20/01/2012 The One Show

Thanks for tuning in, welcome to your Friday One Show with Chris

Evans and Alex Jones. We have magicians, giants, UFOs, robots and

most incredibly, the man who has made silent films cool again,

director of the unlikely cinema smash, The Artist. We kick off with

a gastronomic genius. It is Heston Blumenthal! Good evening. What fun

we have had in rehearsal. What is The One Show rehearsal like? It is

disorganised chaos. Good. You are a big fan of taste enhancing, being

enhanced by environment. You say that environment can affect the way

we eat. We basically eat with eyes, ears and noses. Take sound, you

think, what has that got to do with the way we eat? If you play loud

rock music in a restaurant, people will spill it -- speed updating by

15%. It is good if you want to make up more money -- speed up eating.

In a wine shop, if you play classical music, people will spend

up to 15% more on their wine. have another little twist? I was

going to save this for later. save it for later. The third one,

talking about visual elements, they did a survey where one recipe, a

Japanese recipe, simple, they wrote it in 10 different fonts. The one

that was the most italic and flowery, people thought it was the

most complicated recipe but it was the same. You say there is a famous

chocolate company that spend �300 million on a chocolate lab. A very

secret lab in Switzerland which I would love to go into. It sounds

like James Bond. Not a chocolate labrador! I bet it has sliding

doors. Is it true that you used to hate school dinners? Yes. Is it

also true that you have a new TV show called How To Cook Like

Heston? Yes. We thought we would combine those two thoughts. We are

challenging three dinner ladies to make your fantastic food. Libby

Lewis, Claire, Jane. They are all from Farley Hill Primary School in

Reading. They are going to try to cook like you. First of all, we

would like to know what you're stigmata disease are. -- signature

dishes are. I like courier I did a lamb and butternut squash curry.

Spicy spaghetti bolognese. Jane? I think I would have to cook

a nice rack of lamb, I believe it is somebody's favoured over there.

That is what they would like to cook. But it is not what they are

going to cook. We will find that out soon. 230 years ago, this

person was considered one of the wonders of his age. Today it is

what to do with what is left that is causing a sad to fix scuffle.

Justin Rowlatt asked what is it is time to give the Irish giant his

final request. Today, we would see these people as

suffering terrible diseases, but as recently as the 19th century, men

and women with rare conditions would be paraded as circus freaks

for the pleasure of the paying public. The story of Charles Byrne,

the man who became known as the Irish giant, is no different.

Except for one small fact. He remains on display to this very day.

He is reckoned to have stood at 7 ft 7. A man so tall, he lit

cigarettes on the flames of street lamps. His condition made him a

fortune. He arrived in London, he set up lodgings, he advertised

himself, he had an agent. He was kind of like a celebrity? He was

very much a celebrity of his time. His life did not end well. What

happened? He was only 22 and already showing signs of the

disease that would kill him. At that point, anatomists basically

John Hunter was the most famous surgeon of his time. Never

described, actually, what happened. Rumours started to circulate as to

who had got the body. For four years, John Hunter kept the body

hidden. How extraordinary that this celebrity's surgeon should seek to

steal the body of another. John Hunter relied on Body Snatchers

ball of his career. He does it did thousands of bodies, based on that

he made useful discoveries in medicine. I think John Hunter was a

great man, he pushed forward the boundaries of medicine but I think

he went too far in this case. We know that Charles Bernard stated

clearly to his friends that he wanted his body put in a lead

coffin and put at sea -- Charles We live in the 21st century. We

would not acquire human remains in the way that John Hunter acquired

them at that time. Charles Byrne's skeleton has been the most

important skeleton in any museum collection worldwide, because of

what we have learnt. What benefits have there been of having the

skeleton? The illness made him grow too excessive height. While the

results of the research published last year mean we can identify a

particular groups who are more likely to develop this illness.

this particular case, nobody said as clearly and as forcefully as

Charles Byrne that he did not want to be bisected and he did not want

to be in a museum. So I think the time has come to honour his wishes.

