Episode 8 Room 101

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Hello, I'm Frank Skinner, and welcome to Room 101, the show where

three guests battle to consign their pet peeves to the infamous vault.

Let's meet this week's guests.

Joining me tonight are comedian Sue Perkins, Strictly judge

-Bruno Tonioli and presenter Steve Jones.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

OK, then, let's have our first category.

It's shopping. OK.

What does Bruno hate about shopping?

Argh!

Flat-pack furniture. Hell! Hell! Dangerous.

Very, very dangerous.

I think, it's actually easier to assemble a space shuttle.

Have you ever tried to put together, from a flat-pack furniture box,

a chest of drawers?

-ALL: Yes.

-Yeah.

Well, you're a genius, because I nearly killed myself, I really did.

Cos, you know, the first thing... it comes...

there's all these kind of bits and pieces. I have no idea...

I'm very artistic, you see, you have to understand, so...

and you have to put them down in a very, very precise pattern, right?

Then you've got this piece of paper, says, "Take A",

which usually I put there, "and stick it to B", which is there.

-Are you playing Twister?

-And then the key...

You've accidentally bought Twister. Can I ask you a question?

-How many times have you done this process?

-Once. Never again.

-Terrible.

-I don't think anybody would disagree.

There's a hellish ordeal to try and assemble one of these things,

but, what I would say, the sense of achievement you get

when you do actually assemble it and it's there in front of you,

you feel like a real man, you know. Normally I'm like...

I'm not going for that one.

Bruno, you must often feel like a real man.

-Every day.

-If we can get one, we will.

We have a couple of examples of flat-packs that didn't work out.

These are genuine, not done for comedy, but genuine.

This is a chair.

-I can see where they went wrong.

-Yeah, exactly.

And for those of you who still collect vinyl,

this is record shelving.

-Yeah, but they're not...

-That's a classic.

I know, if that was my house, me

-and my girlfriend would live with that for about three years.

-Yeah.

Here's one of my favourite bits of interior decoration.

This is a coat hanger that looks like a drunken octopus who

-wants a fight.

-Yeah, that's good.

OK. What doesn't Steve like about shopping?

Enforced present-buying.

A few times a year, we, the British people,

are pretty much held to ransom by these huge corporate mega,

mega businesses, that will prey on our insecurities

and fears in order to get us to buy their products.

You know, it's a case of, "Come buy this tat that you don't need,

"or your loved ones don't need, in order to show them you love them.

"If you don't, you're a terrible person.

"You will burn in the lake of fire for all eternity, Ebenezer".

I haven't actually seen that specific advert.

You're not just thinking of Christmas. You're thinking of any...

Oh, I'm talking Valentine's Day, birthday presents,

Christmas, any other occasion you care to mention.

Oh. Curmudgeon. Curmudgeon.

Boo.

Let's talk about this. Let's take Valentine's Day.

-OK. All right.

-OK?

Now, which one would you prefer, sir, madam, which do you prefer?

I'd like to take you out

for a romantic candlelit meal this evening,

because it's Valentine's Day and everybody else is doing it.

Or, would you prefer this?

I'd like to take you out for a candlelit meal

because it's July and I love you.

One has sentiment. The other doesn't.

-Yes, I agree.

-That's my point.

I get a dozen red roses every Valentine...

I buy a dozen red roses, and they're quite expensive.

In fact I had a conversation, I actually had a genuine conversation

with two guys and one of them said, he said, "I've often wondered

"if you could get away with ten, because no-one ever counts them".

There's a pressure of all sorts, though.

Have you ever seen these houses that put up loads and loads

-and loads of Christmas lights...

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-..in their street?

And then the neighbours think, "Oh, our house looks a bit drab".

I saw a fabulous example of this.

This is a genuine house where someone did their Christmas

lights this elaborately. Look at that.

And the neighbours, instead of trying to compete directly,

they did this.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

I'm disappointed in you, Steve.

