Episode 1 James May's Man Lab

Hello, viewers, and welcome to Man Lab Series 2,

where we continue our quest to equip the modern male with the skills he needs to overcome life's obstacles.

Our workshop is fully equipped.

Our kitchen is open. Our bar is fully stocked.

And, most importantly, our sitting area is very, very comfortable indeed.

Excellent. Right, let's get on with something useful.

'Man Lab is the crucible of competence, where skills are forged and shoddiness scorned.

'It is the shining path of enlightenment leading us to the stellar heights of a job well done.

'Coming up: I'm handcuffed to Oz Clarke and a man from Zambia wants to kill me.

-'Yes, it's map reading.'

-At first it was a bit of a laugh. Now they're feeling hunted.

-Nowhere to hide.

'We practise the precision craft of woodworking.

'And descend into the bowels of England in search of the perfect pool table.

-That's well loud!

-'And, finally,

-'we solve a centuries-old problem. Remembering the names of girls you meet at parties.'

-Fanning.

-Claire Fanny?

-Fanning.

-It's excruciating.

'But first a lengthy introduction to a simple question.'

Here we have a typical in-car portable satellite navigation system

and it is a marvellous thing.

It's probably the most liberating piece of popular technology to appear during my lifetime.

Along with the desktop computer and the self-bleeding radiator valve.

In fact, it's tempting to think that sat nav has rendered the old school printed Ordnance Survey map

completely redundant. But hang on a minute.

Sat nav is all very well if all you need to know is, "At the roundabout, take the third exit on the left."

As if it could somehow be on the right.

But what if you had to do some proper navigation?

What if, for example, you'd just escaped from Dartmoor Prison?

'Dartmoor Prison is horrible. Originally built to house French prisoners in the Napoleonic Wars,

'it was designed to be even more gruesome than a 19th-century Parisian khazi.

'Few inmates have ever escaped and those who did found themselves on Dartmoor itself,

'one of our largest wildernesses. Most had no way of navigating

'and would wander for days until succumbing to starvation, the cold or the treacherous bogland.

'This, then, is the sheep-infested canvas against which I, together with TV's Oz Clarke,

'will stage our very own prison break.'

Let's make one thing clear. We haven't really escaped from Dartmoor - they won't let us in

or let us show you how to get out. But from now on this is for real. We're on the run from the prison.

And all we've got is this map smuggled in inside a cake,

-and all we've got on it is the prison here...

-North.

-North is there.

-Co-ordinates.

-We don't know what those mean yet. And a bridge which is slightly south-west.

-We presume it's where we've got to go.

-Knuckles left our swag there.

We need to work out which direction to go in. We need to know where north is. Do this with your watch.

If you... I've got to take it off.

Point the hour hand of your watch, which is set at the right time,

at the sun. It's nice o'clock. But you have to work on GMT and it's summertime, so it's actually eight.

Point the eight at the sun. If you divide the arc between the hour hand and 12 o'clock in half

it gives you south - not north - so south is over there, roughly in line with those chimneys.

-We want to go slightly south-west, so parallel with this wall. Agreed?

-Absolutely.

-There are people on our tail, so we need to go.

-Get moving.

'We set out for the bridge like two guests fleeing an S&M party.

'On the other side of the moor, our accomplice is waiting.

'In accordance with the rules of prison break films, he's called Knuckles and he's knocked off a Jag.

'Knuckles has also left us some vital supplies by the bridge marked on the crude cloth map.

'Moving as one, we make the breathless 850-metre dash,

'driven by desperation and a topical soundtrack.'

# Tonight there's going to be a jailbreak... #

'So far, so good.'

Got it. Good old Knuckles.

Oh, boots!

Oh, Knuckles...

'We now had a decent survival kit - new boots, orienteering compass and, most pressingly,

-'bolt cutters.'

-Straight off. Let's do it.

-Hang on. How do you do this?

-You...

-One of us do one, one the other.

-OK.

-You need to push.

Ahh.

'Now we were free to get our heads around the two most important bits - some pork hidden inside a pie

'and an OS map.'

So we've escaped from Dartmoor Prison, allegedly,

using Knuckles' map which he smuggled in with the cake. It led us to the old railway bridge.

And on the fabric map, as Oz noted earlier, Knuckles has written some co-ordinates.

They're obviously co-ordinates. West and North. West 54 01, North 67 03.

And I have an Ordnance Survey map. Ordnance Survey maps are one of the great glories of creation.

These maps tell you absolutely everything. You only have to look to get a complete picture

-of the place you are.

-Presumably, we'll find that place on the map and that's where Knuckles

or Nosher or Fingers will be waiting for us in the Jag.

'Unfortunately, plotting a path to the getaway car is the least of our worries.

'No imaginary breakout goes unpunished on Dartmoor.

'A crack team of cross-terrain trackers is unleashed to bring us in - dead or alive.

'Their leader, Ian "Max" Maxwell, is the world's foremost authority on animal tracking,

'having tracked his first leopard at the age of eight. He even has his own tracking organisation -

'codename Shadowhawk.

'They could conceivably be a match for Clarke and May, so we set about decoding the co-ordinates.'

54. Obviously, these big co-ordinates go 53, 54, 55.

So 5401 is 54 and a ten, which is there.

-So slightly to the right of that line.

-Yeah. 54 runs down there.

6703 means that it's one-third above 67, towards 68.

This is the line of 67. That's the line of 54...

That's where we're meeting them! Look! Knuckles is there!

-Unless I am wrong, that's the sign of a pub.

-It is. Knuckles is in the boozer.

'What a great incentive for the recently released - a pub.

'Between us and it, though, is a vast vista of lakes, woods, bogs, marshes and exposed moorland.

'So it makes sense to plot a proper route.'

We've plotted a very basic course from here to the edge of the woods.

That gives us something to head for, but we can get a bearing for it with our orienteering compass.

It has this rotating housing.

'If you ever need to escape from Dartmoor, here's a quick guide to using an orienteering compass.

'If you didn't quite get that, watch it again on iPlayer. We're being hunted and we must be off.'

This arrow on the base shows you where to go. Somewhere over there, just to the east of Black Tor.

-That's our first target.

-Yeah.

-Brilliant.

'Meanwhile, back at the jail, Max has already picked up our scent.'

I just found some amazing tracks here. This grass is trampled down.

And that grass is still wet. That's gold dust to us.

We now know within the last couple of hours someone's been here.

They're likely to be wearing trainers. Doesn't look like a boot.

We'll nickname this one and we'll use the nickname on our radios throughout the whole track.

We'll call that Wavy.

It comes round like that. This break off here means they stepped off in that direction.

If they get stuck in the bogs, they'll struggle with this footwear.

We need to change our boots, James.

These things we're wearing will come to bits in bogs and things.

-Also to change our footprints.

-We can tell if they get tired.

Just simply the distance between the tracks will close down.

-They might then replenish with water or drink something or eat something.

-Good old Knuckles.

We know the direction of travel so no point in hanging around.

I want to get on this guy's backside and track him down.

'As Oz and I break cover and use our compass, Max also makes use of his surroundings.'

This is Wavy. Right, let's go.

'With the trackers in pursuit, a spotter climbs the highest hill.

'He might just be able to pick out two blokes in romper suits.

'The chase is on.'

Is that it, then? You didn't get very far.

No, sir, of course it isn't.

We'll be picking the action up later as the miscreants make their way in a south south-westerly direction.

Oh.

Now, the other day we were all sitting around

when Simmy said, "Does anyone fancy a game of pool?"

Of course we did because we'd had a few, so we'd be brilliant at it.

But as we went to rack 'em up, we discovered a problem - we don't have a pool table.

Never mind, though. This is Man Lab so we'll make one.

The game of pool is descended from billiards, which has been played since at least the 15th century.

Indeed, the game is mentioned in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra.

But before we dismiss the idea of Ancient Egyptians racking them up,

here is unassailable evidence of Ramesses II preparing to break.

By the 1900s, the modern game of eight-ball pool AKA pocket billiards came into being

and is now the world's most widely-played cue sport.

If you've ever played pool, you'll know the vital attributes of a table are that it is perfectly flat

and perfectly level. So poll tables are substantial, weighty structures.

They're not feeble occasional tables. They are pool tables all of the time.

Wood is the favoured material, so that is what we will use.

Here is a piece of our wood, as hewn from the green wood of Olde England.

We're going to use it like this, largely unchanged, for the legs.

Let's face it, nature spent maybe up to a century forming for us this perfect wooden component.

Why saw it up into dull old planks?

Even though we've opted to leave the wood looking as natural as possible, we strip off the bark.

So we spend a very satisfying afternoon working at the logs with chisels

until the chestnut is exposed. The real issue with our naturalistic table, though, is yet to come.

Here we are in the Deliveries In area of Man Lab. We have a problem.

No two pieces of our wood are the same.

More to the point, no piece we have is straight and square.

Nature abhors regularity, straightness and squareness. They are conceits of civilisation.

So the problem we have is that we have to work out where to put the bits of wood

so that we do come out with something square and true. We've come up with this excellent system.

We name a nominal north on the floor, which I will do here. We'll call that north.

'We've selected a unique log for each leg of our table. We mark each one with north and a number.

'That establishes their position and orientation.

'Next we mark on the irregular logs the corners of the regular pub pool table that must lie in there.

'Through geometric cunning, we hope to wrest engineering order from the chaos of nature.'

If it was a chair, machine-made, on a lathe, you could make thousands and they'd all go together

because that's mass production, but you can't do that with this.

This is woodland craft skill.

'So using this rustic, 4,000rpm, carbine-tipped chop saw,

'we cut the longitudinal and cross members to the right length.

'Then we set about chiselling the joints to hold the table together.'

Here are the joints. Very simple mortise and tenon joints.

