Eon Straddler Time Traveller

-So this is it, then.

-This is it, my friend.

This bad boy is the latest in technology from taking

time out from time travelling, sitting on your backside

and doing precisely...

..nothing.

-Show us what it can do, then!

-Let's just say it's the business.

-How?

-Well, it does this.

I'd say it's more than a chair.

I'd say it was more like a throne fit for a king,

say like the ones they used in 1256.

-What happened to your eye?

-What happened to your clothes?!

I'm a king and you're not, so I'm sat on this throne here.

-Cool.

-When you're the ruler of a country,

you need something that makes a statement,

-you need to sit on something that says, "I'm the man".

-Sure!

A throne like this, which is larger and more extravagant

than normal chairs, shows everybody how important I am.

OK, I get that, but you're the king, shouldn't it be made out

of something expensive like gold? This is made out of wood!

Not all thrones were made out of lavish materials, in fact,

a lot of thrones were made out of wood.

It's thought that wood added a common touch and symbolised

that the monarch was still the servant of its subjects.

Fair enough. On me 'ead!

Sometimes I think your head's made out of wood.

WATCH BEEPS

What a smell!

-I'm sat on the toilet.

-Oh, that's disgusting!

No, it's a commode, taken from the French word for "convenient".

It meant that in Georgian times you could hide your toilet

in a piece of furniture and keep it for your convenience

in your living room.

No more need to go upstairs or outside. It was genius.

-Stinks!

-Later, armrests were added

so that elderly or infirm people could have a poo.

-Gross!

-We still use them to this day.

Quick, do the finger-clicky thing and let's get out of here.

How about 1963?

1960-anywhere! Come on!

I've got to think.

CHILDREN LAUGH

Thank God for that!

It's good to get out of the early 1700s, dude.

You may not call me "dude".

You may call me "sir".

OK, "sir", what gives with the latest chair design?

You're sat in it.

What, this plastic thing? What's so special about this?

Up until now, most school chairs have been made out of wood, yeah?

-Yeah.

-Well, this was a huge deal, because in 1954,

polypropylene plastic was invented. It was really strong

and could be moulded into loads of different shapes, like chairs.

So by 1963, the polyprop chair was all the rage in schools.

It was designed to be easy to clean, tough and mass-produced

-and could be stacked one on top of the other.

-Nice idea.

SCHOOL BELL RINGS

That's the end of today's lesson.

If you'd like to stack your chair on top of the others?

Obviously, time travelling doesn't always have to span the centuries.

In fact, we can step forward just three years, to 1966.

-Are you all right?

-Great!

Now I like that!

-I thought you would. This is the ball chair.

-Very futuristic!

This was the decade of the space race, the first man on the moon,

and people were looking towards a future, where by the year 2000

space travel would be the norm, streets would have moving pavements

-and people would get to work with jet packs on.

-So what happened?

-They're still working on it, I guess.

-Can you work on

getting me out of this chair, please? I think I'm going to be a bit sick.

So here we are, back in the latest state-of-the-art

best-euros-can-buy chair, complete with built-in heater and massager...

..and best of all,

built-in, its very own fridge.

OK, you just, er, chill, yeah?

I can't wait for this.

I'm so hungry I could eat a horse between two mattresses.

What?

Haven't you "fork-gotten" something?

What?

"Fork-gotten" something!

Oh!

Fork! I'm such an idiot!

Yes, you are.

Er, what are you doing?

I'm eating with my hands!

But I thought you were Eon Straddler, time and space hopper,

-who travelled the centuries in style.

-Style and panache.

-But you're eating your food like some crazy caveman.

-Yes, I am.

But this isn't some prehistoric cave.

Yeah, but not if I do this.

Sometimes I wish we could just sit down and eat a dinner

instead of going back through time, watch TV, play a computer game,

-like normal people!

-Yeah, but as you know, I am not normal.

-You can say that again.

-Yeah, but as you know, I am not normal.

OK, so where are we?

-10,000 BC.

-We're the furthest away in time from home we can be!

Yeah, but with this time travelling watch, we can also

travel back short distances, like, say, three seconds.

Short distances, like, say, three seconds.

Short distances, like, say, three seconds.

Look, stop it, you time travelling freak!

-Why are we cavemen?

-To show you that prehistoric man would use

the same tool he just killed an animal with to cut off pieces

-of meat and then eat it with his bare hands.

-So?

So you try.

But be careful, because it is...

..sharp.

-Why are you using that empty snail shell?

-It's thought that your clever

cavemen would use empty snail shells to scoop up food like a spoon.

Making it the first spoon ever?