My notes on you say you're a very well-known present-er.

HE LAUGHS

What does Sue hate about shopping?

-I hate catalogues.

-Oh.

Because basically they are

environmentally very unfriendly... so they're like a dossier wrapped

in a condom that gets delivered to you, and there's basically 40 pages

of one nymphet in clogs, and you get to one and you think, oh, she looks

nice, and she's in a field, and she's wearing like a hessian smock,

and there's a sort of autumnal light catching her shoulders,

and she's clutching a lamb, and you think, "That looks great".

So you buy it, by filling out the convenient 407-digit code

and sending it off.

And then when you put it on in a semi in Croydon, it really doesn't

look the same. In A&E, someone cutting a sort of poncho off you.

I've actually done a bit of modelling for catalogues.

-Have you?

-On my life.

I once, yeah, was in a field somewhere in Oxford...

-Always in a field.

-..in a wax jacket, with my arm

-around a spaniel, going...

-That's it. That's it.

You're exactly responsible for that, because the things only fit

when you're crouching and you've got your arm round a stinking dog.

I find that women don't spend...

when they're in shops, they might as well shop in catalogues,

because they don't spend very long really studying the clothes.

Let me demonstrate. This is how the average woman, I find,

when I've been clothes shopping, this is how they judge the clothes.

-Oh, God!

-How many times have you seen women do this?

OK.

Well, look, you've all argued your cases extremely well, I must say.

I think, with the flat-pack, Bruno, I don't know

if the flat-pack is at fault.

I think it's us. We don't try hard enough.

I also think catalogues are based on that idea that the dream is

better than the reality, and I kind of like that.

I think you can fantasise about,

"Yes, I'd look great in a field with a spaniel".

But, I do think there is too much pressure on us to buy things,

for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and all that stuff,

and really it should come from the heart, not the wallet.

So I am going to put enforced present-buying into Room 101.

Yes!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Next category, please.

Ah, it's the audience choice.

So we go into our crowd to find... I think we have Clive Green.

Where are you, Clive? There you are.

What would you like to put into Room 101, Clive?

I'd like to put in parent and toddler parking spaces.

GROANING AND A RIPPLE OF APPLAUSE

-Why?

-I don't see any reason why they should park any closer

because they've got a pushchair,

and the idea of a pushchair is that they can be pushed.

I think the toddler

and parent spaces could be used for elderly people.

I think sitting in an audience full of parents who probably have

toddlers, saying that, you must have balls the size of China.

So, I'm not disagreeing with him.

Elderly people fought in the war and defended this country,

and they gave the right for the toddlers

and parents to park there in the first place.

Hold on a minute. Hold on.

The toddlers haven't had a chance to fight in the war.

Can I ask you, if you're

so dismissive about the parent-child spaces, would you park in one?

I have parked in one, yeah.

BOOING

Now, you see, I'm going to put YOU in Room 101.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

I love this guy. He's really growing on me.

You're really growing on me.

You're exactly what light entertainment has been waiting for.

One of my great joys, it was a sunny day,

and I had hung what I believe they call a posset cloth

on the back window, so the baby wasn't in the sunshine.

So when I parked, this guy came up and said, "yeah, you can't park

here if you don't have a child",

and the joy of that reveal, when I went...

Another thing is "baby on board" signs on the back of cars.

How am I supposed to alter my driving while seeing that?

-What difference do they make?

-Well, drive more carefully.

Yeah, but I drive carefully anyway, so...

No, but drive MORE carefully, because the driver has had

two hours' sleep and he's woozy from the smell of excrement in the car.

-Clive, I mean you're passionate, and...

-I am, yeah.

I love you for that, but I hate you for so many other things,

and I just think it's wrong. I think it's a difficult...

you get parents on their own, and they've got a couple of kids,

and they've got shopping, and... it's nightmarish.

Yeah, but they've got all day to do it as well, haven't they?

This is now the Jeremy Kyle Show.