That is the tenon. That is the mortise cut in there.

They are the same at all four corners. What's unique about each is this shape we're about to cut.

That is the, ahem, inter-penetration between that piece of wood and that one.

Once we've got that in place, we can offer up the slate, which we don't have yet.

That is why Rory is standing here, like a virgin teenager at a wedding reception, ready for me to say,

-"Rory, it's time to go and get the slate." Rory, it's time to go and get the slate.

-OK.

-Off you go.

'So Rory slips in his favourite CD and off he goes.

'323 miles up the road all the way to the Lake District.

'This rugged landscape is home to England's last working underground slate mine at Honister Pass.

'The artisans of Honister have been mining and shaping slate into things like roof tiles and kitchen worktops

'for the last 300 years.

'It's Rory's job to journey into the mines and extract the perfect piece for our pool table.

'Meanwhile, with the final inter-penetration joint cut and assembled...

'the frame is done. Now we need to make the support for the slate.

'This will have to be absolutely flat and level.'

This is the mysterious coming together of the square and true and not square and true.

This is where we will find out if our great philosophical thinking bears any fruit.

Or if we're just going to have a very long-lasting bonfire. This is pretty dense stuff.

'So we set about cutting precise notches in the frame to take the supports.

'These have to be equidistant above the floor, which is level, so the slate will be, too.

'Talking of the slate...

'It's still part of the Lake District, but not for long.

'Not with Rory Barker, feared slate prospector, ready to go to work.

'Rory ventures underground, wearing an expression that suggests it's where he just came from.'

-How is it all rigged up? I see these wires.

-We're using a bit of dynamite to take the roof out.

It's set off electronically. You press a button to send a charge.

-How loud is it going to be?

-Just a little bang, a little pop.

LOUD EXPLOSION

-RORY:

-BLEEP!

LAUGHTER

That was well loud!

-Why didn't you put your earphones on?

-He said not to! He said not to put them on!

He said I didn't need to!

'Still, the unwitting victim of the oldest practical joke in mining has done us proud.

'This chunk of Cumbria is destined to become the soul of our table,

'just as soon as it's been milled to the dimensions in Rory's notebook.

'Back at Man Lab, the side rails have been cut and notched to take the clamps for the cushions.'

Well done. It's only taken you three days.

Very nice.

'The moment of truth.

'If Rory's measurements are wrong, it's back to square one for us and the Jobcentre for him.'

Wow!

'So with the slate in position, Sim completes the holes for the pockets, hewn out of solid chestnut.

'Now we can cover our slate in glorious blue baize, taking care to avoid wrinkles.'

It's gone wrong, but not disastrously.

'All that remains is to fit the rails and the cushions and I'm ready to take a test shot.

'Luckily, Simmy has a wire-based solution.'

Oh, yes!

Simmy, that is... that's a thing of beauty.

'What a table this is! We preserved the natural beauty of raw timber,

'but dignified it with geometry.

'We've cut a perfect playing surface

'and sheathed it in that blue baize that the bloke in the haberdashery shop hadn't shifted for years.

'But the most terrifying job is yet to come - marking it up with an indelible felt tip pen.

-'Director Tom loses the toss.' Are you ready?

-Yes.

-Anything you need to say to your family?

-No, they'll never speak to me again anyway if it went wrong.

-Right...

-Slowly, evenly. Don't panic.

DRUM ROLL

Yeah!

'With the symbolic D filled in, our table is finally finished.'

And there's the Pot Black music.

THEME FROM "Pot Black" PLAYS

'This only took seven days.'

Now we're going to inaugurate it with a game between me and Sim. I won the toss so I break.

For the very first time ever on the Man Lab pool table...

Yee-hah!

Pretty good.

Meanwhile, there are still two men on the run on Dartmoor.

'Oz and I are fleeing from Dartmoor Prison, heading for a rendezvous with Knuckles.

'But between us and him is a wilderness of rough terrain - lakes, woods, bogs and marshes.

'We've broken our chains and changed our boots, but in hot pursuit are expert man hunters.

'As we race towards the cover of some distant woods,

'a spotter is sent to the top of a nearby hill to watch for us.'

The problem is we're only just out of sight of the Tor over there, where we suspect they're looking.

There's no way round the problem of having to cover quite a large area of open ground.

Why don't we apply Naismith's Rule? We've got to cover that ground as fast as possible.

We need to get round the corner of that hill over to the trees.

Naismith's Rule says that... These rules(!) ..you can cover three miles in an hour.

And you have to allow an extra half hour for going up 300 metres.

So, technically, we're going down, so we can take a little off that.

And we've got something like two miles and a bit to go.

I reckon that we should say to ourselves that we will not allow ourselves more than 40 minutes.

-I'd like to do it in half an hour.

-Half an hour to that hill?

-Maximum.

If they look in this direction, they'll see us.

Let's follow the contour.

We'll make quicker progress following the contour.

A fundamental rule is follow the contour.

'Contours are lines of equal elevation above sea level.

'These decreasing circles represent hills, with each line 10 metres higher than the last.

'So the closer the circles are, the steeper the hill. Oz and I will use them to zig-zag through the bogs

'on the lowest path to avoid the spotter.'

Over here. And then onto the stone again.

-'We are, after all, consummate outdoorsmen.'

-Then another stone.

'But Max and his team are just 40 minutes behind and gaining fast.'

OK. I'm going to lift this up, but basically I can tell this is really fresh.

It's got a human hair from an arm on top of it.

There we go.

They've changed their boots, the sneaky little devils.

That's what we've been following. And that's Mr Wavy.

We saw that outside the prison. They've been here a while.

Some water.

These have been used, haven't they?

There we go. They've been used once. See that silver in there? That links up.

I think these guys just got out of their handcuffs. OK, let's go, guys. As quick as we can.

OK, a track. Good stuff.

Because they've changed shoes, this links into that boot.

Let's give a nickname. Pineapple Boy?

The reason we call it Pineapple Boy is because the segments inside that track look like pineapple segments.

'Back on the moors and trying to stay low, Oz and I suddenly hit a big problem - a road.

'We're not just exposed to the spotter here. Passing motorists might see sunlight on Oz's head.'

We're about to cross the road. The trick is to cross it at right angles as quickly as possible.

-Yep.

-OK.

Watch it. Sheep!

Tango One to Tango Two. I've got two people running on the valley floor.

The Tor's up there. No, this side - here! Here!

-Yeah, I think we've got 'em.

-Down to the left of the second peak. Pretty much where he's standing.

That's them. OK, what we've got to do now, because we've got an eyeball on them, is move very quickly.

'So Max and his trackers are striking out from the bridge across the moor.

'Although Oz and I have a small lead, there's a long way to go and we're completely exposed.'

We can't even hide against the side of a hill. It's just so obvious,

a couple of blokes racing across open country like this.

If they're up on the Tor looking for us, north, south, east, west,

25% of the time they'll be looking in our direction. So they've got to have seen us.

We were out in open country for about 10 minutes. They'd have two and a half minutes looking at us

flailing across that hassocky bog.

'Thanks to Oz, I'd fully grasped the concept of 25% of something.

'Anyway, there's some good news up ahead.

'This symbol on an OS map is a tree. When you get lots of them, you get woods.'

I think we need to find somewhere to make ourselves look less obvious.

This aqueduct is really useful. It will show us precisely the way. It's got to go downhill.

But it also means it's dead easy for them to track. We need to make ourselves less conspicuous.

-It won't be too bad in the trees.

-The worst thing is the boiler suit, but I can't take it off.

I've only got my boxers and my t-shirt. I'll get arrested.

Not out here, because...

At 800 yards, you would look like a stick. They wouldn't know what you're wearing.

It's 500 yards before you can see the colour of clothing. If you want to keep the boiler suit on,

we could cover ourselves in mud. That will massively improve our ability to blend in.

'Somehow the wine expert managed to make this sound like a good idea.'

-You're seriously saying I have to do the top of my head?

-I would.

It'll ruin my moisturiser, lovingly applied this morning.

'Thus disguised, we were off once more, seamlessly blending in with our environment.

'You have to get up pretty early to outsmart Mr Wavy and Pineapple Boy.'

Brilliant! OK, guys. Come in.

WHISTLES

That's what we needed. This plant is bent over. It should be like that.

We've got one, two. So that gives us the direction.

This is called flagging. Rather like a flag flying in the wind.

The flag will point in the direction of travel. Absolutely brilliant news.

It was really hard about an hour ago. We couldn't see anything because of the bog.

All we needed was one track to tell us they're in this direction.

Now we've got a feature bridge and all these things, so we'll start running, moving as quickly as we can.

Let's go, guys. Pick it up.

'As Max and his team head towards the aqueduct, we enter the woods and finally get out of sight.'

Aaargh.

Don't dally. We have a lot of bluebells.

'The question is - is it all too late?'

There are tracks all over the place.

Right, OK. This is just the oldest trick in the book.

You can see where they've just literally scooped out as much mud as they can.

Two hands like that, grabbed it, rubbed it around, then put it on to their faces, yeah?

So I'm going to do exactly the same as them to try and get into their mindset, yeah?

'He's getting into the mind of Oz Clarke. This is a man who truly knows no fear.'

Some people put two stripes like that because it looks good,

but if you go into, for example, ferns where you've got sharp angles,

you'd wear sharp camouflage as well.

But equally, if you've got sharp features,

a very sharp nose or high cheekbones,

you'd use a stripe coming down to get rid of the high points on your face.

'With both teams entering the woods, we're reaching the end game in our escape to freedom.'

They can smell us. They smell pork pie on our breath.

These guys are escaping from us now. At first, it was a bit of a laugh.

Now they're feeling like they're hunted and a pack of guys will come down on them really soon.

And I should think that where they are, at the moment, it's all becoming clear to them.

