Episode 4 Room 101

APPLAUSE

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

the show where three guests battle to get the things they hate

entombed for all eternity in the dreaded vault.

Let's meet this week's guests.

He'll make you laugh, James Acaster,

she'll make you think, Kirsty Wark,

he'll make you dinner, Heston Blumenthal.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

BELL RINGS

OK, what's winding up James?

Don't really need to explain that, do I?

Probably the worst of all the animals, I'd say.

Lary, but unjustifiably lary.

I don't really believe a goose could handle itself,

but it fronts it all the time.

Like, a swan, we know, can break your arm,

and geese are just like the people who hang out with the bigger kids.

Just go up to you, going, "Naa",

and you know you could punch it, but it's a goose.

-We have a clip, actually.

-Oh, God.

Of a man in a canoe enjoying a beautiful day's canoeing.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I rest my case.

I don't know what your antipathy to geese is.

I mean (foie gras)!

What did you just say to me?

-WHISPERS:

-Foie gras.

-Huh?

-Oh, foie gras! I thought you said something else then.

Yeah, I thought...

LAUGHTER

What time does this show go out?

I mean, geese are not all bad.

Are you talking about eating geese, in terms of, like..?

Oh, goose is good.

Yeah, but like, Heston, you could probably make something

that tastes like a goose that isn't a goose.

Put some paprika in a duck.

We did this Christmas show where we took a goose

and decided to feed it Christmas tree.

Not a whole Christmas tree?

No, it was pine essential oil.

Is that why they swim like that?

-It's the Christmas tree formation.

-Yeah!

You fed it Christmas tree?! Wow.

We made this feed and we thought, if we thought it was nice,

and then the geese ate it, then it would be really nice to eat.

So we did it for about two months before they killed the goose.

How did you kill it? Did it choke on a bauble?

No, I didn't have anything to do with that,

but I had to go and choose the goose.

I had to go into this pen, and this flipping thing went for me,

and it hissed, and its neck went forward, and it...

What you need, you needed one of these.

DUCK QUACK

I can hear them hitting the window at the back of the building!

What's amazing about this though, is if you hear geese fly over,

they all have a great variety of sounds.

It's amazing. I've tried to recreate this for people

who don't live in goose country.

DIFFERENTLY PITCHED SQUEAKING

LAUGHTER

Anyone who switches on now,

they'll think this is Tubular Bells live.

One of my problems with geese is they nearly killed Rod Stewart.

-Are you aware of this?

-No.

This was quite a big news story. Anyone?

-Are you thinking about Rod Hull?

-No!

-No, not him.

-No?

There it is, look. "Rod cheats death in jet terror."

So you see the headline. You think, "I wonder what happened",

and then it says, "Star tells of fear as goose hits engine".

I once went to an audience with Rod Stewart,

and you know they used to have all the questions set up in advance?

And he said, "No, no, I just want to do it spontaneously.

"I don't want celebrities at the front, I want them at the back.

"I just want the public. I want real questions".

So he did a couple of songs. Brilliant.

He said to this guy, "Got a question?"

The guy said, "Yeah, why don't you make good albums like you used to in the '70s?"

LAUGHTER

You know they have teeth as well.

Where?

They have teeth, not only in their beak but also on their tongue.

Oh, I hate them so much.

Ugh!

Oh, my God! Right. I've won the round.

There's no way I've not won.

Look at that.

APPLAUSE

Also, if you ever feed bread to ducks,

a goose always comes along and bullies everyone.

Just bullies everyone.

Everyone's got to step back. The goose is gobbling it all.

That's how it eats.

Like that. Who eats like that?

Just vibrating their whole head, all the way down the neck,

then walks away thinking, "Nailed that. Everyone thinks I'm cool".

No-one thinks you're cool, goose.

Anyway...

..onto Kirsty.

Men who wear too much aftershave.

Imagine you're on an early flight from Glasgow to London,

and you're beside this guy, and he is wearing overpowering aftershave.

And, what's more, the reason he's wearing overpowering aftershave

is he hasn't bothered to shower.

-Early morning, this is not a good look.

-Mmm.

And it got me thinking about aftershave,

and I don't know if any of you remember,

but do you remember when Brut 33 was the thing that everybody wore,

men and women?

But it was advertised by Henry Cooper and Kevin Keegan,

neither of whom you could say were handsome chaps.

So people were obviously not wearing it because they thought

they could be like them - they just liked the smell.

But now, men put on things like, well, you know ...

David Beckham advertises it.

-Brad Pitt.

-Mmm.

David Gandy.

Yes.

Frank Skinner.

No, I really ...

I mean, really, who possibly can think they would be like them,

just because they wear that aftershave?

-It is so horrible.

-I can...

I have to say, Heston is wearing a tinge of something.

I'm not quite sure. I think it's a very upmarket one.

I think it's one designed for, kind of, sexual allure.

I thought Heston would go for, sort of, salt and vinegar.

LAUGHTER

I like to look - I've played this game with friends.

Celebrities.

Which male celebrities do you think slap on a lot of old cologne,

just from looking at them?

-Daniel Craig.

-Daniel Craig, very probably.

-Paul Hollywood.

-Yes.

-Ooh, yes.

-I think that's a good call. Yes.

I've always thought Pierce Brosnan.

-Yeah.

-Ooh.

That slightly squinty eyes is him thinking, "Phew!"

See, how many men in the audience wear aftershave?

None!

Come on.

I'm sorry. That's just not true, is it?

-How many wear cologne?

-Woo!

That man wears cologne. Have you got it on now?

I'm just going to check this guy out.

You look like a dog greeting someone!

Not quite.

I couldn't smell a damn thing. You've been done.

Have you got the word "cologne" mixed up with the word "lager"?

I tell you what the worst ever slogan for any man's smelly thing,

was when they brought out the 007 brand.

They cashed in on, you know, James Bond being absolutely massive.

Watch out for their lovely slogan.

There's a 007 gift set for every assignment.

This one packs the full line,

including 007 aftershave, hairdressing and cologne.

That's 007,

for the licence to kill...

women.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-I rest my case!

-Yes!

-"Licence" spelt wrong.

-Yes.

I'm glad that's your only objection!

OK, so let's see what Heston has gone for.

People that put milk in tea first.

-Me!

-Oh, I got a "me" then. That's a good start.

One bloke.

What's the problem?

I have to say that I am one of these people.

Where do I start?

If someone is going to whack a teabag in a mug,

and you pour milk in first,

it doesn't pull out the flavour of the teabag as much.

You've had that.

Yeah, because it's not boiling.

Tea, cold milk, tea, pour the water in.

The water is not hot enough to start with, which is where it comes from.

It originates when tea was...

So, Cutty Sark days, that was what the Cutty Sark did.

It transported tea.

-Biggest taxes in Britain at the time were on tea.

-Yes.

We've gone into the history of tea here, which is...

But what happened was it was considered...

They might not look like they've got homes, but many of them have.

APPLAUSE

-Because tea was a prized thing.

-Yes.

It was drunk in china cups, pure bone china cups,

and they were incredibly delicate.

So if the water was too hot and you poured it into the cup they'd break.

-I see.

-So what they did was pour a bit of milk in first,

to protect the cup from breaking, and that's where it came from.

But I always feel I'm giving the teabag a bit of a treat

to put it in milk.

It's a bit like, you know Cleopatra used to bathe in asses' milk?

I see it lying there like that.

I get very involved with, you know if I ever use, like,

soluble tablets, I always feel for them, because I think

they're coming out the packet and think, "Wow, this looks great.

"Oh, swimming. Argh!"

I also find, if you don't do that, if you put the milk into the tea,

-you get that sort of scummy stuff on the surface.

-No, you don't.

-You really do.

-If you put warm milk in...

I proved this today. Other people doubted me.

This was the surface of my tea, having put the milk in second.

-No, no.

-That is true. That's real.

Every morning I make a cup of tea.

I drink probably 10, 15 cups a day.

-Do you?

-Up to 20. I've never ever had that.

Everyone has gone quiet!

-You've never had that?

-It's like a revelation.

It's like you've just said you've got a drug addiction.

Everyone went, "Oh, my God. Heston's on 15 a day".

This has become an intervention now.

What do you see in that?

I see the Very Hungry Caterpillar flying over Cyprus.

That's what I see.

How do you know - when you pour the tea out of a teapot,

if somebody puts the milk in first,

you don't know how strong the tea is.

-That's the excitement!

-If you put it in first...

The whole excitement is guessing how much milk to put in.

You know, some people bungee jump...

LAUGHTER

Some people have a gap year in war-torn territories.

I put the milk in first.

Can I make a point as well?

You can walk into the cheapest, nastiest cafe in Britain

and get a beautiful cup of tea.

If you walk into a posh restaurant,

like what Heston Blumenthal has, it's always horrible.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Don't get me wrong. I've been to Heston's restaurant,

and the food is absolutely incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

But, you know, I didn't even bother ordering the tea.

I knew it would be terrible.

You get tea in some posh restaurants.

They bring hot water here, teabag here.

It's like a kit!

It's not IKEA.

I want them to make it for me, is the idea.

Do you wish you had someone to do it, a flunky to do it for you?

Well, if I'm in a restaurant, paying,

I think somebody could knock it together for me before it arrives.

They don't bring me raw pork chops and a Calor Gas stove.

-That would be his place.

-Ah, that's...

APPLAUSE

My mum would put two spoonfuls of sugar in every cup of tea

she ever made, and if anyone came round the house she'd give them

a cup of tea and say, "Do you take sugar?"

and if they said no, she'd say, "Don't stir it".

LAUGHTER

Anyway, I don't feel you argued your case as well as you could

about milk going in first.

It's something I've done for a long time,

and I thought you were dismissive of my surface scum.

That was an old cup of tea.

And, er, geese.

With geese, they are nasty little things,

but the fact that they have all these magical things

which allows them to fly in a V formation,

I'll forgive them almost anything for that.

The Nazis were organised!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Look, it's too late to change your choice now.

LAUGHTER

But, I don't understand why men need to smell like these strange,

weird musk and spirulina mixtures.

It's just wrong.

I am going to put men who wear too much aftershave into Room 101.

APPLAUSE

OK.

BELL RINGS

What is up Kirsty's sleeve?

Plastic flowers.

APPLAUSE

Oh, please!

Plastic flowers are a total failure of imagination.

They remind me of every bad bed and breakfast I've ever been in.

Plastic flowers, nylon sheets,

and in the lavatory, over the loo roll,

a knitted lady with a Barbie coming out the top.

That's what they represent.

And I've been in a crematorium where there's plastic flowers.

A friend of mine has been at a wedding where she was a bridesmaid

and there were plastic flowers!

I mean, they're just so, so...

-I can't even be in a room with them. I find them offensive.

-Wow.

I'm sure you're not...

You're not including these, are you?

But they do a dance, don't they?

They'll dance to me. They'll dance to me talking.

They'll dance to me doing the William Tell Overture

on my fingers and thumbs. Here we go.

HE CLICKS AND CLAPS RHYTHM

Now, come on!

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Loves the applause, that one.

I'm switching this off. It's starting to terrify me.

They just seem incredibly tired and forlorn and sad.

I think that's what I hate about plastic flowers more than anything.

They are just sad, and saddos have them.

AUDIENCE: Ooh!

APPLAUSE

What about waxed fruit? How do you feel about that?

I don't like waxed fruit.

Consistent.

See?

How do you feel... This is the key question for me,

because I'm kind of, you know when you go to the greengrocers,

and you get that synthetic grass with the vegetables on it,

just to make the vegetables and fruit feel at home.

What do you think about that, Kirsty?

I don't like that.

-You don't like this stuff?

-No. I don't like that.

-I like this stuff so much.

-Oh, no.

No, really.

I don't think you'll like this then, Kirsty.

LAUGHTER

What do you think?

-There's a certain je ne c'est quoi.

-Feel that. Come on!

Yeah. Eh?

Imagine a couple of parsnips lying across that.

That's a chat-up line I haven't used before.

-She will not be won over, Kirsty.

-I will not be won over.

I sense that.

Right. You argue your case well there.

So, let us go to Heston's choice.

-It's food that doesn't taste as good as you remember.

-Oh.

We have foods that we used to love as kids,

and then sometimes you get to try them,

you've haven't tried them for years, and they just don't taste the same.

It's not necessarily about the food changing.

It's the fact that our memory, when we were a kid...

So, the excitement of an ice cream from an ice cream van,

-you know, we're that big, so everything seems massive.

-Mmm.

And the same thing happens when you get older.

For example, you've got a long weekend and you go to

the Loire Valley, and you're sitting by the river with your missus

and you're having lunch and the sun is just shimmering on the water.

Grass is softly waving in the wind, in the warm breeze.

Paint a lovely picture.

And then you've got the ice bucket. The bottle goes in.

The chink of the ice cubes, pop of the cork, pour the wine,

and you taste it, and you go,

"My God, I've never tasted Muscadet like this before.

"It's fantastic".

So what do you do?

You buy 75 cases,

strap them to your car and then drive back.

And then you invite all your gastronomic friends

and your boss over and you think,

"This is going to surprise them so much",

and then you pour the wine and you taste it and go, "This is horrible".

That's like holiday romances.

LAUGHTER

Yes...

I don't invite the friends around, but I mean apart from that...

I don't drink, but I'm sure if I did drink now it wouldn't be like I...

Well, I don't remember it, so ...

It's the same with the foods that you remember as a kid

that were so exciting.

You know, we just kind of assume that they've changed the food

-or they've changed the recipe.

-Mmm.

But there's such a ritualization with food.

So if you look at, say, a Kit Kat,

-a Kit Kat used to have the silver foil round it.

-Yeah.

And then the paper wrapper, and there was a whole ritual,

some people would rub their fingers over to get the imprint of "Kit Kat"

-through the foil.

-Oh, yeah.

Or running your nail between the two and snapping it.

-Some people take the chocolate off first.

-Me.

Can I say, children,

this is what middle-aged people talk about after you've gone to bed.

LAUGHTER

So you can change the taste of a food by the temperature of a room,

by the colour of the room, by the sounds you hear.

You can speed people's eating by up to 15%

by playing loud rock music.

That would explain Meat Loaf.

LAUGHTER

-I find that certain things, for example, Toblerone...

-Yeah.

Toblerone are as dangerous now

as they were when I was eating them as a child.

I have never eaten a Toblerone without some bruising.

I actually got a finger wedged in a Toblerone,

between two adjacent pyramids.

Actually wedged there.

I had to wait for it to melt to get some...

LAUGHTER

Do you know about the bear? Toblerone bear?

Every single bar of Toblerone, there is a shadow of a bear.

-What?

-Every single bar of Toblerone, every single bar,

there is a shadow of a bear.

I've eaten Toblerone all my life and I've never known that.

That's thrown you, hasn't it?

It's funny you should mention that, Heston,

because it just so happens

we have a picture of that very same phenomenon.

AUDIENCE: Ooh!

Yeah.

JAMES MIMICS EXPLOSION

So, what about James' choice?

LAUGHTER

I realise now I actually misread your choice.

-You can't not like the shot put, can you?

-Oh, I can.

Who here is a fan of the shot put?

Woo! Yay!

One guy...

and he's a liar.

Here's the problem. At the Olympics everyone does their stuff.

It's amazing - you see people doing things, you go, "I couldn't do that.

"That looks incredible".

The shot put, it just looks rubbish.

They throw it.

Literally, he's here, and he throws it, and it lands...there.

And I know it's heavy, but I've never held a shot put,

so I don't know how heavy it actually is, so I've got no context.

All I'm seeing on TV is someone throw a ball a little way.

There's a certain method, though.

You have to hold it tight to your chin and straighten the arm.

-Yeah, you've got to do that.

-Yeah.

How's that fun?

The Berlin 1938 Olympics, got a big cheer every time.

LAUGHTER

Let's have a look.

This is a shot putter called Leila Rajabi.

I think she's the one on the right.

LAUGHTER

But you have to admire the amount of effort, surely,

that's going into that?

I'm sure, as an Olympian, or as a shot putter,

-it is very hard and you've got to train a long time for it.

-Yes.

But as a spectator, no-one is watching that going,

"Oh!

"Nearly as good as last time that man threw the ball a little way".

On the subject of the weight, for a man, the shot put is 7.2kg,

which is...you'll like this.

It's the size of an average size dachshund.

Now that sounds much more enjoyable.

Yeah. Instantly a better sport!

Throw it into a big hotdog roll.

And the female one is 4kg,

which is the equivalent to the average weight of a domestic cat.

I like that.

-A domestic cat would work better in the hammer.

-Yeah.

If you had the room, of course.

What I wish we had, of course, what would be ideal,

is if we had some fabulous shot putter to come on.

Say, the only British woman to have ever won

-an international shot put medal.

-Oh, Jesus.

Someone like, er, Sophie McKinna. Here she is, Sophie McKinna!

APPLAUSE

This is James.

Hello, Sophie McKinna.

Hi, James. Nice to meet you.

What we thought is the best way to settle this

is if you and Sophie have a contest.

Great idea!

You're all right with a big lead weight flying over?

No, what we are going to do, we're going to use a tangerine,

a small tangerine.

Are you all right with chucking a tangerine?

-Of course, yeah. Give it a go.

-You..!

Hold on.

I have a... I'm going to let you choose your weapons.

What we need is a shot circle.

-You know the thing that they swing...?

-Yeah.

Here it comes.

I'm afraid to go anywhere near her because I feel I've made her angry.

So if anyone can catch the tangerine they'll get a special prize.

-Would you like to choose your ...

-You first.

Choose your tangerine.

Oh, come on.

He's weighing them!

Yeah, straight in, Sophie.

-Have I got to do the..?

-Yeah.

-Do you want a bit of advice from Sophie?

-Yeah, give me a pointer.

-Are you right-handed?

-Yeah.

-So put your left foot against the stop board, like that.

-Yeah.

Then stand your right foot astride.

Bring it forward a little bit to mine. Yeah.

Then tangerine tight in your neck.

-There?

-And then... Yeah. ..bend your right knee,

and bring your shoulders back to me. No, like this.

LAUGHTER

And your head this way as well.

-Yeah.

-And then obviously turn and throw.

Here we go. Get ready to catch.

OK.

Ready?

Whoa!

That was pretty good.

APPLAUSE

Who did that land next to?

Yes.

This lady. So, you're the official marker.

Thank you so much. So it's over to Sophie.

Feel a bit pressured now.

Whoa!

APPLAUSE

Has it actually landed yet?

I'm hoping you two can shake hands and agree to differ on this one.

And a massive hand for Sophie McKinna!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Cheers, Sophie. Thanks a lot.

Anyway, I think you'd agree after that

we can't possibly put the shot put in.

I mean, that was just a spectacular thing,

and it's just made me a big fan of the sport now.

Um, food that doesn't... Yeah, it's difficult, that, isn't it?

Because it is a terrible disappointment.

I don't think I can put plastic flowers in,

because I remember when they were invented,

or when it seemed like they got popular,

and, you know, they were in chip shops and things.

Places where normal flowers would have perished.

I'm going to put food that doesn't taste like we remember it tasting

into Room 101.

APPLAUSE

That brings us to the end of the show.

Well done, James, you were this week's most persuasive guest,

so you are the winner.

Thanks very much, James Acaster, Kirsty Wark

and Heston Blumenthal, and thank you. Good night!

Anyone want a tangerine?