00pm tonight BBC Two are recreating Pride and

Prejudice Netherfield Ball as it most likely would have been. Stuart

Marsden is the dancemaster. We have been practicing a dance. This has

never been seen on television before, has it? Absolutely not. We

researched the music from Jane Austen personal collection.

Beautifully written by hand that she played on her piano. We found the

dance instructions from her niece's Lady Command beyond from her own

niece's she stayed with her in 1805. The dancemaster played a pivotal

role? He did.Why? He was a match maker. It was Regency speedating. If

you fancied someone on the other side of the room. You couldn't go up

to them directly you had to talk to the dancemaster. See if any of that

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 44 seconds

got right down to it. There is another one which was a saucy French

gig that tried many different partners. Thank you to the dancers