-French cheeses. Don't trust French cheese!

-Shut up about bloody cheese!

Time is not on their side and we're going to get them.

'Yes, it's that part of the show where we respond to the letter

'that literally poured into the Man Lab only the other day.

'It might contain the germ of a good idea,

'which means we don't have to think one up or even pay you.'

Here we go.

"May," it says, "please could you show us that clip where you laugh at Charlie's attempt

"to draw that girl he fancied in the last series of Man Lab?"

All right, here's the clip.

'To impress her, Charlie decided to capture Cass's loveliness in a beautiful, hand-drawn portrait.

'Fortunately, I was on hand to offer a frank appraisal of Charlie's drawing skills.'

LAUGHTER

HE CONTINUES LAUGHING

'Thus passed a happy afternoon in mocking Charlie's attempts to draw the human face.'

It's really touching and I can't draw. That's why I don't...

LAUGHTER

"Then could you show us if you could do it any better?"

'Bugger!

'I've always believed, ever since school, that you can either draw or you can't.

'And I can't. I'll show you what I mean by sketching our sound man Dan.

'It is, in the words of Claude Monet, "tres difficile".'

Your nose isn't straight. There's some hair stuff going on there.

I can't do it. I just don't know how to do it.

I can't see it. It's just a mass of colour. I don't know how to make it come out in a pencil.

'But here's a man who reckons drawing can be taught.

'John Myatt is an art teacher by training, but his talent for mimicking the masters

'eventually led to a brush with the law.

'But now he's a reformed man and he's here to teach me the eternal mystery of the human face.'

JAMES LAUGHS

Well, we can... We can build on this, James.

CONTINUES LAUGHING

Um...

Is it as bad as Charlie's picture of Cassandra?

LAUGHTER

'Accepting that I'm an artless buffoon is a low point in my life,

'but it quickly passes and John is able to progress to some handy hints.

'There are basic rules anyone can follow to dispel the impression that you tried drawing with your feet.'

If we look at the actual shape of Dan's head,

you can see that in fact it's long and thin, isn't it?

It's like an egg, but squashed in at the sides.

What hardly anybody realises is that the eyes are halfway down the skull.

If we draw a line from top to bottom, somewhere along here you're going to find the eyes.

And then the bottom half of the face is where it all happens.

There's the forehead, but halfway down again,

between the line for the eyes and the line of the chin,

we can roughly say somewhere there is the root of the nose,

and then we split that into one, two, three,

and somewhere along here is the line of the lips,

and then along this bottom line, we've got the chin. Already you can start to work on a likeness.

'So basic portraiture is first and foremost about remembering your proportions.

'A line up from the edge of the nostrils will show you where the inner edge of the eye is.

'Ears run from the top of the eyebrows to the bottom of the nose and so on,

'then you move on to reveal the soul of your subject.'

OK, that's Dan as I drew him earlier on

before anyone had ever taught me anything about drawing.

And after about 35 minutes, 40 minutes' tuition, Dan is still no oil painting,

but he does look like that which I think is better.

It's the best drawing I've ever done.

It does actually look a bit like him.

JAMES LAUGHS

'This clearly requires practice.

'Rather than alienate the film crew further, I decide to have a crack at some tourists instead.

'The mark of my new-found artistry will be if anyone is prepared to pay me for my efforts.'

The artist Paul Cezanne once said, "With an apple I will astonish Paris."

And now with my pencil, I will dismay London.

'My alluring sign and "pay what you think it's worth" policy draws a steady stream of tourists

'wanting something for the ancestral gallery.'

-Look at me square on.

-OK.

-And if you could smile a bit, but try not to show your teeth. I can't do those.

'I do my best to remember my lessons in proportion,

'the faces shaped like squashed eggs, the halfway lines for the eyes.

'But the one thing I wasn't taught was an artist's patter.'

Try not to smile too much or move. His eyes would be there in a normal human being.

When I try to draw a woman, I make her look a bit manly.

You have no real head to talk of which is interesting.

I might have that roughly... No, you're still too fat.

-Your haircut is not dissimilar to mine.

-Sorry, I don't hear very well.

'Probably for the best. I began to realise that, like all great artists,

'I would never be appreciated in my own time.'

-I look like a smuggler from about 1800!

-I look a bit cross.

'Being on the South Bank doesn't help either.

'For every couple of normal people, there's someone who looks like this bloke.'

The head is an egg, but I can't see much of his head.

At least it prevents me having to do too much of your nose because most of it is hidden, which is good.

'Three portraits down and thanks to Moodius Maximus, my coffers are not exactly overflowing.'

A used staple. Do you know what I think? I think the Romans can bugger off.

B-V-G-G-E-R...off!

'But just as I was getting ready to call it a day and cut my own ear off,

'amazingly, I began to improve as the practice of sketching portrait after portrait started to pay off.'

I quite like it, actually.

In an odd sort of way.

'Though I was getting the hang of it, the question remained - would anyone actually pay for my efforts?'

-Two euros.