Exactly. This idea travelled through the ages.

In fact, the Latin word for "spoon" is "cochlea", meaning "snail shell".

But you might want to make sure yours is empty before you...

eat with them.

RETCHING

This is more like it!

-Where are we now?

-We, my friend, are Ancient Greeks in the year 400 BC.

-Chicken!

-And there's no more need to eat with your hands,

because the Greeks gave us the early prototype of the fork.

Right, let's have it, then.

I know what you're going to say, it's only got two prongs.

But this held down your food while you used a knife to slice off

the pieces of meat, just like you do today. You try.

Be careful, because it is really sharp and you could easily...

HE YELLS

..cut yourself. I'm afraid us Brits were well behind the rest

of the world. We didn't pick up our knives and forks until...

..the 1600s. And even then, they were still only two-pronged.

It wasn't until the late 17th century zat ze French developed

ze four-pronged fork, making it easier to get food into ze mouth,

and this is the way we 'ave used to ze present day. Voila.

Here in the late 1800s,

cutlery had become an elaborate and expensive business,

with the rich owning giant, ornate silver cutlery sets

with which to impress their posh guests at dinner parties...

..served up by their incompetent butlers.

Will you stop staring? It's only acting. It's not real!

Stop it, now, you're freaking me out.

There's only 30 seconds left of this sketch. Do your finger-clicky thing,

your watch thing, and let's get back to present day.

WATCH BEEPS

HE YELLS

Did you know, if evolution carries on at this pace,

because man uses cutlery every day of his life,

in one million years he will have developed

one knife-shaped hand and one fork-shaped hand?

-Really?

-Of course not!

No.

Not the starey thing again. Stop it now! I mean it. You're weird!

# See, I don't understand

# How you're number one... #

Do you realise how close you just came to mortal peril?

-Do you know I'm trained in martial arts?

-No, I didn't know.

Yeah, I'm a black belt World Champion in origami.

-I never saw your World Title fight.

-You wouldn't.

Origami is on "paper-view".

Paper-view?

Anyway, what's that thing you're wearing on your head?

The new style, innit? All me crew is wearin' it.

But you're Eon Straddler, time and space hopper,

the one-man history hurdler. You ain't got a crew, mate.

All right, it's just me and you, then, innit? Stick this on.

I have spent hours combing out my 'fro to perfection, and if you think

I'm putting this over my head, you're very much mistaken.

You'd never have said that in 20,000 BC.

In these times, a hat wasn't a fashion accessory.

Your life depended on it.

Like the life of the animal whose skin provided it.

Aside from stopping you from freezing to death,

prehistoric man was a hunter, so he needed something practical,

that wouldn't slow him down or easily fall off.

It looks rubbish. Can we go now? It's miserable and this hat stinks.

How about 106 BC, Ancient Rome?

Anywhere! I just don't like wearing something that's dead on my head.

There's no place like Rome! Do you know the Ancient Romans

-invented loads of things we use today?

-Like...?

Like roads, sanitation, the aqueduct, medicine,

the postal service, the protective helmet, central heating.

-They didn't invent central heating!

-Actually, they did,

though they didn't technically invent the protective helmet.

-No?

-No. That was your Assyrians in 900 BC.

The Ancient Romans just took their idea and modified it into this

protective garment, protecting you from spears, swords and rocks.

So did the Romans invent cricket?

-No.

-So why am I dressed like Freddie Flintoff?

To illustrate the point that the protective helmet is still

used in sports today where there's a chance of being hit by a hard ball.

OK. So where's my helmet?

Oh, it's here.

Also, Roman gladiators would use the protective helmet

in a fight to the death with other gladiators.

They would even fight wild animals, like tigers.

-Tigers?

-Tigers.

-Tigers?!

-Tigers!

-Just stop it!

I'm not into my tigers, OK? So do the watch thing,

the finger-clicky thing, and let's get out of here quick-smart.

How does the 1800s grab you?

They grab me just fine, just as long as I'm not grabbed by any tigers.

ROARING

Eek! You better click your fingers right now.

You fancied something a bit different.

I didn't say I wanted to be somebody another bloke might fancy.

Look, before we go, let me tell you about your hat.

So far, hat fashions had mostly been for men,

but now you ladies were starting to catch up.

Anyone who was anyone had one of those.

-Feathers?

-Yes, feathers, which meant millions of birds were killed.

Some Victorian women would even wear the whole dead bird on their head.

-Oh, that's gross! Can we go now?

-No. This top hat was quite

literally the high point in men's hats' history.

It was worn by Victorian authority figures,

like policemen, doctors and magicians.

Good! Make me disappear, will you?

Because this is embarrassing.

OK. Happy now?

'Not really. I was being sarcastic. Listen, can we go home now?

'I've had enough of all this.'

All right, all right.

-I'm not keen on disappearing.

-You weren't the only thing disappearing.

Hats fell out of fashion over the next 100 years,

because people found them impractical.

Travelling outside was being done less on foot and more

in cars and on public transport, so there was no more need

-to keep your head warm with a hat.

-So why are you wearing a hat?

Fashions may change, but style, that's something else.

MUSIC: "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz

What DO you look like?

A solid gold rock god that the girls can't stop screaming at.

Screaming at you, no.

Laughing at you, yes.

All that's very well, but if we were to go back in time right now,

we would see that the guitar has a well-rich history,

as opposed to that piece of plastic. It makes you look a right idiot.

No! No, no! This is my big solo!

It's my solo! My solo!

-So, what time is it, then?

-The year is 1520 precisely.

And what's happening here, then?

Here in front of us, playing for our enjoyment, is a mere minstrel.

And what's that freaky guitar-looking stringy weird thingy in his hand?

That, my friend, is a lute.

The first lute came to Europe in the Middle Ages,

and by the Tudor times it became really popular.

This lute has six pairs of strings. Plucked with the fingers,

-it fast became the instrument to sing along and dance to.

-Dance?

Yeah, how can you dance to that?

Minstrels who played for the kings and queens became

really sought-after and became the celebrities of their day.

-So this guy's famous?

-No.

That's just a bloke.

SCUFFLING

Oi!

I'd better get out of here.

Wait a minute!

Don't leave me here in 1520!

Sorry.

It wasn't until here, in 1850,

-that a Spanish guitar maker called Torres...

-Hey.

GLASS BREAKING

Not that one. A Senor Antonio Torres encompassed all the developments

of the guitar throughout history.

GUITAR MUSIC

He made the body of the guitar much bigger than it had been

in previous instruments, meaning the volume and tone got better.

Ole!

GLASS SHATTERING

The next new thing was the electric guitar and amplified sound.

It's here, in the 1930s, that the electric really got switched on.

-Cool!

-Cool as ice.

Now this you might recognise. Here, in 1957, we pretty much

-have the guitar as we know and love today.

-Go on.

That there is a Stratocaster. Like other guitars, it had a solid body

and the sound of the strings could be heard through an amplifier.

This meant the electric guitar could be heard in noisy clubs

with loads of people or in giant stadiums with thousands of people.

And so from here on in,

the future of the electric guitar was set to stay.

Rockin'!

Stage dive!

SCREAMING

# Are you gonna go my way? #

'The trumpet has a long and rich history

'and has gone through centuries of evolution.'

'More than any other musical instrument, it can be traced... '

FARTING SOUND

FARTING SOUND

-Do you know what you're doing?

-Yes. I'm making a hilarious farting sound

with my mouth against the back of my hand.

No. Technically, what you're actually doing is creating sound

with the power of air in a confined space.

-If you say so.

-I do say so. What you've got there

-is a replica of a brass instrument in action.

-Really(?)

-Yes, really.

And if we go back in time, we can see how the trumpet has evolved.

No! Not again! I'm watching this! Can't we just sit down and...

-Chill out!

-If we're tracking the rich history of the trumpet,

we need to go back to when prehistoric man first

started blowing into large shells.

MAKES FARTING SOUND

MAKES PERFECT NOTES

It was used as an early form of communication.

HORNS IN DISTANCE

-What does that mean?

-Oh, that just means there's a giant killer tiger

that's really hungry and in a really bad mood on its way here,

and if we don't leave right now, it's going to eat us alive.

Do the finger-clicky thing and let's clear off!

ROARING

-Now!

-Right now?

-Now!

TRUMPET FANFARE

As I always say, there's no place like Rome.

So did the Romans invent the metal trumpet as we know it today?

-Not exactly.

-Oh.

-Trumpets from the year 3000 BC were found

in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and the Ancient Greeks and Chinese

-had their very own versions of the trumpet.

-How do you know all that?

I don't just go time travelling with you, y'know.

-You never said.

-You never asked.

Trumpets like these were used to send troops into battle

and also at the start of a fanfare of a gladiator contest.

They were long and straight, actually a bit like you.

These kind of trumpets could only be played in one key

and so were a bit limited, also a bit like you.

-Why have you got it in for me in this sketch?

-I don't know.

I think it's because our scriptwriter is using this point

in the sketch to illustrate the fact that I'm the time travelling genius

and you're my long suffering foolish friend who has to endure my insults,

have accidents and draw the short straw for comic effect.

That's all right, then.

So...

So, this is 1436, the Middle Ages.

So what's this got to do with trumpets?

Because this was the era of technical improvements in metalwork.

Basically, you could bend it,

meaning that trumpets no longer had to be long pieces of pipe.

They could be shaped and moulded into this bugle.

PLAYS BADLY

By tightening your lips, you could change the pitch,

and now you could play a whole eight notes of an octave.

PLAYS PERFECTLY

-Now, in the Victorian era...

-Where we are now?

..where we are now, things really started to take off

as valves were added to the trumpet around 1814.

They could change the flow of air and now play a lot more notes.

From being a minor role in the orchestra, say, a fullback,

the trumpeter stepped up to become the orchestra's star striker.

WATCH BEEPS

-How did you do that?

-I'm not Eon Straddler,

time and space hopper, for nothing. I can travel through time,

so moving a jazz trumpeter off a table is an absolute doddle.

With valves on the trumpet, you can get close to the human voice,

-which we can demonstrate through the medium of jazz.

-Go on.

Skidley-bap-bap-a-do-da-bap!

TRUMPET PLAYS SAME

Nice.

Bap-bap-a-do-da-bap! Bap-bap-a-do-da-bap!

MAKES FARTING SOUND

Don't give up your day job.

EON FARTS

Can you stop that?

-Stop what?

-That drumming. It's doing my head in, and I can't concentrate.

And I'm trying to get my quickest time ever.

You can't stop people drumming. It's a basic human instinct.

People have been drumming since civilised man walked the planet.

That may be, but what about my basic human right to peace and quiet?

Look what you've done! You've scuppered my chances of beating

my quickest time ever on Formula Racing!

Where are we now? This isn't our flat!

-Ghana, 790 AD.

-Why are we in Ghana?!

-To show that the drum was not always

-used as a musical instrument but also to send messages.

-How?

By using patterns and rhythms instead of words.

This is a talking drum called a dongo.

-Well, I suppose a talking drum is pretty cool.

-It's very cool.

It was used to send signals such as announcing a religious ceremony,

a wedding, or to warn the next village of an approaching danger.

-Very clever.

-Even the latest Premier League football scores.

Manchester United...

Manchester City...

-That's amazing!

-Yeah, especially as City were down to nine men.

-Really?

You really do spend too much time playing computer games.

Welcome to 1520 and Renaissance Europe.

What's that?

This, my soon-to-be-beheaded buddy, is a tabor.

An ancient drum.

I'll ask again. What's that?!

Oh, that. That's an axe.

Very sharp.

In the 1500s, drums were used to announce a joust

or the build-up to a beheading.

So when the drums stopped...

Can we just stop right now and get us out of here?

But I need to show you that the tabor was a double-headed drum.

The only head I'm concerned about right now is my own!

Typical. Always thinking about yourself.

TAPS WATCH

Don't you ever, ever do that to me ever again.

For centuries, the drum had been used mainly in ceremonies,

but by Victorian times, composers were writing

orchestral and classical parts to add colour and drama to the piece.

I've had enough drama for today, thank you very much.

Seeing as the drum kit hasn't been invented yet,

all the parts are played separately, so it means we both get to play.

OK, here we go.

OK, are we ready to go?

TAPS WATCH

'Eh?

1910 is when all the percussion instruments were brought together

with the introduction of the bass pedal.

So now all the instruments can be played by one person.

-Pardon?

-And this was the beginning of the drum kit as we know it today,

with a crash cymbal...

..floor tom...

..bass drum...

..snare...

..and the high hats.

The drummer set the tempo and became the timekeeper

that took us through jazz...

..swing...

..and rock 'n' roll.

-Sorry, can you say that again?

-No, I can't. We've only got

one minute left of this sketch and I need to get us to the year 2000.

Get to what?

-That's better. I can hear again.

-Good, because by the year 2000,

it was not uncommon for drummers to be replaced by equipment,

computers with programs that could activate loops,

sample sequencers, metronomes and tempo meters, timing sequencers,

recording devices and sound reinforcement such as

a small PA system to amplify electronic drums.

Now I can hear you, I don't understand anything you just said.

Basically, this lot can create hundreds of different sounds

-that weren't available to standard drum kits.

-Ah.

Just press that button.

-Nothing.

-Sorry.

DRUM MACHINE

Which meant that sometimes a drummer wasn't even needed.

-You feelin' it?

-I'm feelin' it!

CRASHING

Can we get the drummer back in here, please?

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd