Hello and welcome to Man Lab,
where we strive to release the image of the modern male
from the concrete jodhpurs of your preconception.
'Striking out on behalf of optimists everywhere...'
Two, one, we have lift-off!
'..we poke Thor with a self-propelled pointy stick
'in an attempt to capture a lightning bolt.'
You'll have to get in, cameraman, I'm afraid, or you could get blown to bits.
'We recruit an army of crime-fighting cats...'
So any burglar hiding in there would be bang to rights.
'And we strive for international sporting glory
'in one of the oldest games in the world.'
CHEERING
Bruce Springsteen told us that you can't start a fire without a spark.
And this has always been true.
For decades now, we've had little piezoelectric lighters,
but before that, we had matches.
Before that, we had flints and tinderboxes.
Before that, we had pieces of wood that could be rubbed together.
But before all of that, way back when the world was young,
we had the great spark that lit man's first red fire.
The very thing that Freddie Mercury said was "very, very frightening" -
lightning.
Since the dawn of time, mankind has cowered in awe
at the destructive power of a decent thunderstorm.
The old Norse sagas told of thunder god Thor striking down his quaking enemies with Mjolnir,
his lightning-emitting war hammer.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the gods
for us mortals to use, and in doing so, created the first human skill
that gave us progress and civilisation.
We could buy a lighter, but where's the skill in that?
Much better to steal the spark ourselves
by capturing a bolt of lightning.
We're now going to talk about Nikola Tesla, 1856 to 1943,
one of the great electrical pioneers,
probably the closest thing we've had
to a human being who does understand electricity.
He's been called the father of the electric motor,
he was a champion of alternating current
and the widespread distribution of electricity
on what we now call the National Grid.
Among Tesla's many inventions was this - the Tesla coil.
It actually belongs to Steve. How does it work, actually?
Well, all the Tesla coil is is a special kind of transformer.
And Tesla invented it
to experiment with wireless power and radio.
Tesla built increasingly larger versions of these coils
in an attempt to develop the first global wireless power grid.
Inadvertently, he invented a form of man-made lightning,
which should give us a chance of seeing what we're dealing with.
- The voltage on this is enormous, isn't it? - Yes, about 250,000 volts.
- Can you fire it up? - Yes.
Everybody stand back a safe distance, please.
- What is a safe distance? - About two metres or so.
Lights off.
ELECTRICAL BUZZING
Unless I'm mistaken, one of those lighting bolts earthed on the table.
- Did you see that? - Yes.
- So that WAS a bolt of lightning? - Indeed. - If we consider that the cloud
- and that the ground? - Yes.
'Small boys, including us, will see this as a hi tech electric whoopee cushion.
'But it also shows us that lightning might be something we can tame.'
This is a quarter of a million volts,
a thousand times what you get out of the plug at home - and that hurts, let's be honest.
'It's a fraction of the power of the real thing.
'But it's the same stuff.'
That's spectacular, and our quest, should we succeed,
is to get that same phenomenon in the real world,
thousands of feet long, a real lightning bolt hitting the ground,
captured on the television for you.
'Stirring words indeed.
'But the only way to turn this ambitious dream into reality
'is to use a vehicle with which Man Lab has already chalked up
'a depressing litany of failure.
'When we first tried rocketry, back in the innocent days of series one,
'our technical approach consisted mostly of shouting at them.'
Rocket!
- No? - No.
Rocket!
'And although this tactic did show some eventual promise...
'our rockets had a nasty habit
'of zeroing in on us, rather than the sky.'
CHUCKLING
'But now we've found a man who insists
'he can not only launch a rocket,
'but also capture a lightning bolt and live to tell the tale.'
This is Charlie Adcock. Regular viewers will remember him
as the man who cut down the Christmas tree using explosives.
This was actually his idea,
and the key to capturing our own bolt of lightning
is, believe it or not, this 0.15mm diameter stainless steel...
- What would you call this? Not line, really. - Filament, I guess,
would be a good word for it.
We're going to wind around 800 metres of this onto a coil
which will form part of a rocket
that we will fire into a thunder cloud, pregnant with electricity,
and because electricity is essentially lazy and wants to go the easiest route to Earth,
it should fly down the wire,
and that way, we will know exactly where it's going to hit the ground.
This is our transmitter for talking to Thor.
It all seems pretty straightforward.
We fire our rocket into a cloud and its trailing wire
instantly becomes a 2,500ft-long lightning conductor,
leading into a barrel of sand.
The only other thing we'll need is one of these -
a thunder cloud, or anvil cumulonimbus.
These gigantic stacks of vapour are formed
by the collision of unstable weather fronts
and rub themselves into a one-billion-volt static electrical frenzy.
Our ambition here is not merely to give you an extremely exciting piece of television,
a lovely image of a lightning bolt,
but also to record it in the ground,
because when the lightning bolt reaches Earth,
the immense heat creates something called a fulgurite,
which is a sort of glass sculpture if the material it hits is right.
When the lightning hits our barrel of sand,
the immense heat will instantly turn it to glass,
leaving a three-dimensional record of the lightning bolt.
And this will be our trophy.
It couldn't really be any simpler.
It doesn't mean it's going to work, but it should do.
THEY CHUCKLE
'To ensure our filament doesn't snag or break during the attempt,
'we're using a computerised lathe to wind it neatly
'around the fins of the rocket.
'But, to be perfectly honest, breaking the wire is the least of my worries.'
It's a well-worn cliche, but we really should say don't try this at home.
Don't stand on the roof with a long stick and a piece of wire pointing at thunder clouds
because it's potentially very dangerous. We'll have to stand back.
There is a significant electrocution hazard.
'Since he's clearly already received a glancing blow to the head
from Thor's hammer, Charlie insists on a test launch
'to practise our safety procedures.
'Time to confront our rocketry demon.'
This is the flame pit of our rocket test launch facility.
This is merely a way of making sure
that the rocket launch filament trail all works.
This is not a thundery day.
Those clouds are too high, they're the wrong sort.
And apart from everything else, this sky-scan device,
used by people who work up pylons, tall buildings,
warns of the build-up of electrostatic activity.
It's on, the range is set to 0-3 miles.
If there was anything threatening
within an immediate radius, we'd know about it.
And there isn't. So, this is a safe launch,
but we're going to also practise the safety procedures we'll have to use in a real storm
because obviously we can't stand here next to this long piece of wire
going "Ha-ha-ha!" while it goes into a thunder cloud.
I and my crew will have to retreat to our safe van.
'This is a full dress rehearsal,
'so we're also testing this electric field mill.
'It tells us when the overhead clouds are fit to burst with static
'and is outstanding in its field.'
So this is measuring the electric field in the atmosphere.
If you can turn it on...
- you can hear a sort of motor going. - Yeah.
There's a rotating plate in there, which is alternately
uncovering and covering up the bottom plate.
This is measuring the rate at which the charge goes on to that bottom plate, then back off again,
from which you can estimate the strength of the electric field in the atmosphere.
'When we launch for real, any reading higher than 1.5
should indicate a highly-charged atmosphere.'
This is always a nerve-racking moment,
the launch of a Man Lab rocket.
It's never been successful so far in three or even four attempts,
but anyway, here we go.
That's the rocket there.
Preparing to launch.
Power on.
Holding down...
constant red light, armed.
Please let this work.
OK, everybody, firing in five, four, three,
two, one,
we have lift-off!
It worked!
Absolutely tremendous!
You'll have noticed there wasn't a bolt of lightning.
We can't honestly claim there's anything wrong with that.
It's all good - rocket works,
direction works, filament's attached,
it's attached this end.
- We just need to do that in a cloud. - I think that's, um...
as good as it can get, really.
That's our first successful rocket launch.
What a fantastic, warm feeling I have.
It's not just that the sun has finally broken through up there,
that's broken our rocket duck.
'Coming up, Thundernerds are go!'
Drive! Drive!
'And the chase for lightning is on.'
Fire!
A number of viewers have written in to say that Man Lab hasn't exactly
covered itself in golden glory in the gruelling arena of sport.
Here are a few action replays.
Let's face it, I was rowlocks at boating.
I was firing blanks in duelling, I got hobbled in the 100-metre sprint,
pulled a muscle in the pool and I can't even take a penalty.
Ohhh! You mug! Everyone hates you now!
However, we now think we've found an event in which
we can compete successfully at an international level.
The sport I've chosen to finally finish our flow of failure is
rock-paper-scissors.
The oldest, simplest game imaginable.
Before people were kicking balls or stumping wickets,
back when the Greeks were inventing the 100 metres,
people in BC China were already playing forms of this game.
Although back then there tended to be a lot of draws, as paper
and scissors had yet to be invented.
We've decided it's time for me and the team Man Lab to finally claim
sporting glory at the Team Olympic rock-paper-scissors championship.
Yes, it does exist.
Now, this isn't a joke.
There is such a thing as UK RPS champion and here is his trophy -
a very valuable piece of silverware, said to be worth up to 500 pence.
- So, Max, I think we should have a game. - Yeah, absolutely. - Right, OK.
One, two...
- One-nil to you. - Yup.
One, two... Two-nil.
- Three-nil. - Three-nil?!
Four-nil.
Five-nil.
Six-nil.
That's amazing!
'Rock-paper-scissors is surely a game of chance.
'Unless you're Abu Hamza, you're as likely to win as the next bloke.
'Or are you?'
There is obviously more to this game than simply luck.
We're going to do a bit of analysis.
We're going to replay mine and Max's game from earlier on
in slow motion and we're going to join a psychologist who specialises
in sports people to see if we can find out what makes this game tick.
'Dr Tim O'Brien is an elite performance psychologist.
'If anyone can unlock the mysteries of RPS, it's him.'
There clearly is something happening psychologically.
There you are - scissors.
James, you slightly move before you do the scissors,
giving Max an opportunity to see your hand.
- That means he has to be very quick, doesn't it? - Rock for you?
- Yes, it is. - How did you know? - Your hand's very, very tight.
Too tight, and you don't look like you're going to release anything.
Are you aware when you're playing of using a technique?
I'm watching how your body is, where your hand is
and what you're going to do.
It's a very good point because I was watching my own hand, which is
stupid, cos I know what that's going to do, cos it's in my own brain.
I should be looking at HIM.
Also, if you notice, when you're losing,
you lose focus immediately, nodding.
- A little shake of the head there. - Yeah, negative body language.
- Max is laughing at you. - Yup.
It's looking to me like you need
to develop a technique that works for you
and then there are the standard techniques
for all performance sports -
avoid any distractions, stay focused on winning,
and also not be affected when it doesn't go well for you.
'Armed with Max and Tim's invaluable techniques, I get down to work,
'determined never to suffer sporting humiliation on national
'television again.'
One, two, three.
I won! Did I? I never know when I've won!
'A day's practice, combined with motivational montage music,
'sees my technique affected.'
Aha ha ha!
By the time match day comes, I've convinced champion Max
and Dan from the Man Lab to join my all-star Olympic team.
But due to a slight oversight,
we will be representing the historic homeland of hand games.
The reason we are representing China is actually quite simple.
Another team has already bagged the role of being Great Britain
and China unfortunately can't be here,
so we have presumed to be China.
We've taken advice on this. These are genuine kung fu jackets.
This legend here actually says "Man Lab" in Mandarin.
And of course this is part of the psychological battle,
because anybody who knows anything about rock-paper-scissors
will know that the Chinese are the masters of it.
To complete our four-strong Chinese powerhouse,
I've recruited a man with enormous hands.
A man who almost guided me to glory on the football pitch.
Take the penalties back there.
This ain't your friend. Get angry. Get in the zone.
Show me your zone face.
Here is his zone face.
It shows us that former Liverpool
and Spurs defender Neil "Razor" Ruddock is in the vicinity of a pub.
His weapon - intimidation.
Right, what you've got to do is use your aggression and your focus,
see the other guy, psych him out, hate the ball,
hate the rock, hate the scissors, hate the paper.
One, two, three, scissors. One, two, three, rock. One, two, three, paper.
- I'm in! Thanks. - Right. - Thanks, mate.
- How've you been, all right? - Yeah, how are you? - I'm all right, thanks.
- Lost a bit of weight. - I have lost a bit of weight.
- Aaargh! I touched you! - You touched my Man Lab.
I don't like to be immodest, especially about sporting
occasions, cos I don't have a good record, but I am quietly confident.
Look at the opposition.
They are a lot of already fairly inebriated students and wasters.
I'm feeling very good about the Republic of China's
chances in this competition.
Despite my bullishness, China finds itself drawn in a tough group, with
five teams including the reigning world champions, Great Britain.
We must win the group or finish second
if we're to progress to the semifinals.
The rules that we're playing by is - one, two, throw.
Each match is decided by a series of one-on-one encounters.
First team to reach four points wins.
CHEERING
'With the atmosphere building,
'I repeat to myself the simple tips that might guide our team to glory.
'Watch your opponent's hand.
'Don't signal your throw.
'Keep your cool when it's going wrong
'and remember, there's no "me" in "team".'
Tonight, you've never been more ready.
- We compete. - Yes.
- We perform. - Yeah.
- Are you ready? I'm ready! - Brilliant. MAN LAB!
ALL: MAN LAB!
'Here we go.
'Up steps the Kentish Confucius, Razor Rudduck.
'The first team in our way, Lichtenstein.'
MAN LAB TEAM CHEER
'A strangely nervous Razor squanders the opening point.
'But ice-cool Max steps up to level the scores one-all.'
China, come on!
'Dan from the Man Lab throws it away.
'Next up, me.'
Yeah!
'I bloody won! The unexpected belief
'that we might have finally found a sport
'I can actually do buoys up the team and we slam down two more victories...'
CHEERING
'..winning our first match 4-3.
'We're now at the top of our league table,
'but our next match is the big one -
'champions Great Britain.'
Well done every one of you. Everyone contributed. What did you think?
How do I deal with me nerves? That's nervous stuff in there.
I let the pressure get to me a bit.
I was watching my own hand, not the other guy's.
I was a bit lucky, I have to admit.
Right, the next team is GB.
So we get ready, we carry on believing in the team,
we do it together.
Come on, let's show them who's the boss!
'But our second game starts with Team China in disarray.'
Razor! He's at the bar!
'Razor's attempt at calming his nerves costs us
'dearly with a crushing defeat.
'And Max is quickly disposed of.
'Even a feisty comeback by Welsh Dan is cancelled out
'as I completely stuff it up.'
What's the score?
'We are match point down to the world champions.
'Our rock paper scissors hands are of clay but cometh the moment...'
YES!
RAZOR SHOUTS
'But victory is short-lived as just a few moments later,
'a poor choice of paper hands the match to the champions.
'A sobering defeat and Razor's erratic behaviour
is starting to worry coach Tim.'
OK, guys. We've won one, we've lost one.
There's a few things we need to do.
- Razor, you can't pick up a yellow card. - I know, I lost it. I lost it.
But I want, I want to win.
'But Razor's resolution proved as shallow as the dregs of my pint
'as within moments, he loses the plot entirely.'
Ready?
Whoa! Whoa! What's this? What's this?
CHEERING No, no, no!
Behave!
'We picked Razor because he's big and frightening
'but beer has blunted his competitive edge.
'We go on to lose to Vatican City
'and we get off to a terrible start against Lapland B.
'Facing an early exit from the competition,
'a chastened Razor grabs the game by the scruff of its neck.
'Yellow card forgiven, we are finally back in full flow.'
CHEERING
- Who's next? ME? - We won. - We won! - We won! - You're worse than me!
'It's a crucial victory.
'We are now at two wins, two defeats.
'The whole of my plight to claw back some semblance
'of sporting credibility rests on this next match.
'To stand any chance of making it through our league,
- 'we must tackle the might of Indonesia.' - Yes!
'But our old foe, nervousness, is lurking ever near.
'It's Razor's final warning.
'And I've got my own problems.
- 'Try as I might, I just can't throw a winning hand.' - One, two, three.
One, two, three. One, two, three.
One, two, three.
'Then I remember, stop thinking what I'm going to throw
'and think what my opponent is going to throw.
- CHEERING - 'It works!
'The match remains on a knife edge. The result could go either way.
'It's all down to the 2011 UK champion to get us over the line.'
- One, two, three. One, two, three. - CHEERING
In case you can't follow this, and we certainly can't,
there are two leagues going on.
One on this table, one on that table.
They are now working out which teams from the two leagues
go into the knockout.
We're waiting to find out if we're in the championship.
And it's genuinely tense and if they put this on in the Olympic arena
with close-up cameras and genuine international teams,
absolutely fantastic!
Gripping!
'Decision time. I've done everything I can. I've trained with the best.
'I've used psychology.
'I've picked the easiest sport I could possibly find
'and I've turned up to the tournament with a bloody great big camera crew and a gorilla.
'We must succeed.'
OK.
The four teams who have made it through...
- ..are Lapland A... - CHEERING
- Great Britain... - CHEERING
- San Marino... - CHEERING
And the last team is...
- Vatican City! - CHEERING
- 'Oh, no. It's happened again.' - PIANO MUSIC PLAYS
James, James.
Chin up, James. Chin up, chin up.
- I'm crap, aren't I? That's the problem. - We won three, we lost two.
I've been terrible at sport since I was a foetus.
Football, no. Cricket, no. Tennis, no.
Athletics, no. Throwing the javelin, no.
Swimming, no. Cycling, not really.
I thought I could be good at going like that but I'm still crap.
'We finished third in our group, edged out by Great Britain
'and a bunch of pontiffs.
'The slim margin of defeat hits me harder than any of my previous abject failures.'
I'll be honest, at this point, the one thing we can take
away from this, I think, if we want to be positive, rock-paper-scissors.
It's thousands of years old. Simple to learn, takes 10 seconds.
Everybody can play it. It's multicultural.
It's multilingual and it can be used to sort out any debate.
So, who's paying the bar tab?
Aargh!
'In case there are any avid RPS followers watching
'and you missed this year's newsletter,
'Lapland A went on to win the tournament while we championed the sport of beer drinking.
'The remainder of the night is remembered as a grey fog.
'All I know is I woke up the next morning in a hedge,
'but that gave me an idea.'
This is a typical small,
semi-rural road somewhere in the middle of England.
The hedgerow bursts with small wildlife, the houses are neat,
the breeze rustles the well-tended gardens.
There is a sense of community. Cheese and wine. all the rest of it.
There is, though, a small problem.
A recent rise in antisocial behaviour, petty theft and burglary.
Something has to be done.
'In days gone by, the great British public
'could rest easy in the knowledge that between them
'and the seedy criminal underworld stood the bobby on the beat,
'who could conquer any machine gun-toting criminal
'with the power of his enormous helmet.
'But with the modern police force stretched thinner than ever,
'where do we now turn to protect our homesteads?'
The locals have done exactly what you would expect.
They have established a Neighbourhood Watch scheme
but the problem with Neighbourhood Watch is it is a little bit boring.
If you're on duty, it's like being the designated driver on a stag night.
You can't have a drink, you have to patrol the streets,
look out of the window and so on.
We believe that we have overlooked a vital,
underused community resource.
'This resource has a top speed of 30 miles an hour.
'At night, it can see six times better than a human.
'It carries piercing weaponry
'and has an operational duration of nine lives.
'We are going to turn a local neighbourhood of cats
'into a surveillance-equipped, omnipresent long arm of the claw.
A lightning-fast crack feline Neighbourhood Watch.
♪ Look what the cat dragged in. ♪
'All we needed was some modified collars,
'each containing a top-of-the-line miniature camera
'and the Agatha Kitties of whodunnit were ready.
'But were they willing?'
Here we see Ozzy the cat being rigged for his shift by Jane, his owner.
Before anybody writes in, we have consulted the BBC Wildlife Department,
who put cameras on all sorts of animals,
and the Blue Cross about how to do this so the cat isn't distressed.
We only put them on cats that like having them on.
If they don't like it, we don't do it.
The camera will fall off if the cat gets stuck anywhere
so it doesn't trap it down a drain pipe or something like that.
The great thing about this is the cat is perfect for this role.
Cats are agile, they are indiscriminate, they approach people,
they can see in the dark, they go out at night.
They are the Sherlock Holmes of domestic pets.
Right, Ozzy.
Go and catch burglars!
- Go! - Ozzy, come on.
- Go! - Come on. - Come on. Come on, Ozzy.
Come and catch burglars.
You can have some prawns.
A piece of smoked salmon.
- Come on. - Off you go. Yeah!
'As Ozzy starts his first beat,
'joining him are three other cat coppers,
'all fitted with our surveillance cameras.
'As they disperse into the neighbourhood on their natural territorial paths,
'you can see from the Man Lab helicopter
'how a whole swathe of the village can be simultaneously
'under the protection of our Cat's Eye system.'
Over here is the headquarters of the FBI,
the Feline Bureau of Investigation,
and the live feeds from our cats show, actually,
that they have a very comprehensive view of the local neighbourhood.
This one is Lilly.
Lilly is making her way through the back garden of one of the houses.
Any burglar trying to force a window would be spotted.
Here we have a cat on top of the wall.
Cats getting into places where your typical Neighbourhood Watch officer
wouldn't actually be able to go.
This one has been looking at this bit of undergrowth
for a good 20 minutes now,
so any elfin burglar hiding their would be bang to rights.
You couldn't do this as the Neighbourhood Watch officer.
You couldn't have four eyeballs in four different places
along this road, in the gardens and adjoining fields.
It wouldn't be possible. You'd need four people.
Four cats do the job extremely well
and all they need in return is some food and maybe a little scratch behind the ear.
Of course, most of the time, there will be nothing to see.
You might think there's a lot of wasted effort here.
But burglars, petty thieves could be anywhere. They hide.
They are sneaky but they are not as sneaky as cats.
'With that in mind, we decide to try the system out.
'We distract the cats from things like doing the crossword
'while I transform myself into the character of James May-riarty...
'villain.'
The astute viewer will have noticed a change of T-shirt.
That's because we are now going to test the system
because I am going to go and pretend to burgle one of the houses in the neighbourhood.
Dan here will be monitoring the material,
the evidence coming back from our cat patrols
and will be assembling anything incriminating
for me to see when I get back.
Obviously, I am dressing like this,
like a character from a comic in the 1930s, so that people realise
I'm not a real burglar and they don't come out and beat me to death with pickaxe handles,
or whatever they do in the countryside.
I'm ready to go. Where is my swag bag? Happy?
Good luck, sir.
Go get me, cats.
'To make this a genuinely accurate and impartial test,
'we've switched off our main camera entirely,
'as well as our helicopter tracking system for the cats.
'I haven't told anyone which house I'm going to try and get into
'so it's entirely down to our cat Neighbourhood Watch to spot me.
♪ Well I'm hiding, police on my back
♪ There was a shooting, police on my back
♪ And the victim, well, he won't come back
♪ I've been running Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
♪ Running Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday... ♪
- Right. Did you get me? - I don't... I think the cats got you.
I saw one cat. Under a bench.
And it ran off pretty quickly and I wasn't sure if it was one of ours.
- It was too quick to see if it had a camera on. - Some fish. - Right.
- Cat by the fishpond. - That one is cleaning himself.
Oh, I'm not sure if we can show that.
- Oh, there! That is my feet. - Oh, there we are.
SIREN SOUNDS
That's the car on the drive of the house that I burgled.
- I stopped and tried the door. - Oh! - Ah!
Hang on, that's the one under the bench.
SIREN SOUNDS
That's very obviously a burglar from the Beano.
- It's ironic that a cat burglar was stopped... - By a cat!
'I've just had my collar pawed.'
He gets me again, going to the window.
'I think I'm nicked, me old China.'
- That's not bad, is it? - You were outwitted by a cat, James.
And that would stand up in court as well as any CCTV footage,
anything like that. That is what it is, isn't it, really?
- Cat cam footage. - Cat cam.
'There are currently eight million domestic house cats in the UK.
'That's enough to revolutionise community policing overnight.
'Now to put my own misdemeanours before the rozzers.'
- Right, is that downloaded on to the little flashcard? - It certainly is.
- I'll leave you to it. - Top man.
And now we shall make use of another much-maligned and underutilised British urban animal.
'The nearest police station is five miles away.
'With a top speed of 58mph, it's time to launch Lieutenant Pigeon.'
This little fellow is actually a police homing pigeon
and is trained to go straight to the cop shop with the evidence.
Sorry about that, mate.
Off you go.
Just think of all the money that has been spent on CCTV,
patrol cars, there's this arguments about policemen on the beat, it's all nonsense, really.
The whole job can be done by a cat and a pigeon.
If your cat's rather lazy, why not write to us?
Remember to mark your subject line "mine would like to be Purr-gerac".
Now, every man knows that any condition in the world
can be sorted out with carbolic soap and a wire brush.
But what about Simmy's hands?
Here's a brief flashback to him eating a pizza earlier in the series.
Clearly, Simmy needs some soap and a wire brush.
Now, we already have a wire brush here in the Man Lab
and we could, of course, go round to the shops and buy some soap,
but where's the skill in that?
♪ He ain't gonna wash
♪ He ain't gonna wash for a week. ♪
Right, making your own soap.
You need some beef fat, which has been dissolved with water
and set in the fridge overnight. That's what this is here.
You need the lye, which is caustic soda,
which you mix with distilled water. We need a mould.
We need some scales, we need some salt and you need a chemist.
- We've got one - he's called Bob. Hello, Bob. - Hello.
'The kind of soap we're going to be making is old-fashioned
'coal tar soap, but you'll have noticed that our thrilling
'table of ingredients doesn't include any coal.
'Someone from the Man Lab has to venture
'deep into the bowels of the earth to dig some out for us.'
♪ Boom, boom, boom, boom... ♪
Rory volunteered, following a vote,
and was immediately dispatched with his favourite club megamix
150 miles away to the Big Pit coal mine in Blaenavon, Wales.
As well as being a somewhat unlikely ingredient in our soap,
coal was once the industrial lifeblood of the nation,
the fuel that fired Britain's might.
Mines like this would have hauled up crate loads of the stuff all over
South Wales, until this lady decided the whole thing was pointless.
Coal, that is, not Wales.
♪ But I want nothing this society's got
♪ I'm going underground
♪ Going underground...♪
- You come down here every day, Ian? - Every day, I'm afraid, yeah.
I'm what we call a fireman or deputy, so I come underground
first thing in the morning and I check for gas and safety everywhere.
We're going down 90 metres now. It's quite shallow for a mine.
What I've found, the deeper the mines, the more gassy they become.
So this is a good mine.
Gassy? I become a bit gassy as well sometimes, Ian, I tell you.
Ian clearly despaired of the circumstances that made
the legacy of his and his forebears' work this feckless teenager.
This is a world that was once inhabited by real men,
men stout of heart
and strong of arm who chiselled away in the blackness so that Britain
could resonate to the beat of her awesome industry, power and speed.
Nowadays, these tunnels are frequented
by rather different blokes.
♪ Yo, VIP
♪ Let's kick it
♪ Pressure... ♪
Ian said that this just happened to be Jedward's favourite
Welsh mine, but it seemed more likely that we had in fact
found the black pit that spawned them.
Sensing a plot, we told Rory to get chipping
and to get out before they came back and gave him a job.
That'll have to be enough.
'Coal mined and devastated at missing his chance to meet
'one of his mixtape heroes, Rory heads back to the lab,
'where we'd been waiting around the chemistry table for two days.'
Come in!
Thank you. Well done.
Go and have a shower. No, you can't. We haven't got any soap.
Go and have a seat.
We'll come back to you in a minute.
The first and most important thing we do,
I think, is extract coal tar from coal.
Blimey. Whoa.
Lovely.
'I'm quite excited about this,
'but considering this is the Man Lab, it's about time
'we got some bubbling test tubes in here and did some chemistry.'
Do we get to light something now and blow it up?
Why do you always think chemists blow things up?
That's the only reason anybody does chemistry at school,
is it smells and bangs.
Bang!
'This may be a little less mad scientisty than
'we were hoping for, but we are getting the reaction we need.'
So, coal is being heated in the tube
and the stuff that would normally go up the chimney in ye olde house
is going through the wool, so the wool is trapping the tar
and what's coming out is just the gas.
Light the pipe.
So that is coal gas coming off, which used to be used for lighting.
Isn't this brilliant?
This is the first time I've done chemistry since 1974.
'Coal tar soap has antiseptic properties,
'but we should point out that these days it's not widely used,
'because in large doses it's carcinogenic.
'But, for a one-off wash for someone like Simmy,
'who has semi-evolved species living under his fingernails,
'it should do just fine.
'Next, it's time to get our ingredients mixed,
'so in goes 125 grams of tallow,
'or delicious beef fat.'
Right, then you make the lye, which is caustic soda mixed with water.
- You need to put your eye protection on for this. - Do I? - Yes.
'Lye may be dangerous stuff, but you can't make true soap without it.
'Because it's strongly alkaline,
'it will react with the oil in our animal fat, causing
'a reaction called saponification,
'which should give us our soap base.
What is caustic soda, Bob?
Sodium hydroxide. And it's very corrosive.
I'm amazed people developed the enthusiasm for washing their hands and becoming clean,
given that the coal tar can blow up, the caustic soda can blind you, you can go deaf.
'In fact, the process is so hazardous that Bob'
has to take the equipment outside to a safe distance to extract the coal tar.
He is using another dangerous chemical called toluene
to wash the coal tar from the wool.
With that done, the liquid needs to evaporate in a petri dish
for 24 hours to end up with the tar.
'We will speed this bit up because it is television
'and I'm sick of waiting around a boring table.'
That's our beef dripping, fully melted, so we can go back to the soap making
factory over here.
To this we add the lye, which we made with the caustic soda earlier.
I do need the safety glasses on for this because it can be a bit aggressive.
It could melt my face off or something.
I should not stand over it. Here we go. This is a tiny amount. I can't really believe this is...
- Bang! - ..going to work.
Roaring conflagration so far(!) Thank God I put this shirt on.
- Hello. - Hello. - Have you been successful? - Coal tar. - Fantastic.
This is very exciting by the standards of what has happened
so far. The mixture is beginning to resemble lemon curd.
Do you see that? Quick, add... What have we got to add? I can't remember.
Patchouli oil for that authentic smell of people who don't wash at all.
And your coal tar please.
A bit more coal tar please. It's not smelling quite institutional enough yet.
It smells tremendous.
We are now in a position to pour this into our mould and let it set.
That's a bar of soap. That's a bar of soap.
'I know this looks like the first soap designed to make you
'even dirtier, but I think we've done it.'
I believe we have successfully made soap.
'A few minutes to solidify and it's ready to test on our "Simmy pig."'
That is soap. It smells like soap, and it feels like soap.
So, Simmy, if you'd like to step this way.
- Ooh. - A piece of soap.
- Happy? - Reasonably happy. - Off you go. - Thank you.
From the dust of the earth we have created soap. The scourge of dirt.
The catalyst for healthy prison shower relationships
and the basis of casual jibes between nations.
But popular tabletop science will cleanse us all.
Here are some soap facts.
First used in Bristol,
it has now made it to the home of Simeon Oakley.
The average Briton is thought to use around £20 of soap-based
- products per year. - Where's the soap? - Hmm? - Where's the soap?
I've given it to Simmy.
I can make you some more but I'll need some more coal.
"Dear Man Lab, I come from a very clumsy and ill-mannered family.
"Mealtimes are a disaster with things being spilled everywhere
"and people speaking during speeches.
"Anything you can do to help. Yours sincerely, Mrs Sugar."
We've had a think about this.
We've come up with a dining solution in which the guests may not
so much as lift a fork without the express permission of,
and intervention by, the head of the table.
Here is a typical four-place meal setting such as you might
find in the Sugar household.
Everything can easily be knocked over, thrown around,
and all the rest of it, but they couldn't if they were stuck in place.
If they were stuck in place they would then of course be completely useless.
You wouldn't be able to have a drink. But what if you could
selectively unstick individual pieces at the flick of a switch?
This we can achieve with the miracle of electromagnetism.
'We set about hacking into the beautiful solid pine
'Scandinavian unlimited-edition £22 table
'which was kindly lent to us by television's Oz Clarke.'
Nice.
MUSIC PLAYS
'Purists will be pleased that we have preserved the table's original
'simple design.'
This is only a prototype. Could we not show you this wiring and this gaffer taping please?
'To test our magnetic table, we've convened an elegant
'and sophisticated Man Lab dinner party.'
- I like your quiff. - And it's really fluffy.
Here's how it works.
This bank of switches controls the fixing of every piece of glass,
cutlery and crockery to the table.
Each one controls an electromagnet.
There's a grid - side plate, fork, plate, knife, glass.
Here are the names of the guests.
And if, for example, I were to show you my side plate,
you would see fixed to each piece of crockery,
there is a special magnet keeper.
So put that down in its rightful place...
There it is.
There is an interesting override function on this system,
which has several uses.
One is when we're ready for the toast.
To me, I can hit Master, which simply turns everything off.
So if you raise your glasses.
In three, two, one...
- Me. - Me. - Me.
THEY CHUCKLE
'Most dinner parties eventually get a bit rowdy
'and especially when Rory's had one too many tropical alcopops.
'But not to worry - with one flick of a switch,
'the host can assume control.'
The other very obvious application of this is at sea,
where, obviously, the table can't be relied upon
to remain flat and level.
And also, if the crew is mutinying and, you know, threatening
to drink all the rum on the first three days of the voyage.
If you could all just put your bits down for a minute.
If we sort of simulate being at sea with your knees.
So you'd go, "Whoa, whoa, it's rough! It's really rough."
I'd like you to... Tip it, tip it, tip it. There you go.
Through waves like that, nothing falls off.
So as it, you know, goes through the waves
and then, it gradually calms down.
The sea gradually settles, put it back down on the floor then.
So, there you are, restored to calm.
So, there you are,
with the application of simple DC circuitry,
some single-pole, single-throw switches,
a transformer, a power supply,
some soldering, lots of soldering,
we've restored order to the chaos of the British dining table,
the nucleus of the family and of discussion
and the art of conversation and progress.
Absolutely marvellous, all done with magnets.
I hope that's what you were looking for, Mrs Sugar.
'Earlier on, we built a rocket with the aim of capturing
'our very own bolt of lightning.
'The theory was simple - we'd fire a rocket
'trailing 800 metres of fine steel wire into a thunder cloud,
'and conduct a lightning strike down to our waiting tub of sand.
'The test firing goes without a hitch.'
Three, two, one.
We have lift-off!
It worked!
'But then, we were hit by a rare phenomenon - a British summer.
'In response, we launched Operation Barbecue.'
Does anyone want a burger?
'A weather-changing tactic never known to fail.
'And even before the diarrhoea had subsided,
'the clouds rolled in and I received a very interesting phone call.'
- Sean, are you on? - Yes.
Hang on, Helen. Sorry.
Are you running?
- Yeah, yeah. - Yeah. Go on, go on. It's the Met Office.
Yeah, yeah. Brilliant.
No, we'll go now, we'll go now.
Thank you. Bye, bye.
Lightning on Salisbury, come on.
Lightning.
- Get in the van, who's got the van keys? - I've got it.
We have a thunder and lightning hotline at the Met Office,
manned by a very nice lady called Helen Chivers.
And she rings us up the instant there are reports
of possible thunder and lightning.
And today, there's a 50-50 chance of it happening on Salisbury Plain,
between about 12 and three.
It's very exciting.
We are now on Army property.
The red flag is flying specifically
because we're about to launch our rocket.
Just as soon as it gets here.
Look at the clouds. Quite promising.
Lots of wind, it's been warm, the conditions are good.
'An hour later, the rocket eventually shows up,
'bearing news that our expert, Charlie, is held up.
'But with the right weather bearing down on us,
'we just can't wait for him.
'We've got to go for launch.'
We're aiming for that cloud, which isn't directly above the rocket,
but we've allowed for the wind. We should go into that.
Is everybody ready? Right, arming rocket.
And...
In three, two, one
and lightning launch.
BEEPING
Ambrose!
Go for the fire extinguisher.
'The Man Lab rocket jinx is back.
'By the time we've put out the small fire
'and replaced the burnt-out wiring...'
Is it the yellow wire or the black wire?
'..we've missed the weather and lost our opportunity.'
To have any chance of success,
we need to be quicker, sharper and better.
By the time the next call from the lightning hotline comes through, we are ready.
We've practised our launch procedure...
'..and we've armed ourselves with cutting-edge mapping technology
'that pinpoints lightning strikes in real time.'
We're heading to this sort of area in Somerset,
where there have been lightning strikes in the last ten minutes
and the last 20 minutes.
This time, we've had the rocket pre-rigged on a special trailer.
It's a straightforward bang, bang, bang, set-up,
retreat to the van, countdown, fire when ready.
'This time, we deploy like Fighter Command in 1940.
'Within minutes, the rocket is up
'and our lightning detection kit is screaming, "Scramble!"'
This is very promising.
We've had three strikes on the nought-to-three mile range. We've heard one of them.
We've got an excellent reading on there, we've got our rocket set up.
That cloud there is a thunder cloud.
- It's going up. - Is it?
Oh, let's get in the van. Get in the van.
In the van!
You'll have to get in, cameraman, I'm afraid.
Otherwise, you could get blown to bits.
We're ready. Right, launching!
Three, two, one. And we...
Come on!
- Ah, bother! - BLEEP
Never mind. It's British summer. There'll be loads of thunder.
'As the days pass, our launch tally starts to rival NASA's...'
Fire!
'..while our success rate remains an obstinate zero.'
Going in three, two, one and fire!
Bugger! I really thought that was it.
Charlie "the ferret" is already in the bushes.
After a dozen fruitless attempts,
we're still no closer in persuading Thor to come out and play.
'Not only that, we're running low on time and rockets.'
Where the bloody hell are we going?
There's a happy holiday atmosphere aboard the rocket van.
Everybody's got up very early on Sunday to do this.
As you can imagine, the mood is cheerful, upbeat and positive(!)
- When's lunch? - Yeah.
That's a good point, actually.
Fire!
'After a month drawing a ballistic blank,
'we're down to our last pair of rockets.'
The trick is to pick your spot and be patient.
Well, we didn't get here on time.
HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
But just when all seems lost,
the weather gods finally deliver the goods.
THUNDER
'The Met Office have issued an amber storm warning.
'That's the second highest warning issued by the Met.
'There's some very stormy weather on the cards
'for the next couple of days
'across much of the country, affecting Wales...'
It's a bit of a classic.
Updraught, anvil-shaped cloud.
There's probably a more technical term for it than that.
But that is the sort of thing we want.
This is where we are. Look.
Lightning, lightning, lightning.
Tons of it.
I think this is probably the best chance we're ever going to get.
Come on. Drive, drive!
If we don't get blown up today, I'm going to be bitterly disappointed.
Look at that. Hang on, there you go, flashing.
It was 20 to 40 miles away, eight to 20. It is coming this way.
This box is brilliant and gives us hope.
We have readings just now of over two,
and 1.5 gives us enough charge in the air.
It gives us a lightning strike.
We've been getting warnings...
Warnings of three to eight miles flashing on the sky scan.
If we get one at nought to three,
we're pretty much guaranteed to be hit by lightning ourselves.
I just got a nought to three.
There's another one, can you see it?
- Can you see it? - Shall I spark those cameras in? Nought to three.
Yeah, yeah, spark everything.
Here we go.
Arming.
And in three, two, one...fire.
This is our final entreaty to the god of thunder
to grasp our humble offering and hurl down his sacred fire.
If we can devote a whole programme to this subject,
we might stand a chance of doing it.
Plus if we went to somewhere like Hawaii, Croatia,
we might, after several months of driving around
and every day sleeping in tents, growing beards,
eventually get a chance of a lightning strike.
But doing it like this,
I calculate that it would take approximately 35 years.
As the great writer and philosopher Friedrich von Schiller once said,
"Disappointments are to the soul
"what the thunderstorm is to the air."
But, in our case,
it's that busy old fool, the unruly sun,
who dashes our hopes.
Nothing.
Not a sausage.
Diddly squat, jack, nada, nildo.
The only thing the yellow box
apparently is telling me at the moment
is that the battery is running out.
I'm sorry.
Off.
Pack up!
'This may be over for now, but when, at a future date,
'we have replenished our ballistic supplies,
'we shall return to challenge Thor once again.'
If you've got some lightning near you, do write to us.
And please mark your subject line, "Scramble."
Well, we're nearing the end of a disappointedly low-voltage edition of Man Lab,
so we thought we'd entrust the finale
to someone who really did understand electricity - Nikola Tesla.
Here to play us out with the theme from Man Lab
is the Electric Lightning Orchestra.
Thank you for watching and goodbye!
GUITAR PLAYS
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd