Bazalgette Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom

This is absolute genius.

So sit down, buckle up and get ready for take-off!

Each show, we'll introduce you to a different genius,

an amazing person who had a genius idea which shaped the world.

And they will inspire us to

come up with our own genius idea at the end of each show.

But, will it be any good?

Will it be any good? It will be Absolute Genius!

And on today's show, a GENIUS engineer...

Who solved a STINKER of a problem!

Prepare to be blown away by his brilliance!

Today we're going to introduce you to an amazing man who came up with

a genius solution...

TOILET FLUSHES

..to a very whiffy problem. I'd leave that for a minute, if I were you.

Thanks to him, whatever was in there has now gone

and we don't have to worry about where it is.

Just leave it to today's genius,

who invented London's first giant sewer system.

Ladies and gentlemen, we give you, Sir Joseph Bazalgette.

Huh? Do you mind, I'm rather busy!

Inspired by his genius idea, we will be coming up with our own

later on using the power of poo.

Yes, but now let's find out more about the man himself

and the humming problem that he solved.

PFFT! PFFT!

Joseph!

PFFT!

Have you ever wondered what happens when you flush the loo?

All the waste that goes down your toilet ends up

underground in the sewer, where it's safely carried away.

But more than 150 years ago in London,

there was nowhere for raw sewage to go.

So it was dumped straight in the River Thames.

And in the hot summer of 1858 the smell became unbearable.

It was called The Great Stink.

To demonstrate, we've enlisted the help of the closest thing

we can find to a poo machine.

It's Hepworth the cow and a few of her friends.

It's still warm.

'We're recreating the River Thames in Victorian London.'

Pat. Cow pat.

Thank you, Hepworth!

'So if you get queasy, look away now.'

In there with some water.

A bit of decorum, boys!

This represents the poo produced by two and a half million Londoners.

Look, that's sprayed on my trousers!

Let's recreate the moment,

to see what the river would have looked like back in the day.

-See if it flows.

-There you go.

Oh, someone had a bad night there, somewhere in East London.

Urghh!

MUSIC: "Jerusalem"

MUSIC: "EastEnders" theme

Would you want to live there? Look at it!

It wouldn't have been nice, would it?

Right, what are we going to do about my trousers?

Take them off, come on, I'll towel them dry.

So that was the great stinky summer of 1858.

-Stick your hooter in there.

-Smell that!

Imagine if London still hummed like that!

Would it put off the tourists?

We've recreated the smell to find out.

What do you think that smells of?

-I don't know, it smells bad.

-Bad, yes!

-Would you have come to this city if it smelled like that?

-No.

-No, right.

-Neither would I.

You know why? Because that is the smell of human poo!

Poo!

It is, exactly!

But it was no laughing matter.

People were getting sick and dying.

At first they blamed the smell.

But disease was actually being spread by harmful bacteria,

leaking from the river into people's drinking water.

To find out more about the bacteria in poo,

we've come to the University of Reading...

to meet Genius Helper - Dr Gemma Walton.

Phew, it's a bit whiffy in here!

There are lots of brown jars with bubbles in them!

Hello, Gemma, don't know if I should be shake your hand...

-You can at the moment.

-OK!

Gemma is a gut microbiologist.

She's recreated part of the digestive system,

to study the good and BAD bacteria inside us.

And yes, before you ask, that brown stuff IS what you think it is.

So, can you tell from your own poo how healthy you are?

In terms of how healthy you are you'd have to look more specifically

at the bacteria there, but one thing that doctors do actually use...

What's that?

..is a Bristol Stools Chart.

Now, this is a list of types of poo in terms of consistency...

Here's your menu for today, sir, would you like type six,

which is your fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool, sir?

Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface. Ouch!

Oh, dear.

Settle down, boys!

How much bacteria is there in our poo?

So, a stool sample can be anywhere, typically, from 30 - 60% bacteria,

so there's lots and lots of bacteria in a stool sample.

'We want to examine our own stool to see the bacteria inside.

'Well, not ours, someone lent us one.'

I think we should give a name to our donator.

Do you, what would you like to call it?

-Erm, Steve.

-Steve, all right. I'll just pick up Steve's sample.

Steve...Steve's not been very well!

So just take a small amount.

Some bacteria in poo is harmful, so we're wearing protective gear.

Examining your own stools at home is NOT recommended!

'First, we're heating our poo sample, to kill the bacteria...'

Get it, how's Steve smelling?

Do you want to pop a few drops all over?

'..then, we're staining it with special dye.'

Wash that off.

Once it's dry we can look at it under a microscope

-and see the bacteria.

-Ooh!

Right, let's see how much bacteria Steve's sample has on it.

-All these little shapes that you see here are bacteria.

-Ah, OK.

Human waste contains billions of bacteria.

That's why we wash our hands after going to the loo.

But in Victorian times, people were washing in -

and drinking - dirty water contaminated by sewage.

If you had a case of diarrhoea, you've got a good sewage system,

and hand-washing facilities so you can keep it pretty well contained.

However, if you were in a situation

where sewage was getting into the water system,

and people with diarrhoea etc weren't being able to

contain it, you get bacteria that cause diarrhoea

going into your drinking water, which can undoubtedly cause further

cases of it and also, if the only thing you've got to rehydrate

yourself with is water that is contaminated with bacteria

that cause diarrhoea, you're in a bit of a tricky situation.

People had been putting up with the stench and disease for long enough.

The Great Stink was the final straw.

London needed the help of a genius.

Enter Joseph Bazalgette -

London's Chief Engineer, with a background in building railways.

Parliament gave him the job of solving London's sewage nightmare.

And what he came up with was a GENIUS piece of engineering.

Bazalgette's genius idea was to build a system of big sewage pipes

to catch London's waste BEFORE it flowed into the river

and London's drinking water.

The sewage was then carried eastwards and pumped out to sea.

No more stink. Genius!

Inspired by Bazalgette's genius idea,

we'll be coming up with our own later on.

But right now we're here at London's glittering Leicester Square,

but we're not going to a premiere, oh, no...

No, we're going underground into the sewer.

Not many people get to go inside Bazalgette's sewers.

So this is a real treat.

And to guide us...

..it's Genius Helper, Rob Smith -

a flusher for Thames Water.

His job is to keep London's sewers flowing.

It's amazing to think this huge network of tunnels is right

underneath Leicester Square.

OK, I can't even describe the smell in here.

It's a little bit soft underfoot, isn't it?

-It's really soft there...

-Blurgh!

This vapour in the air,

this very fine mist in the air, what is that?

A mixture of good, old English rainwater,

and a bit of sewage, but not too much.

Bazalgette's genius sewer system took over ten years to finish.

It used 318 million bricks and involved 82 miles of new

underground sewers, linking to more than 1,000 miles of street sewers.

It was the biggest sewer system the world had ever seen.

London finally had somewhere to dump its smelly waste.

And disease spread through sewage started to disappear.

Anything that goes down the toilet or plughole ends up here.

From loo paper to cooking fat.

It's the job of Rob and his team to clear any nasty blockages...

by hand!

We're supposed to be helping,

but the tunnels are flooded with rainwater.

Rob thinks it's too dangerous to go any further.

Right, the task was going to be that you were going to digging out

and removing fat but actually it's being done by natural means

because the rainfall we've had has flushed the fat away.

It has left a couple of bits and pieces on the rails down there,

so who's the mountaineer?

Well, neither of us, but he looks like he's just about to throw up,

-so it'll have to be me.

-Right.

Now, I'm not saying he's faking it, but seconds after I volunteered,

look at him!

Is that what he's getting rid of?

-Yeah!

-Oh, my... Urghh!

This is the BAFTA moment where he falls in.

Hold onto the rail!

Hold onto the rail, stand sideways, face the wall. That's it.

-What is it?

-That's a pair of pants!

Pants?!

The elastic from the top of someone's pants!

Oh, mate, it looks disgusting!

Aaaagh!

Oh, my life!

He's retching! Come on!

He wants to have a go!

I know, I can see, he's really keen!

Other one through, and so on and so forth.

Think crab-like, yeah?

'It's disgusting.

'But flushers have to do this kind of nasty work every day.

'Without them, Bazalgette's sewers would clog up.'

-Straight down?

-Yes, straight down.

Is this Bazalgette's exact design?

Yeah.

Why did he make it so big?

It's what you call forward-planning. Well, he was a genius.

He was a genius?

He was a genius, he looked ahead.

He didn't build for tomorrow, he built for 150 years time.

That's a clever guy, yeah.

Right, shall we get out of here?

-Yes, please.

-Go for a shower.

Yeah, and then the water will end up here.

Bazalgette predicted the population would grow,

so he designed his sewer tunnels big enough to cope.

Good job, because there are three times as many people in London now.

And breathe! Phew!

Oh, London air has never smelt so good!

I tell you what, I've got an absolutely new-found respect

for the guys that work here, doing that.

It's an amazing job and they work really hard.

-Cheers, then, Rob. Thanks very much.

-Pleasure.

Glad you liked my tunnels, boys, now go and get washed.

But there was a time when we didn't have any sewers at all,

and people had to store their muck at home!

Imagine that!

Yes! It's time for the NOT so genius idea.

In medieval times,

toilet waste dropped straight into chambers called cesspits.

But you had to be careful, even if you were an expert.

In 1326, Richard, a muckraker -

the person who went around clearing up other people's filth -

fell through his own rotten floorboards

into the cesspit below and drowned in his own poo!

URGHH! A not so genius way to go to the loo.

We've been inside Bazalgette's genius sewer

and discovered things that once went down a toilet.

That's the elastic from the top of someone's pants!

But where does it all go?

Meet Genius Helper, Nick Mills, from Reading sewage works.

What does this machine do?

This removes anything that floats in the sewage

that comes into the works.

-Wet wipes...

-pants!

Can we have a look?

You can have a look, don't get too close.

So, in essence, it's just a big sieve, really, yeah?

Absolutely right, yeah.

Urghh, the smell is absolutely... What's that?

And where does the water go next?

That goes onto the next stage of the process

which I'm going to take you to now.

Oh, what is this place?

Here we settle out the solids in the waste water,

and the clean water weirs over the top and goes on.

This is the worst smell we've had so far, why's it so bad in here?

We're starting to concentrate the solids, we call it sludge,

and that has quite a strong odour.

It's been called many things along this journey -

stools, sludge...

Look at it!

Once the solids have been filtered out, the water's treated

so it's clean enough to go back into the river.

All that harmful bacteria has gone.

But what happens to the sludge left behind?

MUSIC: Theme from "2001 A Space Odyssey"

What's inside these big, fat space eggs?

Inside these digesters is sludge.

OK, so what happens to the sludge inside here?

So the sludge spends about 15 days in here with different bacteria

that eat away at the sludge and

produce a biogas that's full of methane.

We use that in engines to generate electricity and heat.

-Right, a reusable energy - poo's got power!

-Poo power!

Absolutely, certainly has.

So, the poo from Bazalgette's sewers is a useful source of energy.

Better out than in! Pffft!

We're going to make our own methane, turning poo into energy.

From sludge like this, you get methane.

So while we make some gas, here are some facts about cack.

The Genius Top Five.

At five, the world's most expensive coffee drink

is made from coffee beans eaten and pooed out by civet cats.

The digestive process improves the taste!

I think I'll stick to tea.

At four, your body finds it hard to digest sweetcorn kernels

that's why they sometimes turn up in the loo.

At three, Cheryl Cole's cack smells of strawberries.

No, it doesn't, even Cheryl has to go to the bog,

and everyone's poo contains honking bacteria.

At two, humans are naturally programmed to hate the smell of poo,

so we don't touch it and end up sick from the bacteria inside.

And at one, penguin poo can be seen from space!

Their droppings show up as dark stains

on satellite images from Antarctica.

The dirty flappy flappers!

So, then, Nick, this is a condensed version of what we saw outside,

the big, fat, space eggs, right?

That's right, so you can see the sludge and we are going to get you

to feed them, because they are hungry at the moment,

and they are going to produce more biogas, the bacteria that is,

and they'll go down this tube, and bubble up through into these

where we can collect it.

Has anyone in 60 years of television fed poo before?

-What do you feed it with?

-With the sludge you've just seen on site.

-Feed poo with poo?

-Absolutely.

So how do we know when methane has been produced?

It will bubble up into this column here and displace the water

so we can measure how much we've produced.

So it looks like when you let one go in the bath?

Yeah, we've just got this cylinder on top. Choose your colour.

-Yellow!

-You like yellow, don't you?

I'll have blue, then. So we don't forget, here's a...

-So, I'll leave you guys to feed the digesters.

-All right, sounds good.

-Get the shovels.

-Give it a stir.

Urghh, it stinks!

I'm going in.

The bacteria in the digestors will eat the sludge we're feeding them.

Have you ever thought this is where yours could end up?

In an experiment like this.

In the process, they'll naturally release gases,

full of methane energy.

It's called anaerobic digestion.

It works best when it's in a warm environment, about 40 C.

The sludge and the bacteria are loving the heat.

Can I borrow your poo poker?

Yes, please.

Right, the bung is in the bunghole, switch on the mixers,

and let it ferment.

Right, we've got 30 minutes, time starts now.

Now all we can do is wait.

And wait.

Don't mess about with it.

15 minutes left!

Each time gas is released, it bubbles up into the glass columns...

Ten minutes left.

..pushing the liquid down.

Five minutes left!

The less liquid, the more gas!

Three, two, one...

BEEP

-I've won.

-Mine's definitely lower.

-No, I've won.

-No, a little bit less.

Nick, come here, expert opinion - who's won?

Right, let's have a look.

I can see from this that Dick has produced more gas.

Come on! You see, I put in more sludge!

-You always do produce more gas.

-True.

We saw the gas bubbling up through the water, up into the tube,

it's still there, but what is it?

The biogas is mostly made up of methane - 65%.

OK, and what's the deal with methane?

Methane is an explosive gas and it's also full of energy, obviously.

Did you say, "explosive"?

This methane gas being explosive sounds good, doesn't it?

It does sound good, but I want to see the energy, I want to see it.

-If only Fran, our genius scientist was here to tell us more.

-Yeah.

-BOTH:

-Hooray!

Our genius scientist, Fran,

can explain things in ways even WE can understand.

She loves a good experiment,

and always pops up when you need her most.

So I thought, let's see the energy in methane.

So, I've got a balloon of methane here,

and some soapy water, so let's bubble methane through the

soapy water and we'll get bubbles that are full of methane.

-Farty bubbles!

-Exactly.

What I'm doing to do is set fire to these bubbles, so we see the energy

and why don't we set fire to them...

-in your hand, Dick?

-Good idea.

Course you did, Fran!

Fran's an expert - this is not something to be messed with at home.

If we get a nice, big handful of those...

Why's it always me?

-And let's just set fire to them!

-No!

So three, two, one...

Aaaagh!

Were you OK, then?

Well, it was quite warm. Look at my arm hair!

Look what you've done to my arm hair! It took me 36 years to grow that!

So you could see the energy being released from methane

with the flame and you could feel the heat a little bit.

That was good, but what we want is an explosion...

we've heard it's explosive.

Ah, well, to make methane explosive, you've got to add oxygen.

Right, have you got any oxygen?

-Just so happens I have.

-Oh, good.

Over here I've got a balloon, a very small balloon of oxygen

-and another balloon of methane.

-Good friend.

So, I'm going to bubble these through the soapy water again...

Is it going to go bang in there?

Well, why don't we just do the same as before,

you scoop them up and we set fire to them in your hand.

-It's a nice idea.

-Why not?

That's it. Three, two, one...

Aaaaagh!

# Boom! Shake, shake, shake the room!

# Tick, tick, tick, tick, boom! #

It was brilliant, but we want to see the power of poo

on an even bigger scale. Massive.

Ah, I can imagine you do.

If I was to do that, I think I'd need to go to a big, open field.

I love big, open fields.

We've been on a whiffy adventure, examining the stinky stuff

running through Bazalgette's genius sewer...

That's the elastic from the top of someone's pants!

..and we've met genius helpers who've made

power from the poo in his sewers.

Methane power!

We're ready to reveal our own genius idea.

Our Genius idea - demonstrate the power of poo on a big scale!

Our challenge -

to build the average household out of cardboard boxes,

calculate the methane they'd produce from five days of poo,

then ignite it and let rip!

I hope you're ready. I hope you're ready.

Cos this is going to be explosive.

But first we need to work out how much methane is

produced by a typical family.

Watch and learn, children, Dick and Dom's maths lesson.

The average person's poo from one day

will give us 13.5 litres of methane.

Times that by that first. Yes?

Clever boy, clever boy.

Times that by 5 days AND 2.4 -

the number of people in the average household.

What's he talking about?

-Hang on a minute!

-No!

-Shhh.

-Times five is...

I refuse to do... I know.

It's there, look. See? There's the answer.

And that's a lot of gas!

So it's 162 litres of methane.

Yep. That's right. It says it there.

Time to call in our Genius Helper..

It's Mark Turner, special effects whiz and explosives expert.

The last time we saw this man, he locked Dick in a cage,

next to almost a million volts of electricity.

So what can we do with 162 litres of methane?

-I reckon ten boxes will sort you out.

-All right.

What I'd like you to do is make them up, take the bottoms down,

I'll go and prep the balloons for these boxes - I'll see you in a bit.

-So we just need to put the boxes together.

-What is that?

There you go, one, sealed.

Yes, that's me - 2.4 Dick and Doms.

We've got a mummy and daddy.

I think we need a .4, don't we?

That could be Mark.

Look at that, it's brilliant! Look at the family, everyone.

And there you have it, the average family household of 2.4 -

Daddy Dick, Mummy Dom, and little baby Mark.

-Shall we go and produce some methane?

-Yes!

-Come on.

Or in fact, to save time, let's use some Mark produced earlier.

162 litres of it.

How many do you put in per box?

-One per box.

-Oh, only one.

-Little Mark!

-Oh, it's me!

Right, let's get them into position.

-Mark, would you like to take yourself?

-I will.

Finally we're ready for the Genius idea.

In this very quiet field we're about to make a VERY big bang,

using the power of poo!

PFFT!

PFFFFT!

And we're all set, the typical British household is there,

ready and waiting.

And you, Bazalgette, you've got front row seats to watch our

Genius idea - methane explosion.

And all of this is to celebrate what a genius you are

for inventing the London sewer system.

Yes, thank you, Bazalgette, for helping us to collect the poo

which creates the methane which will help all of this family go bang.

Actually, you might need these in your ears.

And your mouth open. Good lad.

Right, Mark, we're ready.

Standing by.

Three... Two...

One...

It went right through me! Look what it did to Bazalgette!

Oooh, my back!

Mark's head's intact - we blew his head off.

Mark's torso!

Looks like me and you are in 1,000 pieces, mate!

The methane, with the oxygen, literally blew it to bits.

We've seen the genius of Sir Joseph Bazalgette for ourselves,

and been inspired by his sewage.

And we've transformed human waste into energy.

Explosive methane energy!

Who'd have thought poo could be so powerful?!

So there you are. That's what the gas from YOUR poo can do.

Yeah, you think your dad or grandpa can do a ripper.

THAT was a ripper!

It certainly was. Bazalgette, you are an absolute genius.

Thank you, boys.

Aaaagh!

BOGEYS!!

It went right through me!

-Don't wobble it!

-I'm not doing anything!

Just stand still, then!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd