Episode 4 James May's Man Lab

Hello and welcome to Man Lab,

where the long-lost 10mm spanner of good intention is restored

to its rightful place in the toolbox of personal triumph.

'Coming up.

'We put pedal to metal,

'revolutionising the dull old bicycle.

'We turn a U-bend into a utopia with our urinal Eden...'

There's a rabbit! Hello!

'I build my own boat from a bin liner...'

God, it's knackering.

'And I try to address the nation's inability to score a penalty

'by taking one myself.'

CHEERING

KETTLE WHISTLES

This is a bicycle,

and it is surely one of humankind's greatest inventions.

The modern bicycle, as we know it, was invented in 1885

and since then has liberated nations, mobilised armies,

and provided the inspiration for the 1971 hit The Pushbike Song

by The Mixtures, but even so it's pretty good.

But in a world where your phone is also a camera

and an alarm clock is also a teapot,

the bicycle is starting to look laughably mono-functional.

Curiously, at about the same time the bicycle was invented,

somebody also invented this - the famous penknife made by Swiss Army.

Now, for centuries the pocket knife had been a simple single folding blade

that you used to eat your ploughman's lunch

or lance an unsightly boil on your face.

But then a man called Karl Elsner added a second blade

and then somebody added a screwdriver and a corkscrew

and a toothpick and that thing that boy scouts know how to use.

And this gave us an idea.

Our Man Lab chief engineer, Simmy, has been working with his team

in secret, in case the Swiss are watching,

to disassemble and utterly revolutionise

the humble bicycle, bringing it screaming

into the 21st-century world of multitasking convenience.

It was a process that called for ingenuity,

adaptation and lots of good old-fashioned welding.

No space on our bike's frame could be inefficiently wasted,

no gadget left undeployed.

Did we succeed? You can decide.

# I've got a bike You can ride it if you like... #

Here it is, the world's first Swiss Army bike.

It's still a bicycle, I'm still enjoying a pleasant ride

through leafy Cambridgeshire, but it has added functionality.

It's a wheeled multi-tool. Let's see how it works.

Mmm. I wonder if anybody in this traditional Fenland village

needs my help.

'Yes! This tavern landlord lacks the stature needed to buff up his windows to a fine polish.

'Luckily, one of Simmy's first breakthroughs was to utilise

'all wasted spaces on the bicycle. Even the ones inside the tubes.'

Give me a moment.

'By turning a few levers I release the Swiss Army bike's secret

'under-saddle squeegee and scraper,

'which can reach the top floor windows with ease.

'Within minutes, they were sparkling like the East Anglian intellect.'

Well, if you're happy with that, sir, I'll be on my way.

Thank you very much and have a very safe journey.

Don't thank me, thank the Swiss Army bicycle.

The point of all this is this -

the wheel is the basis of civilisation.

It's also fundamental to industrialisation.

Think of the spinning wheel, the water wheel, the cranked fly wheel

on a steam engine. These things have empowered us.

So if you have a wheel or a shaft spinning round,

you can do work with it, you can produce things,

and bicycles have wheels and shafts spinning round on them

and we can make them work for us, and that's what we're doing here.

Sim's next innovation wasn't simply going to be a thing

that fitted in a space, like the squeegee.

It had to capture the spirit of industrial rotational dynamics.

What better than another useful wheel, a grindstone?

We'll strip that down, get rid of all the plastics and the electrics

and see what's inside.

Cannibalising an electric grinder, Sim re-appropriated

not only the grindstone, but also the motor elements.

So that'll end up on the wheel...

Encased in a welded framework, the idea is that

the pedals are worked, the back wheel turns and the grinders grind. But would it work?

Would you believe it?

I soon rode past a man who would give his kingdom for a grinder. A blunt-knifed butcher.

-Excuse me, Mr Cyclist.

-Yes, sir.

I'm happy to find that with an adjustable backwards-facing second seat

and a perfectly positioned grindstone attachment, sharpening any knife becomes child's play.

Not literally, of course. That would be irresponsible.

How's that, sir?

Wonderful.

# Bicycle, bicycle! #

Mounting a hanging basket bracket in full view of a passing cyclist?

Never fear. Swiss Army bike's here.

For this job I'm going to have to use the Swiss Army Bike's rotary tool.

This attaches to a rotating shaft here, driven by the back wheel.

In my small pouch I have a variety of drill bits.

So, there is the bit in the chuck.

You engage the friction drive on the rear wheel there, like so,

and then I climb backwards onto the bicycle...

..and when I pedal,

the drill, or whatever else you put in there, rotates.

Look at that. It's a reduction ratio of about 120 to 1.

Thanks to Swiss Army bike's revolutionary versatility,

the hole for the hanging basket is drilled in mere seconds.

But that's not all.

In the handlebars of the bike are concealed screwdrivers,

to finish the job off thoroughly.

There, I'll just hang the basket up and then I'll be on my way.

'I could probably have done with a slightly longer flexible drive-shaft

'but that's an improvement for the mark two.' Bye!

Now we've come to a downhill section and normally

when you go downhill on a bike, you slow down using the brake,

but that's very wasteful because the kinetic energy you have,

all the energy you have because you're moving,

is turned into heat in the brake blocks and that's a waste,

so what I've got is a regenerative system. I'm slowing down with

an elaborate pump that pressurises a cylinder full of creosote.

The hurdle with this ingenious gizmo was to use something that was going

round and round, the wheel, to drive something up and down, the pump.

We did this by making an eccentric -

a circular plate off-centre with the wheel.

As it rotates it gives a high point and a low point.

We got the idea from Stephenson's Rocket.

Next we added the creosote reservoir to the back.

"Why creosote?" I hear you cry.

Fear, not sir, no wood is safe from the Swiss Army bicycle.

The high pressure power from the air-compressing brake system

leaves not a single knot of wood unsprayed!

Bye!

But this bicycle is not just for the resolutely practical,

modern DIY enthusiast. Oh, no.

What if you were to chance across a fine fruit-picking maiden

with excellent dress sense,

and wished to woo her with the gift of a refreshing milky beverage,

to wit, a smoothie?

Modifying the bike to perform this most disarming of romantic gestures

was probably the toughest job of the lot.

First, Sim disassembled an existing blender and nicked the motor.

With a bit of welding, we attached it to a strut.

Bicycle, we bring you an offering of a dismantled old food blender.

James, we're going to be somewhere like this.

That against the tyre there, the tyre goes round, that goes round.

That's the original electric motor from the blender.

It's now becoming the drive wheel.

'With the blades rotating nicely, the trick was going to be to make

'a catch that would disconnect the blender from the tyre at will.

'After all, who'd want to pedal around the place on a bike

'with a blender that was spinning the whole time? That would just look stupid.'

Back in the field, all I need to do is engage the clasp

which pushes the drive shaft against the wheel,

pinch the fine lady's fruit,

add some milk from my cycle flask and away we go.

The blender is powered by the front wheel,

which means I have to be moving forwards for it to work.

Thank you.

Your pleasure is my pleasure.

'What a smoothie.'

Excuse me, I don't suppose you've got one of those things

that gets a stone out of a horse's hoof, have you?

Damn.

The Swiss Army bike mark two with horse shoe de-stoner,

extended drill lead and better gearing can wait for another day.

For now, I rest safe in the knowledge that the hectic world

of the modern two-wheeled, clean-windowed, sharp-knived

pristine-fenced, smoothie-wooing gentleman is just

that little bit more convenient.

In fact, we were so pleased with the Swiss Army bike

that we created this shoddy graphic

and pretended I'd ridden it to Germany

to deal with a problem.

This is the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen.

A great football stadium, certainly, but it's so much more than that.

It's more of a colossal monument to modern Germany herself.

To her reputation for great engineering, civic efficiency,

finishing things on time, doing things properly

and all the rest of it.

But to us Englanders it is a place of shame.

For this is where, in 2006, a dispirited England,

minus their red-carded wunderkind Rooney, went out of the World Cup

in a penalty shoot-out against the Portugal of Ronaldo.

-COMMENTARY:

-'He steps up...and it's saved! Another missed penalty.'

Their sixth penalty shoot-out defeat since 1990.

Now, England has given the world many great things.

The printing press, equations of motion, the steam locomotive,

the puddling furnace, the shape of the DNA spiral,

the world wide web and, of course, the corkscrew

but the achievements of Caxton,

Newton, Trevithick, Cort, Crick and Watson, Berners-Lee and Oz Clarke

count for absolutely nothing in the gruelling arena of world prestige.

Just so long as we remain completely inept at kicking an inflated pig's bladder

into the back of an onion bag. Something must be done.

In exactly one week's time, I will return to this benighted stadium

and demonstrate to the nation once and for all how to score a penalty.

But if I'm to succeed,

I need to get to the bottom of why it's all gone so wrong for England.

Recently, we have seen some ruthless cuts in this country's public spending,

and the reason for these is the woeful state of English penalty-taking.

In actual fact, we have spent almost half our GDP

on this state-of-the art laboratory

in an attempt to get to the root of the problem.

Welcome to the Department of Penalty Studies at the University of Loughborough,

where they even have their own infallible striker in the form of this penalty-taking robot.

Now, bizarrely, they call this thing "David", and the great thing about David

is he can kick a ball up to 100 yards at up to 100mph,

and replicate the power and the direction of the kick exactly, every single time.

Like this.

'Sadly, the seminal 1848 Cambridge Rules of Football

'specifically prohibit the use of a robotic striker in an international fixture.

'Never mind.

'To succeed in Germany, all I'll need to do is follow David's example

'and give it some Duke of Wellington.'

'Hmm... There is, unfortunately, one slight snag.

'Unlike my metal mentor, I've never scored a single goal in my entire life,

'and that's not a joke.

'But it doesn't matter, because science and technology can still come to the aid of England.'

Right. Let's find out where I went wrong.

And that requires me, sadly, to wear this ridiculous gimp suit and the John McEnroe headband,

and you will notice that they are covered with these little grey nipples.

Those are infra-red reflectors, and they allow my every movement

to be analysed by these sensors around the laboratory.

It's very similar to the technology used to make the graphics for video games.

Down here we also have our super-slow-motion camera to analyse the point where I kick the ball.

That can record at up to 650,000 frames per second,

rather than the usual 25 frames per second at which you're watching your television now.

Finally, over here, we have this piece of kit,

which will track the flight of the ball towards the goal,

and then display it in 3D on the computer screen there.

Developed by the Danish military

to monitor the flow of pastries across the Channel to England.

-Right, are you ready, doctor?

-We're ready.

Let us take a penalty.

Well, I can tell without your computer that I kicked it straight at the goalie.

-What does it tell you?

-It tells us that the speed of your kick was 34mph.

A professional player would be looking at hitting

the corners a little bit more, perhaps at a slightly higher speed.

'What he means, for the non-academic,

'is that real footballers can kick at 80mph.'

-I am truly, astronomically

-BLEEP

-at football, aren't I?

Am I the worst player you've ever had in here?

Penalty number five.

Missed four so far, so if I miss this one,

I think I'm right in saying England is out of the cup, as usual.

OK, boss, say when.

Stand by. Shot five. Go!

Yes!

APPLAUSE

-Right, let's see if the...

-HE LAUGHS

That's the first goal I've ever scored in my entire life,

and I'm 48, so that's quite an emotional moment.

Erm...

I'm going to go and look at the, er, whatever we call that,

the motion analysis system,

to see if it can throw any infrared light on what I'm doing.

Even though you did score, there are a few faults with your technique -

you are very square with your pelvis,

it's square-on to the goal throughout your shot.

So you're not getting any power from your hips.

Is that why I appear to be kicking the ball like a complete Jessie? Doing a little skip at the end?

A little bit, yes.

Your main fault is that you're only flicking through with your lower leg at the last minute.

You're not really getting the power of your whole body behind the shot.

'If my computerised stick man doppelganger exposes a few shortcomings,

'it's nothing compared with the horror of the slow-motion camera.'

So what am I actually doing wrong?

There are a couple of things that are quite obvious

when we look at this.

You can see first of all that your planting foot

-is too far behind the ball.

-Yeah.

I can't time the run-up properly. I can't work it out. I'm leaning backwards as well.

-That's not right, is it? You're supposed to be over the ball.

-Yours is more of a toe poke.

You can see my toes buckling in that one.

Great. And I look like an idiot.

Well, the white suit doesn't help.

'After hours of tests...

'..the technicians had delivered their in-depth analysis

'of the areas that need addressing if I'm to beat the Germans in their backyard.'

My run-up is poorly timed, I'm not putting my left foot next to the ball,

I'm not putting my weight over the ball because I'm leaning backwards,

I'm kicking the ball with the wrong part of my foot, my ankle is too floppy, my knee is too stiff,

I'm not getting the correct articulation in my hips,

I'm not accurately aiming at the top left-hand of the goal,

and I'm crap at football.

And in a real penalty situation, a real shoot-out, it would be even harder,

because there would, of course, be the psychological element.

The enemy goalkeeper would be trying to psyche me out.

'I'm going to face this in Germany. Urgent remedial action is needed.

'Coming up - a masterclass in the ancient art of penalty psychology.'

-Hate the ball! Hate that ball!

-I do hate the ball!

'..with the man they call the Socrates of South London.'

Ah, you mug! Everyone hates you now!

'The Man Lab stands cathedral-like as a monument to male endeavour and achievement.

'From its workshops flows a torrent of invention and ingenuity,

inspiring like-minded fellows to go forth and waste time.

'But hidden in a forgotten corner lies the Man Lab's dirty little secret.

'A putrid hell-hole that threatens to condemn our achievements

'to the U-bend of inadequacy.'

This is the shameful secret of our Man Lab, the old urinal block.

It's so awful in here, we've never actually used it.

It's just sat in the corner, taunting us with its filth and its squalor.

It's absolutely disgusting, it's like some anteroom to Hades.

Something has to be done, and I'm not talking about a wazz.

What has to be done first is the removal of this wall.

'This act of vandalism obscures a genteel ambition.

'For what we have in mind is to transform this pestilential pissoir

'into the most idyllic of rest rooms.

'Henry Miller said that every Englishman should own one.

'Francis Bacon called them "the purest of human pleasures".

'And even the Frenchman Voltaire exalted us to cultivate them.

'In this squalid space, we shall create a living Eden,

'a garden of earthly delights.'

TOILET FLUSHES

"The Earth," said Nicolaus Copernicus, I think, "conceives by the sun,

"and by him, becomes pregnant with ripe fruit."

The problem we have indoors

is that normal light bulbs don't give the full spectrum of white light,

so you're missing quite a lot of the ultraviolet, so things will grow, but not very well.

So what we're going to do first is put up some daylight bulbs -

they have all of the white light spectrum. They will encourage things to grow,

and this is Darren the sparky, who is helping me with that.

'As any student who's grown their own herbs for cooking will tell you,

'these lights burn cold, so you can put them close to the plants without singeing the leaves.

'But because our garden will also need water,

'we've got to be careful when wiring them in.'

Everything electrical in this room has to be waterproofed,

cos it's going be damp, because it'll be irrigated, so this is a waterproof junction box.

These have little rubber glands in them.

You do have to remember to tighten these up, and then no water can get in.

These walls have been lined with this stuff, which is...

It's a sort of reconstituted plastic waste sheet. It's brilliant stuff.

None of us can remember what it's called, but anyway, it's that stuff.

Then onto that, we're going to add this waterproof membrane,

because there's going to be an irrigation system in here,

and the plants are quite literally going to be growing up the wall.

'My vision for the Man Lab garden is a horticultural heaven,

'where the serenity of Sissinghurst and the culture of Kew shall coalesce.

'But we start with a humble homage to the greatest historical garden of all -

'the hanging garden of imperial Babylon.'

OK, so this is a hanging basket. It is basket-shaped and it hangs.

-We need to line it.

-Right.

So, erm, a natural product, just using natural moss,

so literally just fill round the finished layer,

and pack the whole of the basket out with the moss.

Mm. Smells marvellous.

'To give our Babylonian basket a distinctly British flavour, we're starting with strawberries,

'although the possibilities for our garden are limited only by our imagination.'

What else can we put in there?

We can have orchids, we can have some flowers,

what other edible things can we grow - salads?

-Salads, yeah.

-Peas. Leeks.

-Yep.

Opium?

Poppies would grow in there, wouldn't they? If you had a bed of...?

Yeah, with the... Yeah, with good light and heat, then yeah.

'Before Ian goes off to phone the police,

'I placate him with a plant that even Thomas De Quincey would never try to smoke.'

Tomatoes!

So, actually, basic gardening is not that difficult, is it?

The golden rules are decent composted soil,

healthy plants, dig a hole, loosen the roots, stick it in, pack it round, put some water on it.

That's the basic principles, really.

I hope Monty Don watched that bit.

'With our lighting and irrigation ready, we bring in our seedlings,

'and lay down matting sown with the grasses of the meadow.

'But our garden is not yet complete -

'we must leave Mother Nature to work her magic.'

And there will be more.

Our former khazi is going to be transformed into a cornucopia of exotic produce,

all of which will mature and ripen and blossom in the next five weeks.

And you're just going to have to take my word for that,

because I don't want to spoil the surprise of the final reveal.

We shall revisit that world that was once just stains and soap scum

about five weeks hence.

Wa-hey!

'So, while we got on with other exciting activities...'

HE LAUGHS

'..grasses grew and plants silently sprouted.'

Timber!

So, here we are at hence.

It's five weeks later,

the garden has been tended by members of the Man Lab.

I genuinely haven't seen it yet, and I'm about to see it for the first time.

So, here we go.

Come into my garden.

Wow.

'Where once were cracked cisterns and indelible stains,

'now flourish exotic vistas of herbs and peppers, fruits and vines.

'Himalayan Vanda orchids festoon the walls and ceiling,

'while cacti from the Americas nestle in the pan.

'Butterflies flit, ferns unfurl and flowers blossom

'in our unlikely indoor Alhambra.'

Thomas Campion, 1567-1620, wrote,

"There is a garden in her face, where roses and white lilies blow."

And it's a good job he lived when he did, because if he was here today,

he'd have to write, "There is a garden in our bog," which wouldn't have been as good.

But that... There's a rabbit! Look!

Hello!

Surely not?!

Strawberries!

See, the garden is like a sort of waiting room at paradise,

it's why they're popular in all cultures - it's where we ultimately long to be.

I'm sitting here, or crouching here,

like the first man in the first garden.

Mmm.

All is innocence and pleasure.

He's eaten a hole in my trousers!

LAUGHTER

You...idiot!

Look at all these things you can eat, you fool!

Leaves and strawberries and you've eaten a pair of jeans.

You're not bright, are you?

Maybe you have an unloved spare room, you know, the sort of place where there's a mouldy mattress

and some books you no longer read, and a broken pushchair.

Turn it into one of these.

Come to think of it, I've got a small downstairs lavatory that I don't really use very much.

I could certainly make the experience of using it a great deal better.

'If you have already transformed your bog,

'why not write to us at -

'Mark your subject line "I feel much better after that." '

'There's less than a week to go

'before my attempt to rescue the nation's sporting reputation

'by scoring a penalty from the very spot where England were knocked out of the 2006 World Cup.

'So far, my efforts have been, at best, pants.'

Oh, that was terrible!

'Good job, then, that science has developed a confidence-inspiring formula

'based on the study of over 10,000 penalty kicks.'

Right, I've done a bit more research,

and on the internet I found this very handy formula,

which gives me my LPS, my likelihood of penalty success.

It looks very complicated, but actually it isn't.

It all breaks down into a series of ones and noughts.

This half of it is about the player.

This half of it is about my technique. So let's work it out.

Am I right footed? Yes, I'm pretty sure I am.

Am I a striker or a defender? I don't really know,

but I'll call myself a striker because that gives me a one.

Is my age 21 or under? Sadly not, so I get a nought for that.

And have I been on the pitch for under 45 minutes? Well, yes.

I've only been here about 15 seconds.

So that's that half of the equation divided by four.

I have to multiply that by this side.

Will I be starting my run-up outside the penalty box? I think I will.

So that's a one.

Am I going to do a slow run-up - SRU? Yeah, why not?

It's unlikely to be fast, let's be honest.

Am I going to kick to my natural side?

That is, if I'm right footed, that way, so the ball goes over there.

Almost certainly. That's a one.

Am I going to use the inside of my boot?

I'll probably toe-jab it but let's say I manage to do it properly.

Am I going to aim for the top left-hand corner,

the most obvious place to shoot for a penalty? Yes, so that's a one.

And that is divided by five so that gives me three over four,

0.75, multiply by five over five, one equals...

0.75, multiply by 100,

gives me a whopping 75% chance of scoring a penalty.

How about that?

'Maybe I worked that out wrong.

'Luckily, I've enlisted help from the professor of the penalty kick,

'ex-Liverpool, Spurs and West Ham's Neil "Razor" Ruddock.

'He's the thinking man's football coach,

'but only if you're the sort of man who likes thinking about pies.'

Listen. The penalty, your formula was absolute rubbish.

Taking a penalty's about there.

This ain't your friend. Get angry. Get in the zone.

Show me your zone face. That's it. Number one, get in the zone.

-Number two, put the ball down. Yes?

-Yep.

Number three, never look at the keeper.

He's going to try and put you off.

Four, you're in the zone, don't change your mind.

Number five, important foot is your standing foot,

not your kicking foot. OK?

Number six, make sure you get a good strike. Shall I show you?

-Yeah.

-I'm in the zone, I'm not looking at the goalkeeper.

-How do you know where the goal is?

-It's straight in front of you, James.

'I'm not sure Mr Razor realises just how little I know about all this.

'I'm going to have to put some effort in to avoid a trademark Ruddock roasting.'

-Right, so zone...

-Zone.

-Zone face.

-Never look at the goalkeeper.

-Hate the ball, don't look at the goalkeeper.

-Hate that ball!

I do hate the ball. I've hated it since I was a child.

Take the ironing board out of your back.

-Loose.

-And it's that bit of the boot.

Just the inside of your laces.

If you toe-punt it, it could go anywhere

-and you'll break your toe.

-OK.

-Do you want to give it a whirl?

It was too straight.

'In case you haven't worked it out yet, or you've just tuned in,

'I'm really crap at football.'

What chance do you think James has with his current technique?

To be fair, it's the worst technique I've ever seen from a human.

That formula said 75%.

25% of scoring one goal, cos he just ain't got the power.

I mean, look at him, he looks like Bambi on ice.

Just have a look at this technique, watch, look...

Brilliant, James(!)

That only bounced four times before it hit the goalkeeper.

Try and kick it, try and see if you can hit the goal without bouncing. Power! C'mon! Hate that football!

'Stung by Razor's despairing cries,

'I readjusted my priorities and gave it a right bloiter.'

There you go! Oh, what a save! What a save!

'It was a belter!'

'And for Razor, it was the first stirrings

'of a vague hope that the whole exercise wasn't a complete waste of time.'

You can't come back failing, you know that?

You have to do it for England.

What will happen to me if I don't?

I think people will hate you more than they already do.

This is for your country. If you score, every England football fan... You'll be a hero, won't you?

You'll be bigger than Beckham, imagine that!

You get page three birds after you.

'I just couldn't let Raquel, 21, from Essex, down.

'It was time to do this properly.'

Get your foot like your fist.

At the last second, make your foot hard.

-Your standing foot goes there.

-Where was I putting it?

You're coming from here, you're kicking from here.

-Is it there, or is it there? About a ball's width.

-Another ball's, yeah. Smash it.

Don't look at the goalkeeper. Get in the zone. Number one, get in the zone.

Power!

'And then...'

Whoa, that was a good one. Just inside the post!

Not even Jurgen the German would save that.

'It was a thunderbolt, as if from the iron-clad boot of Thor himself!'

Take ball.

'And to disprove that lightning never strikes twice...'

-How good did that feel?

-Excellent.

'Razor had taught me well, but there was more.

'The pressure of match conditions.'

I'll tell you what we're going to do. You've got to walk the walk.

I'll be a German supporter behind the goal. You've got to do it for real.

-You've got to get on the halfway line, and walk the walk, while I give you abuse.

-OK.

-See if you can do it.

-It's BBC Two, remember.

-It's on quite early in the evening.

-Do they understand German, BBC Two?

-Yeah, some of them will. Keep it German.

-OK.

'Alone on the pitch, I tried to imagine the horror of holding

'a whole nation's sporting destiny in my quivering hands.

'To make matters worse, Razor's impersonation of 50,000 hostile fans

'was surprisingly convincing.'

CROWD CHANTS

GERMAN ACCENT: Ah, ja! English man! We want you to miss!

Woo-hoo! Come on, sweetheart! Look at the state of him!

Eh? Have a look at them legs!

Seen more fat on a chip, mate!

Pressure! The whole country's watching you!

If you miss, you're nothing, son.

In the zone, face, zone.

What are you talking to me for? Get in the zone. You can't talk to the fans!

I'll blow the whistle. WHISTLE

Ooh! You mug! Everyone hates you now!

You can't go back to England, you're going to have to stay in Germany!

THEY LAUGH What a bad penalty, what happened?

It was the German supporters, they put me off.

-Was it?

-Yeah, they're ugly.

'Practice ends in disappointment.

'If I'm to avoid a disastrous repeat performance on the big day,

'I must remember the key points of the Razor sharp penalty procedure.'

OK, here we go. This is the basics.

Don't tell me. Let me see if I get it right.

In the zone, get the face, hate the ball.

Don't look at the goalie, short run-up,

standing foot right of the ball, a ball's width away,

kick the bottom of the ball, toe down,

on the laces, aim at the top right-hand corner,

shoulders square but get the ironing board out of your spine.

What could be simpler? Then you go home either sick as a parrot or over the moon.

'I sort of wish I hadn't got into this.

'I've elected to make my limp right leg an ambassador for all England.

'And in the cauldron of Gelsenkirchen, failure is not an option.'

And now, boat-building.

'This is Antony's Passage crossing near Plymouth.'

Until 60 years ago it was a ferry crossing by prescriptive right,

that is to say it had been there for so long that nobody could

question it or interfere with its operation.

It was mentioned in documents as long ago as 1324.

'Small ferries were once as commonplace as abandoned shopping trolleys

'on the inland waterways of Britain.

'The building of small boats, in fact, was once a vital component

'in maintaining the country's integrated public transport system.'

But of course, with the coming of the family car,

this ferry crossing was closed in 1952.

But was that a good idea?

'Ever since the ferry stopped sailing,

'reaching Antony's Passage from Torpoint has become

'a 16-mile journey by road, rather than the 416 yards across the water.

'This leads us to a fatuous question.'

What if, for example, you bought a two litre tub of ice-cream

here in Torpoint, on this side of the water,

because you had the vicar coming round for afternoon tea,

but you live over there in Antony's Passage,

and you don't drive?

'This is exactly the problem facing Rita and Heather. They've stocked up on a two-for-one special on vanilla,

'and with the vicar coming over for a Sunday sundae,

'they must get home to Antony's Passage before it melts.

'So that's a race.

'Rita will be hiking the 16 miles around the bay by road.

'But Heather drew the short straw and must rely on Man Lab.'

Here then, finally, is an excuse to build a boat,

and it's going to be a coracle.

'So, while I start here on Operation Can We Dream Up An Excuse To Build A Coracle,

'Rita is hot-footing it round the long way, chaperoned by Rory.'

-So, ramblers aren't just getting up every morning, rambling straightaway?

-Oh, no, no.

A coracle is, in essence,

a very large wickerwork basket made out of any springy wood,

typically ash or willow, and then it's covered with an animal skin,

although these days we'll be using a waterproof builder's plastic sheet.

Now in centuries gone by, people would have to forage

for their coracle-building materials in nearby woodland, but now

we find, following the invention of fact-based television entertainment,

that everything we need is in a very neat pile right here.

'The first thing to know about coracle building is that,

'unlike a normal boat, you build it upside-down.

'Step one is to use these wooden pegs to carefully mark out

'the boat's perimeter.

'Then you position the dubiously titled "longitudinal members"

'that will eventually be bent over to form the hull.

'Coracle building is one of the oldest man skills in Britain.

'Julius Caesar himself reported ancient Britons using them in 54BC.

'And so to speed things up, I've invited an ancient Briton to help.

'This is Peter, our coracle building expert.

'It's already 3pm and the afternoon is marching on.

'Peter and I need to finish by 5pm at the latest, if we're to catch the tide.

'So at the moment, in the Great Man Lab Ice-cream Race of 2011,

'we've still to leave the gates.

'Meanwhile, though, Rita and Rory are storming ahead,

'at almost four miles around the route.

'But for Rita, it may have felt like a bit further.'

What about those? What are those trees called?

Fir trees, as far as I'm concerned.

-But you're not sure?

-No.

-Right.

'Peter and I get weaving, inserting strips of willow

'in and out of our still upright members to form the sides,

'or gunnels, of our upside-down coracle.

So you end up, in effect, with a sort of knitted boat.

'Each willow strip must snake inside and outside the uprights,

'with each willow strip above that snaking the opposite way.

'It's a surprisingly intricate procedure and if we get it wrong,

our coracle will look far from ship-shape, as Peter explains.

It'll be a mingy comumbus, as they say in Shropshire.

-Do they?

-Yeah.

-What does that mean?

A mingy comumbus, to describe it, you're going to a market

with a basket full of butter, all rolled up nicely, all together in a basket,

the sun gets on it, heats it, it sticks together and makes a mingy comumbus.

A mingy comumbus. Sounds like "a right cock-up" in the Southeast.

Yes, an absolute muddle and mess.

'With Heather's ice-cream becoming a mingy comumbus,

'Peter drives the build forward at a speed that's, frankly,

'terrifying for an elderly gentleman in tiny shorts.'

Ow!

'With our torn and uncomplaining hands,

'we start to bend the ribs over.

'Our mystical communion with ancient man is slightly lost on Heather.'

How long do you think you're going to be? This ice-cream's melting.

We'll be 15 minutes. Stay in the shade, please.

Are you sure? Cos I could catch the bus.

No! No, you can't catch the bus. There isn't one.

'Whilst I re-explain the rules of the game to Heather, Rita and Rory

'are well over halfway and fast closing in on Antony's Passage.

'But back by the shore, suddenly, our coracle springs from the wood.'

-Look at that!

-There's our boat.

-That's tremendous.

'The only thing left to do is wrap the boat in plastic sheeting

'and we're ready to go.'

There you go, a complete coracle.

It's not the showroom edition, it's slightly rough and ready, we've done it in a hurry.

But it is not just part of the integrated transport solution,

it is a specific transport solution for a specific journey,

and this, apparently, is the traditional way of carrying one.

-Heather!

-I'm on my way.

We're ready. Rita won't be there yet.

The vicar must be bored to death.

'To stay in the race we had to set sail immediately.

'Incredibly, our pile of sticks seemed to be seaworthy.

'There was even a ship's dog.'

Here we go!

For the first time in 60 years,

Antony's Passage will be reached from the sea.

It is no longer safe from invading forces,

from the envy of less happy shores.

See the blue boat to your left? Aim for that.

That's easy for him to say, isn't it?

'Finally, we have progress!

'Look at that!

'Unfortunately, Rory and Rita have now made it almost

'all the way round the bay and are on the home straight.'

-That's Antony's Passage there?

-Yeah.

-So we're that close?

-We're that close.

We're nearly there. I can almost taste it, Rita.

I wonder if James is in the water yet.

# And the stormy winds did blow

# And we jolly sailor boys were up, up, up aloft

# With the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below. #

Oh, I've gone off course. I can't sing and row.

'That's partly because rowing a coracle isn't like rowing any other boat.'

You're suppose to move the oar in a very elongated figure of eight,

so you have a little push there and a little push there.

'But little pushes aren't going to cut it in this race.

'If we're going to beat Rita and Rory, and serve the vicar

'his definitely-not-melted ice-cream,

'I must row like Sir Steve Redgrave.'

We have absolutely no idea where Rita is,

I don't think I can see her standing on the shore.

-Where am I aiming for?

-Just in front of our boat here.

-Hang on a minute, "your boat"?!

-Yeah.

Well, why the bloody hell am I paddling this polythene bag

across the bay if you've got that thing?!

-Seriously, is that yours?

-Yes!

Oh, it's been a long day, Rita.

-It's been a long day.

-How much longer?

-A long walk. Not very far now.

We are almost there.

I'm quite exhausted,

but as Nelson said, I think, at the Battle of the Nile

when he thought he'd been mortally wounded,

"I am killed. Send regards to Mother!"

Then he realised that he hadn't been killed at all

and he was so excited and pleased he said, "Oh, kiss my Hardy."

That's not true, I just made that up!

Nobody panic in these last few feet.

Hold it there.

'Even though we'd landed we still weren't home and dry,

'and the tricky process of getting out of a round-bottomed boat

'was costing us valuable seconds.'

How the hell do you do this? Here you are, madam.

And welcome ashore. It wasn't that frightening, was it?

I'm absolutely soaked.

It's not perfect, but it has promise.

Thank you very much for being my first passenger.

Don't forget your ice-cream. The vicar will be disappointed.

'We've done it! Heather just has time to change her trousers

'before Rita and Rory and the Reverend turn up at the finish line.'

I'm so pleased I've come for the tea!

Good, we're glad to have you.

'The maiden voyage of the good ship Mingy Comumbus is an unparalleled success.'

Well, I suppose, for many centuries, a stretch of water like that

was an enormous obstacle to human progress.

All you actually need in the end to conquer that social

and indeed philosophical divide is the sticks of the forest

and a plastic ground sheet.

And that's it.

'And so, my job done, I row away,

'marvelling at the ingenuity of ancient man, but wondering

'why it took him so long to come up with the outboard motor.'

So, there you are.

If you live near a disused ferry crossing

and you're bored of taking the long way round and you don't have a car,

and the water's reasonably calm and the distances aren't too great

and somebody's left a pile of coracle-building materials

in a convenient clearing in a nearby woodland, you know what to do.

Ah!

David Drumsticks writes in to say, "I live up a dark alleyway

"and at night I really need a torch to find my way to the front door.

"Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to take it with me. Any suggestions?"

Well, the obvious answer to this, David Drumsticks,

is to wear a head torch but unfortunately they do tend to make

you look like a complete idiot and they encourage dogs to urinate

on your leg if you stand in one place for more than ten seconds. So we've come up with something better.

Why not incorporate the torch idea into something you know

you're going to take with you whatever? For example, your boots.

We've decided to fit these coarse Victorian boots with

futuristic light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

'The LEDs will go in the toe of the boot,

'with the circuit and batteries towards the heel.

'A bit of metal on the side of the boot should

'work like an on-off switch when I click my heels together, a bit like

'Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz, but with clodhoppers and more stubble.

'So, all this means I get to do my fifth favourite thing in the world, soldering.'

Now just hang on while I steady my trembling...

Do you want to lean on something?

Why don't you lean on that? That's it...

'With the diode wired up, we completely

'naff our chances of returning these boots for a refund by drilling

'a big hole in the toe and forcing the LED in with some pliers.

'The wires will be connected via a simple circuit board

'to the batteries, all contained within the hollowed-out sole.'

"That'll do," comes the cry of the perfectionist down the ages.

Don't show that too close, in case electronics enthusiasts are watching.

'Lastly we drill two more screws into the boot

'and solder the wires on, almost completing our circuit.

'However, we're not quite there yet, so to make them fully operational,

'we drill another screw into the opposite shoe, thus making it possible

'to complete the circuit and turn the light on and off with a simple tap.'

-There you go, not bad!

-It's quite good, isn't it?

-That is good.

'Unfortunately, doing the other boot took a really long time,

'and watching two long-sighted middle-aged blokes

'fumble about with wires really doesn't make good television.

So, there you go, that's those finished, then.

-There you go.

-Shall I try them out?

Yeah, go and try them out.

Right, here's how we're going to test the headlamp boots.

Here we are in the seating area of the Man Lab

and if we walk this way, past all these many and varied obstacles

that we have around the place, past our bar that we built,

the kitchen we built in the last series, the railway bridge,

Sim's workshop, Sam's workshop, this bloke who I've never met before with the trolley,

the organ, the canisters, the wires,

a very hazardous piece of wire here,

the punch bag and the filing cabinet,

we arrive at the door of my office which, for the purposes of this experiment,

is our correspondent Mr David Drumsticks' front door.

Now let's go back to the beginning and do it at night.

Let the experiment begin.

Boots on!

Hang on.

I don't want them flashing, I want normal boot.

That's off and that's on.

Here we go. OK, I'm ready to make my way and this is fantastic.

I can see quite clearly that there is the front wheel of the unmendable motorcycle.

As I go, you see, no chance whatsoever of hitting...

-CRASHING

-..of hitting that.

Moving across the otherwise pitch-black room, there's a box of stuff Sim has left.

There's the edge of the compressor, some boxes, stepladder.

Be very careful not to walk into that.

There's that bloke again who I've never met.

I'm making my way very easily to the front door where

I have to put the code in.

Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought of this, actually.

Erm, I'm going to have to lift my leg up.

Cos this, this doesn't, it doesn't use a key, it's one of those,

one of those press things.

This is a good stretching exercise, it's quite yogic.

There we go! Ta-da!

Those are, without question, the finest boots I've ever seen or used.

These, though, I'm not so sure about.

'It's the day of my sporting date with destiny. Bugger.

'My mission, to score a single penalty from the very spot where

'England failed in the 2006 World Cup.'

'He steps up. Oh, and it's saved. It's another penalty disaster for England!'

'I've been training hard.

'My performance has been scientifically analysed by state-of-the-art laboratories.'

Am I the worst player you've ever had in here?

'I've benefited from elite professional coaching.'

You mug! Everyone hates you now!

'But as the stadium fills with thousands of hostile fans,

'I begin to realise what a hideous ordeal it must be to take a genuinely vital penalty.'

Well, I'm in the changing room with ten minutes to go.

I'm only going out there to kick a football.

It doesn't matter, does it?

And yet it really does matter, somehow.

And I slightly regret agreeing to do it because,

well, I accepted at the age of eight I was useless at football

and that was 40 years ago

and now I'm just going to make an absolute donkey of myself

and disappoint an enormous number of people,

ruin my career and as I've often feared,

I'll have to run a small provincial shoe shop for the rest of my life.

'Hang on.

'This is defeatist rubbish. I know I can score.

'I've done it in training.'

That was a good one!

'So to keep me focussed I've smuggled Razor Ruddock into Germany,

'through the oversized channel.'

See James, you've got understand

this goes far beyond the boundaries of football.

This is life. It means a lot to people.

To an aesthete, it is an art form, an athletic ballet.

To the spiritually inclined, it is a religion.

Jean Paul Sartre?

No Paul Gardner, used to play for Blackpool.

I know what he meant.

C'mon, ten minutes, son. Put that all aside...

-Right. Hate the ball!

-You've got to get focussed.

Zone, remember the zone? Get in the zone.

-Get in the zone.

-Zone, hate the ball. Hate him.

In your mind's eye you can see yourself scoring a goal.

I'm hating the ball. Why do I hate it?

Cos you're going to smash it past the goalkeeper you hate even more.

We'll call this football Hammond.

I hate it, I hate you...

Feel that hate.

Deep loathing. Deep, deep, deep loathing of this...

KNOCKING

I think it's time to go, son, I think it's time.

C'mon, England. Think of England. Think of England.

I'll think of England without lying back. More, more!

'Some, when faced with destiny, feel the hand of history upon their shoulder.

'All I had was the giant hairy bear paw of Ruddock.

'It'll have to do.'

Now get out there and show me what you can do! Go on, son.

CROWD CHANT

Go on, son!

Oh, no!

WHISTLE BLOWS

'This was for the fallen heroes of England's doomed campaigns.

'For the souls of Beckham and Batty, and Southgate and Ince.

'And as Rupert Brooke might have said,

'had he managed to get a ticket,

' "If I should miss, think only this of me,

' "that there is a corner of some foreign field that is forever England nil." '

Come on! The side!

This is the big moment.

WHISTLE BLOWS

'I've cocked it up.'

CROWD CHEER

I've seen your Beckhams miss, I've seen your Inces, your Battys,

your Gerrards, Lampards, miss.

That is the worst performance I have ever seen by an Englishman on a football field!

Disgusting!

'To paraphrase the great Glen Hoddle, I'd let the fans down,

'I'd let my country down, but most importantly, I'd let Man Lab down.

'And it had all been going so well.

'We had navigated the toughest terrain,

'and built sturdy altars to the spirit of sporting fraternity.

'We had confronted our fears and reached for the stars.

'We had wrought transports of delight, and brought forth

'from the dank fog of confusion, a sunlit dawn for all mankind.

'But for all our hard-won triumphs there lies within us all

'an eternal frailty, a hardwired capacity for error.

'We are, despite our vaulted ambitions, only men.'

That, I'm afraid, brings us to the end of the current series of Man Lab,

the programme that hopes to bridge the age-old divide between the arts and sciences

and between craft and creativity. And we conclude with a man who, more than anybody else,

embodies the true spirit of Man Lab.

He is a mechanic the equal of Thomas Newcomen,

a musician the peer of Beethoven, an artist with the soul of Pissarro

and the beating, lyrical heart of Thomas Campion, 1567-1620.

Most importantly, though, he is an unmitigated optimist.

It's goodbye from us, and from the man they know simply as "Paul".

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]