-LAUGHTER

Oh!

Look at that!

I think it's really good, actually. I do.

HE LAUGHS

'Art, they say, is its own reward,

'but a grand total of £10, two euros and a used staple means I can go to the pub and that's better.'

Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Art is never finished. It is merely abandoned."

I think it's an excellent idea.

Can I have a cheeseburger?

'So just in case one of your viewers ever writes to you, here are those tips again.

'The head is roughly a squashed egg shape tapering at the bottom.

'Draw a line halfway up which is where the eyes will be.

'They are an eye's width apart, but don't draw the middle eye.

'Dividing the bottom of the face in half tells us where the end of the nose will be.

'Dividing the space below that into three tells you where to put the mouth and chin.

'Add ears, hair, beards and hats to suit.'

-We were talking in the Man Lab the other day and we all agree. Bob the director...

-Tom!

-Sorry, Tom. And Stan on the camera...

-Sean!

-Sorry, Sean on the camera.

..that remembering names is a very difficult skill for a man to master, especially at big events.

However, there are techniques for dealing with this.

In the interests of preventing a man looking like a feckless, teenage halfwit, we decided to try them out,

using one, our very own Rory.

'And here is a baffled Rory who we've managed to smuggle into the army rugby league charity dinner,

'the jewel in the military social event calendar.

'I'm monitoring his every move from the man van.'

From here, I can see everything that's going on on this screen, a live feed from our main camera.

There's Rory's face now.

I can hear everything Rory says through this device.

By pressing this button, I can advise him through a secret earpiece hidden in his ear.

You can just see the camera discreetly hidden in his clothing.

'During the pre-dinner drinks, Rory must circulate as unobtrusively as possible,

'learning each guest's full name. Later, he will play the role of master of ceremonies,

'announcing each guest as they present themselves to be seated for dinner.'

I also have here the names of all the guests,

plus the added complication, because this is the army, of their ranks

and I have, on this computer and on various bits of paper,

details of known techniques for helping to remember people's names.

In short, though, what we're asking Rory to do here is pretty much impossible.

Look at his face now. Look at him, he's getting nervous.

A couple of quick techniques - use the name frequently,

so find an excuse to say it a number of times.

The next guys that come in, I'll keep saying their names.

Don't overdo it or they'll think you're a nutcase.

'A new crowd of guests has arrived. Time for Rory to try out technique number one.'

-Hi, I'm Rory.

-Hello. Emma.

-Nice to meet you, Emma. How are you doing, Emma?

-Very well.

-Good evening. Rory.

-Hi, I'm Claire.

-Nice to meet you, Claire. Did you get here all right, Claire?

-Yes.

Nice one, Claire. Nice to meet you, Michelle. Lovely drink there, Michelle. Drink it up, Michelle.

HE LAUGHS

-How are you doing, Stu?

-Not bad.

-Having a good night, Stu?

Lovely. Enjoy yourself, mate. Have a good night, Stu.

-He thinks you're a...

-BLEEP

-..lunatic!

-What was the first one called?

-Her name was Emma.

-I think.

-You're right.

-Yes!

'No-one is quite clear why a village idiot is at their dinner,

'but they're too polite to mention it. Another technique...'

Ask, "How do you spell your name?"

-Roger...?

-Dussard.

-Dussard. How do you spell "Dussard"?

-D-U-S-S-A-R-D.

-It's French.

-French? Oh, zut alors!

-Oui.

Silly sod!

To help you remember, write it with the tip of your finger,

but not in the air because that'll make you look really a lunatic!

-What's your name?

-Norman.

-Nice to meet you, Norman. I'm Rory.

-Rory Barker.

-Rory Barker...

You don't need to spell your own name out, but use your full name, so you can get their full name.

'I'm starting to wonder if Rory might have problems beyond the help of memory techniques,

'and as the guests flood in, he struggles to keep up.'

-Andy Kershaw.

-Andy Kershaw.

-Rich Naivalurua.

-Naivalurua.

-Fanny... Fanning.

-Fanning.

-Fanning.

-Claire Fanny?

-No, Fanning. Sorry.

-It's excruciating.

-Ben, sorry...?

-Ben Hughes.

-Ben Hughes.

So how do I remember his name?

Do little rhymes. It's Hughes, so you could do the association "huge Hughes" cos he's a big bloke.

Yes. Yes, big, huge...

Ben Huge, Ben Hughes.

Big Hughes, Ben Hughes. This is a nightmare. It's all going wrong.

God, he looks nervous!

And you're Katie Eastwick... Katie Garside.

-Eastwick?!

-It was close.

-Really close(!)

-I think she quite likes you, Rory.

-Yes, she's only human.

-Don't say that out loud, you fool!

-Sorry, I wasn't talking to you then.

-What are you talking to?

-I was talking to my drink.

LAUGHTER

-What do you mean? I'm not...

-Get out of that one!

I'm sorry.

Talking to his drink!

I forgot that she could hear me when I spoke to you. Oh, she's looking at me.

Subtly...

'Time is running out and so far, Rory has managed to remember a few and terrify many.'

Rory, just to let you know, I don't want you to panic, but it's three minutes to dinner.

'With the clock ticking, Rory is suddenly hit by a scrum of late arrivals.'

-John...?

-Hulatt.

-I've written it with my finger.

-Also the rhyming association, it's the army, John Hulatt, "bullet".

-Hulatt, "bullet". And Caroline.

-That's C-A-R-O...

-Jeremy Bethel is a Colonel. He is a Colonel!

Stuart. Stu-art.

-Is that Ben Johnson?

-That is Nobby...

-Nobby Nocock. Nobby...

-It's Nobby Pocock.

D-U-S-S-A-R-D. Roger Dussard.

I can't work out if these blokes find Rory incredibly charming

or the biggest chump they've ever had in their mess room.

LAUGHTER

Bring your drinks, please.

Oh, here we go! Good luck.

Right, thank you very, very much.

The format for tonight, in a moment, I'm going to hand over to Rory.

Rory, come to the centre, mate.

Rory's been going round trying to memorise all your names. Who am I?

You are Ryan...

-..Swindale.

-OK, well done. All right, yeah.

-We can do this, Rory, I think.

-I'm going to hand over to Rory and Rory is going to call you through.

'Time to see what Rain Man Rory can do.'

Ben Hughes.

'Ben Hughes, AKA Ben Huge. Word association technique - correct.'

Emma...

Emma...

-Who the hell is Emma?

-Po...

Bo... Bowes... Emma Bowes-Crick.

Good rescue. 'Emma Bowes-Crick. Repeating the name back to them technique - correct.'

-Colonel.

-Colonel Jeremy Bethel.

-Thank you.

-'Only bloke in a white jacket - easy one.'

Ben Johnson?

'Writing the name with the finger technique - failed.'

Ben Hulatt.

Oh, nearly.

And Julie Hulatt.

'Word association technique - Hulatt, bullet, correct.'

Norman...

Sergeant Major Norman...

-Come on.

-Montford.

'Writing the name with your finger technique - failed.'

-Andy Gray.

-'Name repetition - correct.'

-Ben Johnson.

-LAUGHTER

'He's not Ben Johnson either.'

Katie Garside.

'Speaking to a gin and tonic, not a recognised technique, but it'll do.'

Roger Dussard, D-U-S-S-A-R-D.

'Clarifying spelling technique - flying colours!'

Um...

-Clive...

-No.

-Jeremy...

-No.

-Fred...

-No.

-Andrew...

-No.

-Ben...

-No.

-Johnson.

-LAUGHTER

-I'm not sure Ben Johnson's actually here!

Who's this bloke?

-Ben Johnson?

-CHEERING

Ben Johnson!

'With the great Ben Johnson mystery of 2011 solved,

'Rory slam-dunks the final guests with ease.

'My score sheet shows that Rory actually managed to remember over half the names

'of these identically dressed people. Strangely though, he wasn't invited to join them.'

On reflection, perhaps society would be better served

if we could all just acknowledge that we can't remember each other's names,

then we won't all look like idiots, just like Roger there.

Anyway, meanwhile, back on Dartmoor, the net is closing.

'Oz and I have escaped from prison and are on the run from a crack team of expert trackers

'with only our orienteering skills and basic camouflage to help us.

'Our goal - Knuckles, our getaway driver, waiting for us on the other side of miles of tough terrain.

'We've already made it across the moors from Dartmoor Prison to these woods,

'but the trackers are closing us down.'

Right...

-Right, quick map update.

-Yeah.

We made our point here at the edge of the woods.

We've walked into them to this curve here on the path, widely used by ramblers and so on.

There's two schools of thought. One says you should stick to the path

because you go much quicker, there's nothing unusual about people walking on paths,

there's already lots of tracks on them, you don't make as much noise.

The other school of thought says we should go straight through the woods as we're less likely to be seen.

I say we go through the woods and then hug the northern edge of the reservoir.

'So that's what we do - disappearing furtively into the undergrowth like two wanted plumbers.

'But after 20 minutes of struggling through branches and bogs and making precious little progress,

'Oz has had enough of my bright idea.'

If we keep on ploughing through there, we're going to take too long.

'Eventually, we head back to the path.

'At this rate, Max and his tracker team will be nearly on us.'

The path of least resistance for trackers is crucial

because there's no way, if you're in a hurry, you're going to go across this river on my right-hand side

or break through into all of this greenery here.

You'll stay on here and move as quickly as possible.

-Go straight on down here, then we get to the bottom and there's a right turn.

-Hang on.

-Why not cut across there and cut the corner off?

-James, let's keep going.

-There's nowhere to hide on the path.

We'll just have to go faster.

Right, we've found something really suspicious. Come on.

Right...

I thought I'd got them. This is somewhere where they could have hidden up, gone to lay up for days.

This is what the most dangerous criminals in the world will do.

If you built something like that, there's no way people will find you.

But no luck this time. Just keep looking.

'So the shack turns out to have been made not by two TV presenters,

'but by a common or garden escaped criminal psychopath. Phew!

'Anyhow, this diversion buys us a few precious seconds as we head to our next landmark.

'The cartographers among you will have realised that this large area of blue is a reservoir,

'but in order to get there, we face a fresh challenge - some locals.'

-WHISPERING:

-People, people, people.

Keep still.

FAINT CONVERSATION

That was a two-hour walk.

They're not going to be every weekend.

'They might look like harmless ramblers,

'but all it would take is a little torture from Max and they could crack.

'It's a risk we just can't take.'

-WHISPERING:

-We've got to go. We can't stay.

'Avoiding the public was tricky.

'As we came across the second road to cross, our camouflage skills were tested to the limit.'

-You can be seen a mile off.

-There's one old lady by a van. She's on the other side of the van.

She's not looking. We have to get... Car!

'My God, he's vanished(!)'

We've got to go, James. We've got to go.

'With the road cleared, we were at last on to our final major hurdle -

'the Burrator Reservoir with just over two miles to go before our rendezvous with Knuckles.'

The path of least resistance drops straight down to a reservoir.

When we get down here, just a little bit further on, I want absolutely hand signals only, yeah?

That's going to be... Unless they can swim, we've got them.

Yeah?

'But for once, there's something Max hasn't considered.'

-This is very interesting because none of this is marked along here. This is marked as "lake".

-Yeah.

Because of global warming and we've got such dry weather at the moment, all of this should be under water.

Look at this stuff here. This is roots going under the water. You can tell from the kind of vegetation.

All of this should be under water.

That means if the water level stays like that, the next time this map's updated, that line will change.

-But as far as the map's concerned, we're walking in the lake.

-And the trackers may not realise that.

'With Oz and I walking on what Max thinks is water, we make brisk progress along the north shore.

'But when we attempt to cut up from the lake and through the wood to the road, we nearly get collared.'

-Down, down. Duck! Stop!

-What?

-It's them. In the field. You see them coming up the road?

-Yes.

Right, down. OK, down.

Down here.

Come on, down here.

Oh, sorry. Oh!

'We may have avoided capture by the skin of our teeth,

-'but in the scramble to hide, I've knackered my knee quite badly.'

-Are you OK?

'And as we struggle on to a higher path in an attempt to slip past Max and his henchmen,

'I'm reduced to a crippled hobble.'

Keep going.

-Can you get down here?

-Yeah.

-Under here?

-Yeah.

-Down there. You see that track there?

-Yeah.

-Right round there.

-Yeah.

-Across there, mostly through woodland.

-Yeah.

-A little bit of open ground, then we're just there.

-You've just got to dash for it.

-750 metres.

'But 750 metres might be 750 too far.

'This is like a bad World War Two movie.'

We don't know how close they are, but they are close.

It's so simple from here. Go down this track. It's wooded all the way.

The helicopter won't see us. They won't see us. We just go down that track.

Honestly, I reckon 20 minutes and we're there. It'll take 20 minutes.

I can't do that.

-It's 20 minutes and we're there.

-Oz, I can't do that.

-I can't...

-Knuckles is waiting there. This is the last bit.

My knee's swollen like a kipper. I'm sorry, it was that bit in the bog.

I can't run. They're not going to be very far away. They'll just get me as soon as I break cover.

Hobbling across like an old man. You go.

-I'm not going to go...

-I'll go down there, the wrong way. I'll lie low for a bit. I'll come out at night.

-They won't find me down there. I can just hide in the bushes.

-Do you want a lift up?

-Agh! I'm sorry.

-This is terrible, James.

I'm not doing this now for television, a hammy acting thing.

I did put my foot in a hole and twisted my knee quite badly.

It goes to prove that Dartmoor is a very clever place to build a prison

because a lot of the people who escaped in the 19th century drowned in bogs, froze to death.

Quite a few of them went back to the prison and asked to be let back in.

But the fact remains that with a decent Ordnance Survey map

and this thing... You can get this from a camping shop for £4 or £5.

And your eyes and your common sense.

That will take you right across terrain so inhospitable

that in the 19th century, they built a prison on it.

I think we're close.

-Right, where's the other one?

-All right, all right.

-Where is he?

-You won't get him.

He's got the map.

# You know it's safer...

# Breakout! #

There you have it. Thanks to the good old Ordnance Survey and a few basic map-reading skills,

a bald man in ill-fitting overalls has got away. What better recommendation is there than that?

It now remains only for me to say goodbye from here, north 52 degrees, 26 minutes and 23 seconds,

west zero degrees, 13 minutes and 11 seconds.

Goodbye.

SINGING IN HARMONY # Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah-doo

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah-doo

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah-doo

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah

# Doo-nah, doo-nah, doo-nah-doo-oo

# Doo-nah, doo-nah

# Ma-a-a-an La-a-a-ab... #