Charles Byrne's life may have ended here in England, but it began a

world away, here among the farms and smallholdings of Northern

Ireland. And today, I am meeting a distant relative of them, a man who

probably has the strongest claim to decide the final fate of the Irish

Rear this is the area Charles Byrne came from, what is your connection?

We share a common ancestor, which we believe could be anything up to

1500 years ago. You are a distant, distant relatives. Does your

connection explain your... How shall I put it, considerable

height? It does. Charles Byrne was ever put eight inches. I am 6 ft 9.

-- he was 7 ft 8 inches. Is it time we respected his wishes and buried

him? We still don't know how much more information that skeleton

possesses, that we can make use of. What benefits are there for people

who carry the gene? To develop a screening process, to screen out

people who carry the rogue gene, and who may or may not develop this

condition. I mean by that, that people will not grow to these

extraordinary heights, that they can be treated before it causes any

long-term harm. It is not so much the height, that has nothing to do

with it, it is the medical condition which can be quite

debilitating. I suppose in the long term, this means exceptionally tall

people like you, giants, won't exist anymore. There will never be

any more giants, if it is done on a wide enough bassist.

Only time will tell what happens to the Irish giant. Only time will

tell what happens to our three dinner ladies, Libby, Kayal and

Jane! -- Claire and Jane. A book goes along with Heston's TV show,

Libby is going to cook from the book. She is cooking mushroom soup.

Simple, button mushrooms but they are so fragrant. The magic, you

know like a cappuccino comedy make the soup like a cappuccino, instead

of cocoa powder, you drive some mushrooms to make a mushroom powder

dustbin. How are you feeling? too bad. Hopefully be able to do it.

Clare is also cooking from your book. She is doing one of the fact

that -- one of the Fat Duck classics. The real key is to make

bacon flavoured milk, then use that to make the custard. Normally when

you cook custard, you don't overcook it. This one, you get

higher and the green clumps the egg together. This is going to taste of

bacon and egg. Cooking the most famous ice cream in the world, how

do you feel? Excited. That is good. Jane is doing chocolate soil.

do you feel? Yes, excited. The kids would love that? Most of them.

little bit of hazelnut oil gives it some clever but when you start

discussing how you want your soil to look... It gets so real but it

is great fun. You serve this for people to eat and buy? These are

recipes from the book, you cook this at home. You have not tried

this before, have you? Are you ready. 5, 4, 3, 2, one, get cooking.

While the girls are doing that, Heston and I are going to join Alex

on the sofa. Let's have a taste of next Wednesday's How To Cook Like

Heston. Here he is, trying to guess the ingredients in some chicken

stock made by his local women's hockey team.

My last challenger is Emma. It is nice, a light chicken stock.

Chicken carcass? Chicken carcass. bit of celery. Celery. Carrot. A

tiny bit of white wine. A bit more than tiny! Identifying those

ingredients was easy. That was very impressive. You said it was quite

easy, when did it begin to get difficult after that? For the

stock? It got harder, one would imagine? If you put a lot of celery

in something, you can really tasted. It comes back to what we were

saying earlier. -- really taste it. The reason why sounds can affect

the way you eat is because of memory, we always have to relate to

something. You can taste something in wine or food if you recognise it.

The great thing for me, this thing about taste and flavour and the

difference between the two. That was very impressive. Every week,

you focus on a main ingredient. You have done beef and ex-, this is

about chicken, give us your top chicken tikka. Chicken stock, if

you are going to make a chicken stock, sprinkle skimmed milk powder

over Europe chicken wings before you rose them. Secondly, if you are

roasting a chicken, invest in one of these thermometers and stick it

into a -- your chicken, and you'll get perfect chicken every time. If

you cook chicken too hot, like a wet sponge, you squeeze the

moisture out and you end up with dried chicken. If you can control

the temperature, you have beautiful, moist chicken every time. You are

about cooking on low heat and slowly. How low and how long for

the perfect chicken? The average chicken, three or four people, I

would put it on 90 degrees... that all? You think it is not very

hot. If you put your fingers in 90 degree water, you would burn them.

It is just that when you open the oven, the heat falls out. It is 10

years that the VAT back has been there? Our - the Fat Duck. No, it

opened in 1995. Is it true that you have 42 covers, each table of two

brings in �250,000 a year of turnover, which is �5 million a

year, yet you still don't make any profit? As a stand-alone business,

no. We have so many staff, we have 100 staff for those 42 people. We

have 52 chefs for 42 people. A lot goes into making your recipes, as

we can illustrate. This is a Heston recipe. I mean, seriously. That is

one of the slightly more ambitious ones. It is fish pie! But it is not

any old fish by! This is a James Martin recipe, which one are you

Your new show, is it about making yourself more accessible, telling

everybody else they are doing it wrong? What is the message?

main drive was that we did the Fat Duck cookbook about five years ago,

a window into the Fat Duck, how we do the dishes. Some of the recipes

are seven pages long, so it is not a home cook book. Over the years, I

have developed hundreds of techniques that are the building

blocks to the dishes we serve in the Fat Duck. Although it might be

Bacon and egg ice-cream, there are techniques to get the texture,

flavour and making balanced. It is how to take those techniques from

the Fat Duck and incorporate them into your cooking. If you are

making spicy spaghetti bolognese, a little bit of staff unease with the

onion at the beginning and you will have a more meaty flavour. It is

things like that, technique. love it. How To Cook Like Heston is

on Wednesday night, Channel 4, 8pm. That is the only downside, Channel

4. The film The Artist has caused a stir for many reasons. It is tipped

for many Oscars, has been through nominated for many BAFTAs and has

won Golden Globes. But since its release in Great Britain, some

people have asked for their money back because it does not have any

words. It's a silent film! We will be talking to the writer and

director shortly, but first, Carrie Grant has made her own brilliant

film about silent movies in a style befitting the genre, so we very

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 176 seconds

much need Neil the pianist. Take it I loved that a. And Neil, that was

brilliant. We have only got the hottest director in the world here

in the studio, the artist behind The Artist. It is Michel

Hazanavicius. Welcome to the programme. Congratulations on the

success that the film has had and the success it will have to come.

But you say that when you lose the words you gain so much more. Yes.

When you say to people, I will not use words, you say to them, I will

use images. It is another way to tell the story. They expect

something. They want to see something different and they can

accept another way to tell stories. So you can have some poetic

sequencers and people can accept that. It is difficult to do it

these days. With a silent movie, you can try. You tried very well

and you did OK. The film is about a silent movie star whose world is

turned upside down by the arrival of the talking movies. Shall we

An amazing movie. We were wandering earlier, what is it about the

French, because nobody can cook like the French, apart from Heston.

Nobody can make wine or cheese like the French, and nobody can

certainly make atmospheric films and Cinema like the French. What is

it about you? I have to say, I do not see myself as a French man. I

am a film maker and that is what is important for me, not being French.

The great advantage with silent movies is that there is no language,

so it's more important than being from here or from there.

pictorially, film noir has always had that offbeat, almost like jazz.

It has a different cut to it. think this movie is inspired by

American movies and culture, so maybe it is a mix of something

European and maybe French and something more American. I think

maybe we dare doing different movies. Your wife is the female

lead in this. Was there anybody up against her for the lead, and did

you consider not casting your wife? It is much more simple than that. I

wrote the script with her in mind. And you say you are not French!

That is so romantic. They say this movie is a love letter to Hollywood,

and I have to say it is also a love letter to my wife. He is good,

isn't he? This guy is good! Good luck with everything. What are you

going to do next? Where do you go from here? Of I think I am going to

try the talking movie, and maybe with colour. It has been done

before but good luck with that. can see The Artist in cinemas. It

is amazing. We have both seen it. And it is a silent film, remember!

With Heston here, Jay will have to do something special for Foodie

It probably was not quite what the song writers had in mind, but many

of us have developed what amounts to an addiction to sugar. Sugar,

harvested from the giant grass that the call came, has been around for

at least 5000 years but it only began to be imported in quantity

into the country from about the 14th century. It came from the far

side of the world. Cane sugar was and is grown in tropical regions of

the world. It was in 1319 that Sugar became available in the UK.

It was very expensive, a real luxury. It was two shillings per

pound, which in today's terms is about �100 for a one kilo bag.

we got a taste for sugar in the UK, we wanted more of it. But expensive

imported sugar cane remained out only source until the 18th century.

What changed that and Major do something for the masses were these

ugly things, which happily grew here. Mrs sugar beet, part of the

same family as beetroot and charred and grown as animal fodder for

thousands of years. Until 1747, when scientists found a way to

extract sugar from it in a form that could be used in cooking. The

sugar beet industry began to take off across Europe, eventually

becoming a real rival to cane sugar. And then, exactly 100 years ago,

the first processing plant was built in this country, in Norfolk,

finally providing us with our own home-grown sugar. We are standing

up the first factory to be built in 1912. The sugar beet was delivered

to the factory on the river. Much of it was delivered on a

traditional barge sailing craft. They were loaded at the factory.

There was also a need for large quantities of water in the process,

so it was important that the factory was built on a large river.

Today we are drawing to the end of what is known as the campaign, the

precise militaristic operation to harvest 7.5 million tonnes of sugar

beet and get it into factories like this for 24 hours a day processing

to turn it into sugar. Farmers like David are working to exact

timetables for the delivery of their sugar beet from the fields to

the factory. How would it have been in the old days when you did not

have this equipment. In the old days, they would have picked them

like this, banged them together and made them out. And then they would

have had a hook and another member of the team would have chopped the

top off and thrown them on the heap. It was back-breaking work all day.

You are welcome to try a small piece. The original source material

for sugar. It is sweet, isn't it? It's not very nice though. How do

you then go from all the sugar beet I can see over your shoulder to the

granulated stuff on our breakfast table? This is sliced sugar beet.

This goes into a big vessel, with hot water. An analogy that I like

to use is that it is like making tea and these are the tea-leaves.

Essentially, the sugar diffuses into solution in that large vessel.

The sugar solution is then filtered, treated and boiled on the vacuum

conditions to produce a syrup in which sugar crystals start to form.

This is then spun to separate the sugar from the liquid. How much

sugar do you produce in this complicated factory? We slice up to

9000 tonnes of sugar beet every day and from that we produce about 1000

tonnes of sugar a day. But the annual harvest produces more than

sugar. The process also extracts 500,000 tonnes of animal feed from

the waist Pulp, 300,000 tonnes of recycled topsoil, liming material

to treat the fields, bioethanol for fuel, not to mention over 1 million

tonnes of sugar. For productivity, beat that. He never disappoints.

Our guest star dinner ladies are here, cooking up a Heston

Blumenthal star storm. They are very relaxed under the

circumstances. They are. Can you talk us through what they are doing,

starting with the mushroom soup? She has just added the but grip --

button mushrooms. Great technique for any soup, especially vegetable

soup, keep the cooking time down to keep the fresh flavours and the

vegetables. The way to do that is to cut them thin and they will cook

quicker. Libby, you are the boss of the dinner ladies at your school.

Yes. Claire is making ice-cream. Not just any ice-cream. Not just

any old ice-cream! The key thing with ice cream is the faster you

freeze the custard, the smaller the ice crystals and the smoother the

ice-cream. Chris, you have just bought some on an ice-cream machine

for Christmas. And he is saying you do not need one. And they are no

good. They take too long to freeze. She is happy! It keeps her amused.

Then it is the best thing in the world. But I would say this

technique, by using something you're going to see a little bit

later, you can turn a mixing bowl, or in normal bowl and whisk into

the best ice-cream machine you can ever buying. It is Bacon and egg

ice-cream. Do you serve it as a dessert? Yes. And how is Jane doing

with her chocolate soil? She is doing very well. That is the first

stage over there. She is on track to make her own little garden.

you serve under Claire, is that right? I am Libya's assistant.

Genuine dinner ladies. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk?

Come and impress us. So, this is basically a passion fruit gateau.

Like a chocolate truffle top and then add biscuit base. I have

frozen it for a good reason. It is a fantastic finish for chocolate

dessert and it involves using one of these, a paint gun from a DIY

store. My dad has one of those in the garage. It has warm chocolate

inside it. You have a go. This is going to get messy. If you do this

at home, it is best to wrap things Can you see that texture? It goes

like Suede. It is still frozen. The coldness of the cake crates the

texture. You have to let it do frost to eat it. I can tell that

This adds an extra dimension to the eating experience. I might get a

I have two pieces of cake. There is popping candy in the base of this

as well. Take a piece of cake each. It is chocolate and passion fruit,

pot -- popping candy in the base. I want a hint of mandarins. I am

going to bring that smell in by In the bottom of this bold, I have

some dry ice. You can buy this online, but it is very important to

handle it with care and use gloves. It is minus 80. You can buy it

dries online? It comes in polystyrene boxes. Two or three

days in the box, if it stays cold. This tastes better than it does?

You had this Mandarin smile. Here I It couldn't be any better. Can you

How good is that! That is absolutely brilliant. Whenever we

do food stuff on the show, we always have a little nibble, so as

not to get full for dinner later, and we give the rest to the crew.

The crew, you are not going to have any of this, sorry about that.

you read us into the next film? Hidden deep inside a Scottish

hillside is an incredible place, it is the size of six cathedrals, it

is carved out of solid rock, and it was kept a secret for over four the

case. Joe Crowley has managed to crawl inside.

The port of Invergordon and the deep sheltered waters of Cromarty

Firth in north-east Scotland. Today it is a hub for the oil industry

but 70 years ago, warships docked here, a vital part of Britain's

wartime protection. Mac Carlton a defence against evasion was the see

all around us. -- our ultimate defence against invasion. If a

German U-boat succeeded him blockading that carports, they

would staff or supplies, particularly fuel, a life blood of

the war effort -- succeeded in Hidden in the hillside, blasted

from solid rock, a secret bomb- proof depot from the Second World

War, one of only three of its kind in Britain, storing precious oil

for the Royal Navy. Archaeological investigator at Allan Kilpatrick

has agreed to take me down into this cavernous, hidden world that

is close to the public. I think you can probably smell a little bit of

residual oil lingering in the air. Here we go. Wow, it is fast. It is.

230, 240 metres into the hillside. This is the biggest single

construction in the Highlands since the Caledonia of -- Caledonian

Canal. Shall we go a bit further up? Yes, let's see what is beyond.

This is the access to the tank one, one of six in the complex.

February 1941. It is lovely workmanship which reflects the

workmanship in the tanks as a whole. The materials are first class.

Where is the door? I wish there was. The access is down these pipes and

it is on this contraption. I and sliding through a tube just 18

inches wide, so not for claustrophobic or anyone on the

tubby side. That was unnatural. My goodness. Absolutely huge. Each one

of these tanks, and there are six on the site, 230 metres long. Nine

metres wide, 12 metres high. You are looking at 5 million gallons

per tank. As we are talking, the reverberations are passing down, it

is an amazing Dzeko. I suppose you need something quite high pitched

It goes on and on. How long would that last for? About two minutes.

There is nowhere for the sound to go, so it just bounces. You can

compare it to a cathedral, you could literally fit York Minster

lengthwise into this and still have a little room to spare. It is that

kind of size. It is the height of two double-decker buses and long

enough to hold 21 parked end to end, and that is just one of six tanks.

5 million gallons in here, 30 million gallons in total, I can't

really get a grasp on those figures, what could you do with that fuel?

You could run my diesel family car to the Sun and back eight times.

wasn't diesel? It was a horrible gungy stuff called furnace fuel or

oil. It doesn't move at all, it is like tar when it is really cold.

The oil came from the Gulf and three tankers were lost just off

the coast here during the war. can still see some of the oil on

the walls. Would it have been a reserve that was never used? It was

used constantly, and up until the 80s, when it was last full, in 1982,

during the Falklands conflict. men toiled here for three years,

all sworn to secrecy. Malcolm McLeod was five years old when this

fast operation started in 1938. This is the first time he has been

up here to witness what his father helped to build. What were

conditions like for him? Dusty and probably the marquee because there

would be streams of water coming down. He would be covered in dust?

Oh, yes. Long hours? Yes, top hour shifts, six days a week. This took

its toll on the men who worked here? A good few died quite early.

It is an incredible achievement. it is that. Inching down is a

monument to British military engineering. But it is also a

memorial to the unsung heroes of war, people who toiled away in

secret for little reward, to create a valuable asset that would serve

Britain for decades. He is right, he is always right. We

have already been treated to some news -- movie magic, some Kitchen

Magic, it is only right we have some magic. Tomorrow, Mel Giedroyc

is teaming up with Pete Firman to perform spellbinding illusions on

BBC One. We have over 240 cans of baked beans. Stacked over 7 ft tall.

If you could just do exactly the same on this side, if you could

handcuff me through the wall. her around here, mind to the Tower.

You are a saucy double-entendres, Where did the BBC find you? I have

been on the comedy circuit for a number of years and done many, the

-- Edinburgh festivals. They got me on board for the second series and

I am chuffed to bits will stop more comedian or magician? If a comic

asks me, eyes in addition, a magician asks me, I say comedian. -

- is a comic asks me, I say magician. You are on the show

tomorrow. Have you always wanted to be a magician's assistant? I have,

for about 30... Hello, Heston. About 30 years. It has been brewing.

My brother, when he was about 12, did a magic act in our house. He

went by the name of fingers gas. He had a beautiful assistant, called

Zaza the beautiful. We have a three sisters in my house, I was not

chosen. Let's continue your therapy now. Pete is my cycle analyst --

psychoanalyst. You have a trick from your tour? Heston, are you

willing to be the guinea pig? Heston,, round here. This is the

latest in slicing and dicing technology. This is a guillotine.

As they say in France, a guillotine. You might think you have seen

something like this before, but this is made of plexiglass, you can

see through it. I am just going! This played, it is about �25,

pretty solid. I have a carrot here, you are pretty familiar -- probably

you are pretty familiar -- probably familiar. We put the blade in there

and we go like this. And it slices and it dices. I wanted to get a

closer look. Step around the back. Move a little bit forward, move

your hips for it. Just kneel down. Adopt a praying position. Are you

genuinely worried? To be honest, the whole thing is a

bit surreal fault that has taken me by surprise. You think you are

nervous, I have not done this before. That is a dovetail joint, I

would not put your fingers there. Have a little look. It is a fine

piece of workmanship. Just go all the way down, we would just get you

in there like that. About that table in the Fat Duck, can we get

carrots. You have a fairly broad shoulders. Did you buy this trick

today? Yes, the first time out. Relax, you are all tents. This

might be better around the back! I don't know what that puddle is! The

blade is going to come down, his head is going to be rolling on the

floor and the carrots will be unharmed! How is the soup? Do you

know what, I will never know. Ready? Going a little bit back.

Here we go. 1, 2, 3... For... I am going to adjust this carrot. This

will blow your mind. 1, 2, 3. All the way through! Are you all right?

This audience is going to give you Thank you very much. They are run

at 635 tomorrow night on BBC One. Can you do the next bit? In a week

when everyone has been star-gazing, Gyles Brandreth has uncovered a

strange tale of UFOs. But not in the stars, in Kent.

On September 4th, 1967 in the early hours of the morning a groundsman

at a golf course in Bromley made a startling discovery. Lying on the

ground of the 18th fairway was what appeared to be an alien spacecraft.

By mid-afternoon, five more UFOs had been discovered right across

the south of England. This sensational story immediately hit

the headlines. It might have been that the Martians had landed.

Police were taking no chances. Ministry of Defence official line

has always been to downplay the existence of UFOs. But behind

closed doors, the Ministry's response was rather different. John

is the author of how big are little green men and he has interviewed

retired MoD agency in charge on the day. The Defence Intelligence Staff

had one officer who was responsible for investigating UFOs on the part

of the MoD. He had been told by his wing Commander that at least three

flying saucers had landed and were on the ground, to which he said,

expletive, what shall we do now? One of the officers said to me,

there was not a manual for the case of alien invasion. One was taken

away by an RAF helicopter, another blown up by the army, and one found

its way on to a police sergeant's desk. They did not realise that

when they put it down it had a bleeping mechanism in it. When it

came to rest and started screeching at them, they were literally

fighting to get out of the door. And then the moment of truth.

was a hoax. This was one of the original hoaxers behind the stunt

and he had no idea how much attention it would attract from the

military. We were apprentices at the Royal Aircraft Establishment,

and every year we tried to raise money for charity, and the more

publicity we could get, the more money be raised. What sort of

trouble did you get into? We got away with it. Things were more

relaxed in those days. There were no terrorists. You designed it, and

this is the design that you chose. It had an electronic circuit inside

that was activated when we turn them over. If we pick it up and

turn it over, it makes a strange noise. We also put about half a

hundredweight of rancid flour and water paste inside everyone, which

smells revolting. I do not know what it is. It is a strange sticky

substance. By today's standards, these may appear rudimentary fakes,

but at the time, the MoD considered them a real threat. Recent

documents, released under the Official Secrets Act by David Clark

from the National Archives, now reveal that key defence officials

at the time were more concerned about the threat of UFOs than the

government was letting on. Lord Howe Batten, Chief of Defence Staff

in the 1950s, the Chief of Defence Staff in the 1970s, they were both

believers in flying saucers from out of space. -- outer space.

the man who was the chief of defence staff only a few years

after these hoax sightings actually believed in UFOs? Absolutely, no

doubt about it. And this had been covered up. After retirement, they

came out and said they think this was something the Government should

have been taking seriously. Following his retirement, he

bombarded parliament with letters demanding more information

regarding the Government's involvement with UFOs. What is the

position today? The Ministry of Defence have said on the record in

2009 that they are no longer interested in the subject. They

have an open mind about aliens but they never, in 50 years of

gathering sighting reports, never found any evidence of any kind of

defence threat, so they decided it was time to close down the X Files.

So if I see a flying saucer, what do I do about it? Do not tell the

Ministry of Defence because they are not interested. In 1957, the

Government told us it did not believe in UFOs but when six Flying

saucers landed, the Ministry of Defence came running. And it is

clear that some of the top brass of the time really did believe in

He is gone. But he will be back. cannot talk about hoax UFOs stories

and aliens without referring back to the classic that was the Jeremy

Hello. What do you want? Where are you going? Please come back. Do you

want a cup of tea? That was not a sketch. They were genuine hidden

cameras. She and her husband in Dorset, she thought it was an alien.

She did offer him a cup of tea. is nice to aliens. Coming up, can

the dinner ladies cook like Heston? We will find out in a moment. First,

some clever science fact. Miranda has been to see why anyone would

want to put whiskers on a robot. Nature has developed phenomenal

censors. Birds of prey have incredible -- incredible eyesight

to spot dinner from a great distance. Some animals sniff out

their victims with highly sensitive noses. But when it comes to the

sense of touch, you cannot beat a good set of whiskers. Animal

whiskers are not like normal hairs. They are thicker and stiffer at the

base and each one has a mass of nerve cells, so they are sensitive

when they touch anything. That comes in handy when an animal

cannot rely on its eyesight or sense of smell to find food and get

So here at the Bristol robotics Lab,... Good morning, it is a

pleasure to meet you. They are developing a robot that can find

its way round by touch alone, inspired by whiskers. And here,

Professor Tony Pipe heads the project. Why a whiskers? I think a

sense of touch is one of the sensors that has been underplayed

in research to date, because a lot of research has been on vision,

which is good. We feel there is a lot to be learned from how

biological organisms use their sense of touch for us to use in

engineering systems in robotics. What are the applications? Imogen

firefighters in a large building, a warehouse setting, smoke everywhere

and they only have a certain of time in the building. -- imagined.

If robots could help them get out of buildings, navigate around, fine

things in the building that a useful, like people, survivors,

that would be useful. But it is another Tony, Tony Prescott from

the University of Sheffield, who has been looking at which animal

whiskers are the best to emulate. And rodents and shrews have come up

trumps. Shrews and other mammals use the tactile sense of whisker

touch more than their visual sense. Rats and mice specialise in

exploring the world in the dark. We have been using high-speed cameras

to try to see exactly how they are moving. These animals have two sets

of whiskers, long outer ones to help them move about exploring

their world, and smaller, delicate ones, tighter to the snout, which

are able to feel objects in more detail. Each whisker sends

information back to their brain, building a mental map of their

environment. Shrews and rats carefully control how they move

their whiskers, in the way that people might use fingertips to

explore an object. They control how fast the whiskers move. We spent a

long time perfecting those parts of the robot that control how the

whiskers move. Each whisker has its own motor, so it can control when

it touches. After years of research and development, this is one of the

world's first robots to move by How does he work? The whiskers go

around the circumference of the snout. Will he investigate me?

interact with him. He came right up to my hand and touched! That is

something that shrews do all the time, walk around their natural

environment. They detected with the large whiskers and bins and the

Orient their snout towards it. like whiskers, it has long outturns

sensors to feel its way and in no, more sensitive ones to find out

what it has touched. And it can replicate animal movements with its

neck. It has hit the wall. He knows he cannot go through so he has to

move in a different direction. But how far is it from saving lives?

cannot guess exactly. 5, 10 years? There is a lot of work to be done.

We are concentrating on the sensory mechanism. If you look at the base,

it has a platform which can go over rugged terrain, which we would have

to sort out first. But it cannot go over rugged terrain. Taking

inspiration from rodents and the Shrew, the world of robotics could

be within a whisker of helping Front Line rescue and emergency

services. Look at your whiskers! Nearly time for the big moment. How

have the dinner ladies done trying to cook like Heston? There is one

thing left to do, to help out Claire with the ice-cream. Do you

want to go round there? No, we will do that at the end. Standby for the

thing! Have you finished the mushroom soup? Yes. Bring it over

here. How do you think it has gone? It is a bit thin. It is basically a

light soup with a bit of cream in it. This is mushroom dust. But is

dried shiitake mushrooms from the supermarket. It does look like a

cappuccino. It is officially gorgeous! Delicious. A little bit

of salt? Chris, you are learning! Very nice, lovely. If you have been

making chocolates soil. How has it gone? I think it is OK. You have to

dish it up. She has some vanilla ice-cream, into a flower pot,

obviously. We also have Desert in flower pots! It is about taste and

environment. -- we all serve up our How much fun is this? You have to

make this at home. And you even have a little sticker there. Can I

use this? Come on, Heston, get in there. It needs a bit of salt but

the... Actually, it is gorgeous, isn't it? Jane, tell us what you

think? Well, it looks OK. Thumbs up. Well done. Come on! You have got

one minute. This is the bit where you turn it into ice-cream. And you

turn the bowl and whisk into the best ice-cream machine you can

Where is the risk? Where is the risk, everybody? We cannot make

ice-cream without the whisk. will have to do it with a spoon. 40

seconds. We will be doing it in the Queen Vic if we take any longer.

This is good. If we were not dealing with... This is dry ice.

Keep whisking. I am not sure we have time to taste this. I will

just tell you about the show you have already seen. Thank you to has