He's getting worse and worse.

-Anyway, look, Clive, I admire your passion...

-Thank you.

But I am not, under any circumstances,

going to put parent-child parking spaces

into Room 101, but what about a big hand for Clive anyway?

APPLAUSE

OK, next category, please.

It's the wild card round. Now there are no limitations of category.

You can pick anything that you don't like.

What is Steve's wildcard?

Gym etiquette.

-Gym etiquette.

-Or lack thereof.

I'm guessing you go to the gym quite...

You know, you've got to look after yourself.

-Well, you don't have to.

-Well...

Can I just say, before you do this, I have a picture of you,

which I think suggests that you do go to the gym, and it works.

-I really don't want to see this, do I?

-No, you look great.

Ooh!

Look at that. A little bit of advice. Comb your stomach.

But you do... you do look great. So you're getting results.

That's one plus.

Well, as I said, you've got to look after yourself,

but it's all the other things that go with the gym which

I struggle with, like personal trainers, for instance.

The thing about the personal trainer which I find outrageous...

I don't know if you'll agree with this... is when they slip

on their physiotherapist hat, and then you see them on the mat,

with a young lady... they found a loophole... giving it all this

I'm just doing your glutes here, if you could flip your legs

over my shoulder.

I swear to God! If you saw that on Clapham Common,

-you'd call the police.

-Well...

-It's outrageous!

-Eventually.

-What was that?

-He's doing the glutes.

Steve blanketing her in his stomach hair.

I don't like the guy who's on the weights giving it this noise.

HE MOANS LOUDLY

I do that all the time! That was me, Steve!

No. I'm at the gym, not a Parisian sex club.

I don't care. I've got to do the work.

You've got to push those weights.

THEY GROAN

Shut up!

This is basically masculinity in crisis, right there.

I'm quite noisy at the gym because I take my own cox

for the rowing machine.

And, yeah, he's a small man, but a big voice.

That's annoying,

-but it's nowhere near as annoying as the nudity.

-Yes.

I want to ban the nudity at the gym.

You look great, Steve. If I was like you, I would do my exercises naked.

But I'm really, I don't like people, you know, it's awful.

-Have you had the glance?

-The glance?

The, "Ooh, look at him, that's nice".

Oh, I've posed with a 50 pence coin for scale.

-That was you?!

-That was me.

It's nice to put a face to the coin.

-OK. What is Bruno's wildcard?

-Oh, God, what is it?

No idea.

Oh, God! Tacky shop fronts.

Oh, it makes you puke every time you walk around it.

I mean the thing is, you know, even if you don't shop,

you walk around the high street, and... make an effort, make it

look pretty, because everybody will kind of feed off it, you know.

It will make the whole ambience so much better.

If you see something nice and nicely displayed,

I would just go in and browse.

If I see a mess, I just... I'm just going to run.

I'm just going to get out of it.

Give it a nice look, some lovely flowers, some nice design,

something that makes it pleasant for everybody.

I think, generally speaking, Bruno,

that tacky shop fronts are on tacky shops, and that seems fair, to me.

-Yeah, but...

-I don't want to be misled.

I don't want a shop to look all stylish

and go inside and it's Pound Saver.

But no, just make it look pretty. Well, why not?

Because that's like breast implants. It's just not true.

-No, but you can just make...

-It's a false front.

No, it's not. It's not.

No, you don't have to buy silicone implants.

Anyway, let's look at a few examples of shop-based things.

This, erm, I love this.

This was... They actually had a sale at Poundland.

What about this?

If you want to buy white goods, this is the shop that you want to go to.

Hey!

Right, what is Sue's wildcard?

I mean, what sport on this planet doesn't allow you to

wear your own shoes?

Bowling alleys... It's like a sort of Guantanamo style atmosphere.

There is blaring music.

There's lots of screaming children, people violently breaking up

after a day at IKEA, and you approach this sort of slightly

disinterested woman in a ponytail, and you see the rack of...

in fact you smell the rack of shoes before you see the rack of shoes.

-Clown's shoes.

-They do that spraying thing, though.

Oh, but it's very half-cocked.

They'll do it when they're talking to you.

There's a sort of mist around the clown's shoe.

The one I want is the tongue up and a full... in.

And then you get the clown's shoe.

It's not even a trainer. I've never seen a shoe like that.

No-one has ever seen a shoe...

No, I quite like them. I like the centre parting.

But it's also... Exactly.

As that shows, it's the fact that I'm really bad at all sports,

you know, I'm absolutely...

I'm weak, I've got terrible vision and I'm distracted by food.

That's the holy trinity of a bad bowler.

Just chuck it in the gulley, and there's that long, slow...

Have you ever tried cat laser bowling?

-What is it?

-You know those laser key-ring things?

-Yeah, yeah.

-You need one of those and a cat. I'll show you.

APPLAUSE

Poor cat. That's horrible.

Oh, come on. Bruno is going, "That's horrible".

The poor kitten.

Don't do that with your cat at home.

OK, well, look, I really feel although you argue with passion,

I love bowling so much, I'd really feel it would be wrong to put

it in, because I know lots of other people like it as well.

So I'm not going to put bowling into Room 101.

-ALL: Awww.

-ONE PERSON CLAPS

That was a bowler.

And the gym, I just think the gym generally is a hostile

and difficult place, and I probably am very rude in there

and do all the wrong things, because it's hard to relax there

and be the nice person you want to be.

But I take your point, Bruno, that although it is a bit deceptive,

you know, we all make an effort to look better on the outside than we

do on the inside, so I am going to put tacky shop fronts into Room 101.

-Oh.

-APPLAUSE

Make your high street look beautiful.

Right, then, let's have our next category.

Ah, it's entertainment.

So, what doesn't Bruno like about entertainment?

Cinema etiquette.

It is, you know... guys, you go to the cinema, right?

You're really looking forward to seeing that movie.

You've waited weeks to go and see this particular film you

always wanted to see, and there's one guy next to you with a 12-course

meal on his lap, I mean literally a 12-course meal, popcorn this

size, spilling on you, crunching and munching all the way through, the

stench of the hot dogs and all the rubbish that he's got on his tray.

How can you have all that stuff in front of you when you go

-and see a movie?

-I find cinemas nice. Nice and quiet.

-You can make a phone call, get on with some work.

-Yeah, but...

I mean it's so irritating.

And another thing, you know, they have these huge, huge drinks.

I mean... I don't know how you can drink that much

anyway, and they try to... the last possible drop.

-They're like...

-HE SUCKS LOUDLY

I mean, come on! What is this? Animal Farm?!

I just want to watch Kate Winslet

sinking down the bottom of the ocean...

But that's the perfect sound effect.

-Yeah. Water going through ice.

-Yeah.

I went to a well-known West End cinema, and I said to the guy,

"Can I have a large cola?"

And he said, "Yes, there you go, sir".

And I said, "Actually, can I have it without ice?"

and he said, "Yes, certainly, sir".

Have you seen the large...

The large packets are literally like this.

They're enormous. I mean whatever is in it,

how are you going to be able to drink the whole thing?

You don't drink it all in one go.

You need to make four or five very noisy trips to the toilet.

Exactly. "Excuse me, excuse me, sorry",

and then banging everybody on the head with a packet of crisps.

-Oh, no, no, no.

-But you must be a nightmare at the cinema

because you can't talk without standing up.

OK. What does Sue hate about entertainment?

-Mime. Mime artists.

-Oh, really?

It frightens me, yes.

Because a mime, basically, is a clown that you can't hear coming.

I don't think I'm particularly snobby about art forms.

I like everything. Big blockbuster films,

sometimes the opera, all sorts of things.

But it seems to me that all other art forms say something about

love and loss and guilt and hell and pain and the human condition, and

mime says, "Look, there's a wall", and, "there's some rope" and...

-Yeah, but...

-"Ooh, this is a really heavy balloon".

Have you been scared by somebody as a child?

-Something has happened...

-Both of my parents

are professional mime artists.

I grew up in an expressive world of silence.

-It was a very quiet household.

-Yeah.

"Speak to me!"

What about those everyday mimes that we all use?

-Oh, what, like

-Yeah, exactly.

-Like you know when you want the bill and you go

-Yeah.

And you know when people go...?

Is that the hospital? I just lost three fingers in an accident.

Yeah. But that, I love that.

I'm a bit of a traditionalist. I go...

HE MOUTHS

Here's a test for you, Sue.

-Watch this and tell me whose side you're on in this clip.

-OK.

Hey! Leave him alone, man!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Fair enough.

-I think mime is quite special,

and can be really something fine to watch.

My final move in this argument, my trump card,

is I'm going to bring on someone who really can do it.

So, please welcome Les Bubb.

APPLAUSE

-Come on. That's good!

-That is great!

Come on. Seriously.

You're melting me. You're melting me.

How the hell is he doing it?

You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.

Just come here. Just...

AUDIENCE GROANS

APPLAUSE

-Les Bubb, ladies and gentlemen.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Excellent.

All right. Listen, I've... I've changed, OK?

I've learnt stuff, you know.

OK. What in entertainment really winds up Steve Jones?

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

This is a slam-dunk, Frank.

Can I just say, before you launch into this...

-Hey.

-That's bad.

-Ah!

-The sleepy eye.

Hello.

I always promised myself, if I was ever to come on Room 101,

I would put the flaming haired she-devil that is

Anne Robinson into the box, but one of your lovely producers,

Clare, told me it had already been done.

Well, Jessica Hynes did it, but I think the tradition is that now

and again Welsh people will come on just to check the locks.

We should have a look at why Steve is not a fan of Anne Robinson.

This was 2001. This was Anne on Room 101.

-What do you want to put in?

-I want to put the Welsh in.

LAUGHTER AND CHEERING

I've never taken to the much. What are they for?

LAUGHTER

Well, they're always so pleased with themselves, aren't they?

Were you genuinely upset by it?

Yeah, actually. It's outrageous.

You can't put three million people in Room 101.

How many Welsh people has she ever met?

I mean, put an individual Welsh person in.

Do you think she had a bad holiday?

Did she go to Gower on a rainy weekend?

I think her argument was she lived in...

she grew up in Liverpool, and there used to be, er...

Welsh people used to come to Liverpool now and again.

Oh, I take it all back. Fair enough. Put us in there.

Well, let's have another look at Anne,

because I think at one stage on Room 101 she actually sort of is

slightly humble and actually quite praising of the Welsh.

OK, let's take a look.

Over the years, being of Irish descent,

where we're terribly ashamed of ourselves,

so we can't sing like they do

and we can't play rugby like they do, and we can't be clever

like they are, so, I've just grown to dislike them more and more.

Too little, too late.

The damage had been done. She's not human.

Well, erm, I feel you really mean this, Steve.

-HE LAUGHS

-To a degree, yes.

I can't put mime in.

-Neither can I now, because I've seen the light.

-Yes.

And I'm off now. I will never speak again.

And Bruno, as I think I have found tonight,

-has managed to combine mime with speaking.

-Yeah.

That's very unusual.

And I'm one of the people who talks in the cinema and stuff,

so I can't put that in. But you know what?

I'm going to put another padlock,

and I am going to have Anne Robinson once again led into Room 101.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Goodbye.

And there she goes, returning to the vault.

And that brings us to the end of the show.

Well done, Steve, you were the most persuasive guest tonight,

-so you're tonight's winner.

-Thank you.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

And thanks very much, Sue Perkins, Bruno Tonioli and Steve Jones,

-and thank you, good night.

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE