"This is a flat-bladed screwdriver and, obviously, it is for doing up and undoing screws, and yet, last year, there were over 8,000 reported cases of men using one of these as a chisel." "Now, look, man did not devote the last 10 millennia to self-improvement through art and science so you could abuse and corrupt an innocent hand tool." "It has to stop." "Hello, and welcome to Man Lab, the grooming arena in which the terminal decline of the modern British male will be arrested and possibly even reversed." "The Man Lab is an amphitheatre of accomplishment, where skills are learned, and incompetence spurned." "Last week, for example, we built an integrated railway transport solution..." "I haven't had to walk anywhere." "..serenaded an ice maiden... gave life to a picnic table, and diffused an unwanted World War II bomb..." "All clear, everyone!" "..sort of." "This week, the insatiable quest for male capability takes us across the English Channel using a dog as a navigational instrument." "Take aim!" "I fight a duel over a car-parking space... ..prevent John Sergeant from damaging his nuts..." "No, we can't do it, because it doesn't fit on." " John, are you familiar with locking wheel nuts?" " No, I'm not." "..and I encourage today's downtrodden man to blow his own trumpet." "HE PLAYS BADLY" "JAMES LAUGHS" "Right, I think it's time we built something." "MUSIC: "Morning" by Grieg" "Imagine that you went to your local pub for a pint, only to find it shut." "Not just closed for the day, but closed for good." "Pubs in Britain are calling time for the last time at a rate of about 40 a day." "Now, we could ignore this inconvenient truth, but that would be just a bit like appeasement, and that would mean... that one day we'd find ourselves..." "..alone and with no local." "We need to be prepared." " We need..." "Yes, madam?" " I did say excuse me, but you didn't hear me." "No, I'm sorry." "It was the noise of the traffic. ..our own pub." "Fortunately, we have space for one here in the Man Lab, just south of the kitchen and west-northwest of the recreational area." "What we will produce here is the beer-drinking equivalent of the Cold War bunker." "A sort of post-nuclear bolt hole where we can pull pints in safety while the rest of the world is consumed by apocalyptically bad supermarket own-brand lager." "My vision is something not too fuddy-duddy." "No faux-Victoriana nonsense." "The Man Lab Bar will be born of shimmering stainless steel, bedecked with designer flock wallpaper, a groovy chaps' grotto in which the bell never tolls." "Seamless." "It shall stand out as a welcoming beacon in the gathering publess gloom, a bastion for Britain's beleaguered and beerless." "But even here, a pint has to be earned." " To work!" " LOW GRINDING" "That noise you can hear is not the drill slipping in the end of the screw, it's because this one incorporates a small hammer action to drive the screw home." "Some carpenters and cabinet makers will tell you you should hammer certain types of screw and not screw them in." "The screw head, they will tell you, is for taking it out." "However, blinded by beer goggles, we commit a dimensional faux pas." "I blame Man Lab master builder, Simi." "Simi, this is actually, technically, about 3ml too big here." "Are you saying somebody cut it wrong?" "Yeah, that needs to be taken down a bit." "It's correct down there, but down here, about 3ml too big here." "It needs to be there." "Luckily, Tony has a router, a sort of power chisel, the perfect tool for ruining things more quickly." "We attach it to an arm pivoted at the central curvature of the Bar's radiused end." " Sweet." " So that forms a perfectly arced crystalline edge." " Perfect." " Fantastic." "Right, a bar-building progress report." "We have to add shelves for our bottles of tequila and so on, and we are having a big debate about how to support them." "You can get some chromium fittings from the DIY shop, and they are quite nice, but they are a bit poncey." "We've invented something instead, and it's quite clever." "They are little pieces of dowl, which will screw into the uprights, so that the shelf will rest on them." "And if you're looking at them, you'll think, they've done that wrong, because the holes not in the middle." "That is deliberately so, because it means you have a handy little height adjuster." "There's the low point." "Turn it round a bit, it goes a bit higher, and there's a high point there." "How about that?" "Note to the nation." "Some men, ordinary men just like you, have just done what you've been promising to do for several centuries, they have put up some shelves." "And look at our reward, here on Earth." "Our very own barrel of foaming ale." "Yes." "All that remains is to plumb in the pumps of our pleasure." "I quite like the idea that the two pumps are to one side." "Right." " Somehow it..." " That's up to you." " What do we think, cameraman?" " I would put them bang in the middle, but..." "Two, to the side." "Agreed." "Which side?" "I think that side, because we've already put the barrel down there." "I think that side, because there's more light down there." "Light?" "What's that got to do with it?" "We going to turn the lights off." "Yeah, it's going to be moody." "Do none of you understand it basic principles of photography?" "Yes, but nobody goes to the pub and says, "I'll have a pint, and I hope it's well lit"." "So, that's the pump problem settled by the firm hand of leadership on the tiller of HMS Man Lab." "More delirious bar-build action later in the show." "I'd like to take a moment to tackle a problem that is making men's lives a misery everywhere." "I refer to the tie-it-yourself bow-tie." "Here is what you do." "You fold the tie exactly in half, fold it in half again, fold it in half a third time, open the lid of the bin and drop it in, because dress code is for Edwardians, frankly." "But what about navigation?" "Surely that's important?" "As soon as man could sit on a floating log without falling off, he became a seafarer." "He discovered new continents, built empires, and filled his ships with the bounty of distant land before plotting a course homewards across thousands of miles of wild ocean." "Not so long ago, that would have been very tricky, but these days, of course, it's easy, because we have Sat Nav." "In fact, my telephone will tell me where I am, anywhere on the Earth, to within a few yards." "It plays tunes as well, and it takes pictures." "It's amazing." "But look what Sat Nav has done to this descendant of Sir Francis Drake." "It has turned him into a compliant navigational yes-man." "SAT NAV:" "At the end of the road, turn left, then take the second right." "A passive, moon-faced dimwit of directional infidelity with no real idea of how he got anywhere or where anywhere is." "SAT NAV:" "You have reached your destination." "But what if they turned all that stuff off?" "How would you know where you were?" "My mission is to navigate the high seas, the English Channel, anyway, in this antique sailing boat without help from the digital dame of directional correction in a black plastic box." "Instead, I will be relying on only the charts and instruments of the ancient mariner." "Leaving Deal at dusk, I will traverse the treacherous Goodwin Sands, cross the perilous Shipping Lane under cover of darkness, then turn south to collect a man from the beach at Sangatte." "This man is known to me only by his codename, wine connoisseur Oz Clarke." "He has some contraband for me." "Cheverny is one of the rarest wines in France." "I'm having that." "If I can locate him successfully, all this will be mine." "Now, proper navigation is more than just mincing about with dividers." "Before Sat Nav, and certainly before the invention of things like radio, navigation was a baffling science that was refined over hundred and hundreds of years of hard head-banging." "Much valuable work was done here at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich." "In fact, I'm standing on the meridian of Greenwich." "It's a sort of datum line for establishing longitude around the world." "But even this little problem took centuries to sort out." "Knowing how far east or west a ship was defeated the scientific capabilities of early mariners." "As a result, whole fleets were wrecked as they wandered witlessly around the world's oceans." "The Royal Navy became so desperate to crack the problem, that it even considered a bizarre and complex theory suggested by an anonymous 17th century alchemist." "And if it was good enough for the Navy, it's good enough for Man Lab." "The gist of it is this, you needed a dog," "I have one here, this is Dodger." "And you also needed something called the Powder of Sympathy." "The Powder of Sympathy was a mysterious concoction with mystical powers, or so its inventor claims." "A weapon, dipped into it, would transmit the memory of the hurt it had caused to the wounded party anywhere in the world." "The idea was this, you wounded the dog with something like the point of a knife, and then whenever you dipped that same knife in the Powder of Sympathy here in Greenwich, the dog would bark because he would remember the trauma, wherever it was in the world." "So it was a very simple way of communicating with a ship at sea." "If the knife was dipped into the powder, in Greenwich, at noon, the ship's dog would alert the crew to the precise time back in London." "By comparing this with the time of day on board ship, its position east or west of London could be worked out." "It's brilliant." "But does it work?" "We're not going to wound Dodger in any way but we are going to traumatise him quite badly in a more sort of humane and modern way." "Sit." "MUSIC: "I Dreamed A Dream" by Susan Boyle." "DODGER WHIMPERS" "# I dreamed a dream in time gone by DODGER YELPS" "# When hope was high... #" "The plan is to dip SuBo's CD into the powder in Greenwich precisely two hours into my journey." "Dodger should then alert me that it's time to make the sharp right hand turn across the shipping lanes and onwards to pick up the waiting Oz." "# Still I dreamed he'd come to me" "# And we would live... #" "Just in case the Powder of Sympathy turns out NOT to be a reliable way of navigating the channel," "I will be taking along some basic charts and instruments just as a backup." "First of all, we have to navigate the Goodwin Sands." "They're very treacherous." "And we have to avoid their shipwrecks, of which there absolutely hundreds." "We also have to consider things like the tides and the winds." "Let's say the tide is coming this way and let's say it's moving at five knots." "A knot is a nautical mile an hour, so after one hour of sailing, the boat will have moved five nautical miles in this direction." "So I have to steer slightly north to compensate for that." "And then, the winds in the channel, which are powering my sailing boat, tend to be in this sort of direction, so I will have to allow for those because they will tend to move the boat that way at the same time." "So I've got three different things to try and resolve here into what we call a heading, so that we end up going in the direction we expected, otherwise, if we're off, we'll hit the sands," "we'll hit a shipwreck, we'll hit a supertanker, or whatever." "Remarkably, the chart and the musically harassed dog are only the start of my navigational toolbox." "The ancient mariners had some very sophisticated navigational aids available to them, such as this piece of wood." "It's called a cross-staff and basically you put it up to your eyeball on the pitching rolling deck of your ship and then you slide this piece until the bottom's on the horizon and the top is next to the sun" "and then from here you can read off the angle between them." "That gives you your latitude." "Brilliant." "That's how they found America, actually, even though they didn't know it was there." "Obviously, none of this will actually be necessary because we've got Dodger." "Right." "I'm ready." "With every navigational aid known to pre Sat Nav man." "A chart and a traumatised dog." "Let's go rescue the bald one from the beach in la belle France." "Permission to put dog aboard, skipper?" "And now, Celebrity Man Task." "Last week, in Man Lab's campaign to highlight the hidden talents of our best loved public figures, comedian Alexander Armstrong smashed his personal record for competitive flat pack furniture assembly." "This week, it's the turn of veteran news man, the twinkle-toed John Sergeant, to reveal his all-consuming passion." "Today he will reacquaint himself with his hidden hobby for the first time since 1968 and change the wheel on a car." "TOY TRUMPET PARPS" "Right, time I started." "That's the special signal." "He must beat a record he set in 1964 on the A3 near Guildford." "42 minutes and 46 seconds to change the offside front on a Triumph Mayflower." "Who left all this?" "Where is the spare tire?" "That's not mine." "This exclusive attempt will be able to be seen by me in the Man Lab monitoring centre where I can offer tips and encouragement via a two-way intercom." "The rules are simple." "Any school boy error carries a five minute penalty." "Very nice looking tyre there." "Amazingly, it looks that it might fit." "John, I should point out that that is a space saving," " get you home spare wheel." " Oh, right." "This is not very encouraging." "Nope, we can't do it because this doesn't fit on." " John, are you familiar with locking wheel nuts?" " No, I'm not." "We never had these on cars." "Try the glove box." "Try the glove box?" "Wheel locking kit." "That looks good." "I'm going to have to make that a school boy error." "We pick up the action on 22 minutes." "John's finally got to grips with his nuts but only by defying HSE guidelines." "Bending his back and not bending his legs." "Give himself a nasty crick doing that at his age." "He hasn't got it in the right place." "That's another school boy error." "There is a jacking point." "There is a small indentation where the jack should go." "I'm afraid I'm going to have to award you a schoolboy error" " for that, Mr Sergeant." " Why's that?" "Incorrect jacking point." "Incorrect jacking point?" "No." "Would have lifted perfectly well on this." "No, I disagree with that." "It's a good idea but I don't think I can accept that." "I wasn't giving him the opportunity to accept it!" "The main thing about jacks is to lift the car up." "It would have gone up, it wouldn't have hurt the car." "The fact they've got a little dent in it doesn't make it safer, doesn't make it more acceptable so I'm rejecting the whole of that marking system." "It's completely wrong and unfair." "OK?" "Now then..." "As the half-hour comes up, the McEnroe of motor mechanics finds his form." "Jacking up and removing the offending wheel in a single," " balletic, sylph-like movement." " And..." "He's done it." "Sergeant can sense again the thrill of a youth spent on his knees in lay-bys." "So I do know now that I've got to tighten this up quite hard as I'm going round." "I'm going to have to award you a schoolboy error for going around the wheel and not working across, which is technically more correct." "Sorry." "He may laugh but that is the only way of ensuring that the wheel is correctly seated on the hub." "There you are, you see but if I'd remembered that you'd have thought I'd been cheating." "Despite the racing clock, Sergeant's classic and masterful approach is edging him ever closer to smashing his personal best." "But then, busy reflecting on his victory, he gets sloppy." "Right, here we go." "I'm sorry, John, I'm going to have to insist that you repack the boot before we can award you your badge." "Oh, no." "All right." "The wheel now won't fit in there because it's a different thing so I'm going to have to put the wheel instead of the passenger, all right?" "Put it in the boot!" " What on earth is he doing?" " Right." "OK, that's got rid of the tyre." "Will we be able to close the boot properly?" "But..." " Yes!" " Closed it." " Congratulations, sir." "That is a good job done well." " Thank you." "Sergeant has shaved 0.08 of a second off his 1964 time." "Making him a worthy recipient of our pro-celebrity man task badge." "Here is your champion, positively dancing with joy." "Phwoar, what about that then?" "Anyway, let's move on to this." "This is Ode To Joy, the theme from the final movement of Beethoven's ninth Symphony played for you today by Charlie Hyland who took Grade One oboe in 1995 but then put the instrument back in its case and completely forgot about it." "And here is a very depressing statistic." "Every year in Britain, around 73,000 people take Grade One on a musical instrument." "But about 20,000 of those people take it no further." "HE PLAYS A BAD NOTE" "Where are they now?" "You see, I've always believed that a chap should be able to hold down a decent tune so what we did was we put out an appeal to lapsed Grade One-ers with a view to forming our own Man Lab Band." "I was so confident of this idea that I went ahead and booked a venue for the Grade One-ers' public debut." "Here it is, St Martin-in-the-Fields, one of the country's leading classical music venues." "They've invited us to open one of their evening recitals in two weeks' time." "I believe it was Felix Mendelssohn who described England as a land without music." "But was he right?" "Let's find out." "We've had the first bunch of respondents to our appeal, they're here in our hired studio for some auditions." "Let's see how much latent talent there is in our land without music." "Here's the door." "Everyone who has turned up today has been able to locate his instrument or at least owns a music stand." "Any musicians that were lapsed that were feeling a bit bad about having let their instrument go and were thinking of getting back into it, I'd say get back into it." "Then I thought, I'm just going to do this and see how it goes." "And I reached Grade One standard with some difficulty." "I did much better at theory but it just turned out that I wasn't very talented." "My assistant, Victoria, and I have decided to keep the auditions simple." "Our hopefuls can play either a nursery rhyme or, if they're feeling confident, the national anthem." "The lips have to change, that's one thing that I really hadn't rumbled, is how important the lips are because that's what gives you the..." " Morning." " Morning." " Good morning." " In your own time, sir." "HE PLAYS A BAD RENDITION OF GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" " Perfect." " OK?" " Thank you very much." " OK, thank you." " Thank you." "Clearly fairly committed but possibly a danger to society as well." "HE PLAYS A BAD RENDITION OF GOD SAVE THE QUEEN" "I have to be honest, you did lose me a bit slightly on the second line and it began to sound quite medieval." "Things aren't going too well." "What's worse, I think I've become the only person in Britain to have sympathy for Simon Cowell." "This is hopeless, I'm going to hang myself." " Morning." " Morning." " And you are?" " Donal." " You're Donal and you're a trumpeter, obviously." "Excellent." "And what are you going to play for us?" "Well, I'm going to play Three Blind Mice but" "I have actually..." "I can't really read music." "Right." " You know how the tune goes presumably?" " Yeah." "OK, well give it a bash in your own time." "BAD TRUMPETING" "The first bit was all right." "Oh!" "Honestly..." "I'm quite interested to see how you cope with the bit where they run after the farmer's wife!" "It's quite complicated but could you give it a go anyway?" "Thank you, that's marvellous." "That was a bit cruel!" "I think of all the people in the country who are lapsed musicians from an earlier life, is this really the best we can come up with?" "It was." "But then in walked Orpheus with his stringed muse." "What would you like to play for us today?" "Well I'm going to give Oh, My Darling Clementine a bash, if that's all right?" "HE PLAYS WELL" "Do you know what?" "All things are relative but that was beautiful." "Thank you, you're in." "Oh, thank you, thank you." "Thank God for that." "A hint of musicianship." "It's so sad to have a skill and drop it." "From then on, harmony flooded the room." "To be honest, you're one of the first people to come through the door to play a tune that we recognise, so congratulations." "Five hours in however, my elation turned to suspicion." "Things started to go a little bit too well." "HE PLAYS PROFESSIONALLY" " So you have Grade One?" " Yeah." " But you have some other grades." "Up to seven." "So when you responded to the advert for people who had only achieved Grade One..." "Was it ONLY achieved Grade One?" "Well, that was the idea to be honest." "He's a musician, he's not a lapsed instrument owner." "It's a shame, isn't it?" "But if we were going to form the Grade Eighters we'd effectively have a decent orchestra." "And nobody would be surprised." "We're going to have to reject him for being too good." "Having dismissed the hopelessly talented interloper, we continued our quest for unrealised potential." " Excellent." "Thank you." " Thank you." " OK, thank you." "He has actually got Grade One and he's quite good." "I think we'll have him, anybody disagree?" "I said, I find it strangely moving, that." "From inauspicious beginnings, it seemed our glorious vision for a musical nation reborn might just be within our grasp." "After eight hours of joy and despair, we finally had our line-up." "I tell you what, since so many people are keen for some strange reason on playing God Save The Queen, why don't we get everybody back in, give them the full score and let's just see what sort of job they make of it?" "We might be surprised." "Ladies and gentlemen for the first time ever, the Man Lab Grade One-ers." "THEY PLAY GOD SAVE THE QUEEN OUT OF TUNE" "Watch the stick." "Suddenly this whole Grade One idea sounded quite literally like a very bad one." "That night, I dreamt that St Martin-in-the-Fields had fallen down but when I checked the next day, sadly it hadn't." "Given that our debut is in two weeks' time, what I say next is purely for morale." "That was excellent." "Top." "Top." "All across the nation, pubs are closing down." "But here in Man Lab, one is about to open." "Just as soon as we've finished it." "The walls are painted, the innovative shells are up and the newly built bar has its very own barrel of ale." "Now it's time to confront high-fashion in the shape of this roll of flock wallpaper." "And this is where we come unstuck." "I've never actually done any wallpapering." "No, I can't say I have either." " Have you not?" " No." " I don't have any wallpaper in my house." " Do you?" " No." "I don't have a house." " That's great, isn't it?" "Here we are, we're going to give you some handy wallpapering hints and nobody here has ever done it." "But just then, help arrives from an unexpected direction - the door, through which the top brass have just arrived." "That man in the grey jacket is Mark." "He's the BBC's Head of Entertainment." "He's not very funny, is he?" "Since he's here, I thought the Head of Entertainment might ENTERTAIN the idea of doing something useful." "Mark?" "You've got quite a big house, haven't you?" "It's four storeys, so it's narrow, but tall." "Does it have any wallpaper in it?" "It doesn't, for a good reason." "I can't wallpaper." "Oh, you can't wallpaper either?" " Have you ever done it?" " I've tried it." " Ah!" "But I can only do the lining." "That's much more than we've ever done." "You see, nobody here has ever hung any wallpaper, because none of our houses have wallpaper." " I'm not going to have to demonstrate to you how to hang wallpaper..." " Ooh!" "The viewer would like to see value for money." "I'm shivering already with fear." " Can't we get someone in?" " We just have." "But there's a few tips I do know, even though I've never done any wallpapering." " One is, when pasting..." " Yes?" "Move the piece of wallpaper..." "This applies even if you're just doing patterned wallpaper rather than embossed." "Paste it with this edge right to this edge of the table." "Paste across that way." "As you get to that end, slide it to that end of the table, and then you don't end up with any paste on the table itself and then subsequently, the sheets won't get pasted on the wrong side." "Good." "James, did you choose it?" "Yes, I did." "I've always wanted a bar with some flocked wallpaper." "Should be...there." "Now, this, viewer, is public service broadcasting." "Don't forget, these people work for you." "Do you mind starting that?" "I've just got to go and bring someone up about the Sergeant Major we've got coming." " Really?" " Yeah." "I really have, I'm not just saying it." "So if I muck up it's not down to you because you weren't there?" "Oh, right!" "Aha!" "If Mark had been watching the series, he'd have realised that the sergeant actually featured on last week's show." "Is this thick enough, James?" "James has left me to it." "I think he's actually having a nice cup of tea, which is what I came in for." "Right." "Now, the BBC's own guidelines for wallpapering as broadcast entertainment clearly states that..." ""Flock wallpaper requires extensive pasting," ""applied in an entertaining, informative yet inclusive manner."" " That's not too bad, is it?" " But Mark does not seem to have pasted extensively enough." "There isn't any glue on that bit, Mark." " I'm really sorry, mate, but I don't think you put enough glue on." " Ach!" " As soon as I've gone, you're going to take that off." " No, I'm not." " I'm going to leave it there." " I'm pleased." "It was all worthwhile." " Thank you for coming." " OK." " See you soon." "Now I know who built the sets for Eldorado!" "I need to trim that off before it gets too dry." "It does slightly offend me, so..." "My quest to resurrect the ancient skill of navigation and end the tyranny of Sat Nav is under way." "My aim, to locate Oz Clarke on a lonely French beach and smuggle him and his contraband back to Blighty." "I've studied the stars and the tides, and I've got my charts and instruments." "I've even brought along Dodger the dog, programmed to bark when it's time to change course." "We've set off at dusk to go through the Goodwin Sands while it's still light, because we need to be able to see for that, and then we'll cross the Channel and the shipping lanes in darkness, arrive at Sangatte in darkness," "and then we can head back before anybody notices." "Within minutes of starting out, however, the cloud cover prevents any navigation using heavenly objects." "The wind's picking up a bit." "You will notice it's quite foggy and it will be dark soon, and we won't see any stars." "So, we've got the compass, we've got our charts, and arithmetic." "We're sailing like Vikings." "Now, this is interesting." "This is what's called a grid bearing compass." "It's like a normal compass." "It has a compass card and that rotates as normal." "It also has this ring on the outside, also marked, which rotates." "If you put the heading you want, let's say it's 270 West at the top, there, then when north and south on the card line up between the these two things, which are called lubber lines, you know you're heading to 270." "Brilliant." "You get those in some aeroplanes as well." "The real problem for me with sailing is that it's full of words that are not pronounced the way they're written." "So you have the "mainsall", and the "foresall"" "and the "midsall", and the ropes are called sheets, unless they're the ropes that are called ropes." "You go and see the coxswain or the bosun on the forecastle and you talk about the gunners." "I mean, I would call this a boathook." "But I expect if you're a sailor, it's a "buttock"." "Well, I've made the rendezvous." "Got the contraband." "This kind of weather, surely James can't miss France." "What Oz forgets is that the UK has not signed up to the single European weather, so on my side of the Channel there's a serious depression." "Right, here are the facts." "This wind is almost up to force six, forecast to rise to force nine." "Bear in mind we're only trying to cross the Channel." "Imagine what it would have been like for mariners back in the days when they crossed a whole ocean to America." "That's why a lot of them drowned." "Cheers, old boy." "That's the "watters" over the gunnels and almost up on to the poop deck, and the forecastle." "I'll have to get the "buttock" out and deal with the bosun in a minute." "The brewing storm was bad enough, but then things took a turn for the worse." "A vital component of our navigational kit proved to be faulty." "DODGER BARKS" "Was Dodger telling us it was time to make the sharp right turn for France?" "Or was he just barking..." "like a dog?" "With no way of telling, it was clear that the ancient alchemists' theory was complete rollocks." "With the force nine gale upon us, the whole mission lay in peril." "Our last remaining hope was with taking readings from the magnetic compass to plot our route on the charts." "Right, there's our course." "If we use the plotter..." "Roughly, I can see, lining it up, that that is somewhere in the region of 133 degrees true, which we have to convert to magnetic because of the thing called magnetic variation." "True North isn't in the same place as Magnetic North, but the chart is drawn to True North." "Because otherwise..." "The marking out of the map on the globe doesn't make any sense." "I'm sorry, guys we're going to have to call this off because this is getting more and more beyond our limits to be sailing." "It's starting to blow more and more." "Seriously, this is going to build and build now." "We're not going to be getting across the Channel tonight." "Sorry." "That's the way it is." "If you can't go, you can't go." " What about the brandy?" " Well, I'll buy you a pint." "Actually, one of the sails has just gone down." "This is a piece about navigation, it's not about trying to be heroic or drowning for your amusement." "The skipper is the skipper." "He's in command and he says no, so we can't do it." "I'm very sorry." "Well, I'm on the beach, James." "You asked me to be here." "I am precisely here." "Where are you?" "So, our tips for successful navigation, delivered in glorious hindsight..." "Never believe 17th century theories about magical powders and dogs." "Take a map with you." "And check the weather before you set off." "The thing is, there are a lot of people out there I know who think that TV isn't very honest, it's all fakery and false jeopardy." "And indeed, you might get that sort of thing on certain survival programmes, but you don't get it here in Man Lab." "We couldn't go, so we didn't go." "That is exactly what happened." "Anyway, we'll have another go next week, but in the meantime, this." "Our noble quest to defy the tide of pub closures across the nation is nearing completion." "After two days of carpentry, metalwork and wallpapering, the Man Lab bar is almost finished." "'We have our cask of ale, but before we can plumb it 'into the pumps, we must relieve the build-up of excess pressure." "'Someone has to drive a wooden peg, called the spile, into the membrane in the top of the barrel." "'I volunteer..." "Sim.'" "I'm actually slightly worried about this." "What, because of pressure in there?" "It's not a bomb." "It might go, "Psst"." "The only reason I'm standing out here, viewers, is because there isn't room for both of us behind the bar." "It's not because I'm scared of the barrel exploding." "Not at all." "Come on, Simi." "You've got to belt the little peg into the ale of olde England." "Here we go." "I can smell it from here, actually." "Oh, that's like when you go past a pub beer garden on a summer's day on your bicycle or your motorcycle, and you just get this brief one inhalation of freshly gushing beer." "It's absolutely fantastic." "'Ideally we should wait 24 hours to let the contents of the barrel settle, 'but beer is like a siren to a randy sailor, 'and we are, in the end, only men.'" "Come on, Simi." "So, in one fell swoop, I'm hoping..." "Don't be mimsy about it, will you?" " Just..." " Don't be mimsy?" " Yeah." "Oh, I don't like the sound of that." " She's a beaut." " Is it coming out all over the floor?" " HISSING" " Yes." "Where's my peg?" "'Finally, and not before time, my cup run runneth over.'" "Crikey, that actually looks like beer." "Got a bit of a head on that." " There you go, sir." " Oh!" "We shall drink this first pint... in memory, really, of all the pubs that have been forced to close down." "Mmm." " It's excellent." " Is that very good?" " It is really good." "Well, Sim, I'd like to declare the Man Lab bar open." "Hooray!" "Dreaming when dawn's left hand was in the sky, I heard a voice within the tavern cry, "Come, my little ones," ""and fill the cup before life's liquor in its cup be dry."" "GROANING" "Are you involved in a petty squabble over something like the height of your hedge or maybe planning regulations?" "Or even some tedious aspect of office politics?" "If you are, keep watching." "'I've been involved for many weeks in a squabble with our executive producer, Will." "'I keep parking in his reserved space at our office, 'or so he claims." "'As a result, he's been sending me countless mealy-mouthed e-mails, telling me not to do it.'" "Oh, not again!" "'And I've been ignoring them.'" "Look at this lot!" ""From" " Will Dawes." ""To" " James May." "Re" " Parking." ""It has been brought to my attention that..." ""Once again I must remind you that..." ""Company policy on parking states that..." And so on, and so on." "That's exactly the problem with these minor disputes, they drag on, they're inconclusive." "If you're not careful, they degenerate into tiresome and expensive litigation, and then you end up with a lifetime of a lingering resentment and debilitating, impotent fury." "It's ridiculous." "The whole thing could be sorted out before breakfast...with a duel." "For centuries, duelling has had its own rules and etiquette to elevate it above the street brawls of the peasantry." "Indeed, the earliest surviving examples of written duelling protocol date back to 15th-century Italy." "The classic scenario of posh blokes with pistols at dawn stems from the 1777 Irish Code Duello." "This rule book formalised duelling across Europe and North America." "I have here a copy of the Irish Code Duello." "It is quite confusing." "Rule One has stuff about, "A tells B he is impertinent, B retorts" ""that he lies, A must make the first apology and B may explain away" ""the retort by subsequent apology," and so on." "But the gist of it is, if I am to challenge Will to a duel, he must first be guilty of impertinence." "Obviously impertinence is a slightly outmoded concept these days, so it will have to be provoked." "I think the way to do this is by using the more genteel language of the 18th century, and, indeed, the telephone." "So, here we go." "Hang on..." "Yes." "Bear with me a bit." "PHONE RINGS Hello." " Dawes?" "May." " Hi, James." " I put it to you, sir, that you are more than adequately versed in the sin of Onan, sir." " What?" " What you talking about, you idiot?" " A-ha!" "Impertinence." "'One short visit to Will's office to throw down the gauntlet, 'and the deal is sealed.'" "Very well, sir." "I demand satisfaction." "Now we've got the preliminaries out of the way, Rule Nine it states that both sides must appoint a second to organise the time and place." "Under Rule 16, the challenged party chooses the weapons." "Will has requested duelling pistols." "'This is a poor choice... 'as I've been practising.'" "This is a duelling pistol, circa 1805, one of a pair." "It is muzzle-loaded." "You have to load it from this end, not that end." "It is smooth bored, i.e. there is no rifling, spirals cutting the barrel to spin the bullet and make it more accurate, and it only fires one shot at a time." "A lead ball like that." "And it was the duty of the seconds to ensure the pistols were charged, smooth and single." "Smooth barrelled, one shot." "Anything else was cheating and terribly bad form." "'Mind you, there's nothing in the rules against 'roping in antique firearms expert Bill Harriman to give me some tips.'" "In goes the powder." " A piece of wadding." " There's your patch." " I can start to push it." " Seat it home." "This can't go off, because there is no percussion cap on there." " And it's also at half-cock." " And it's also at half-cock." "Which is where we get the expression "half-cocked" from." "Cap on nipple." " Bring it to full cock." " Full cock." "Two hands or one?" "I think you'll be fine with one." "Even as a cardboard cut-out, Will and his wagging finger are very annoying." "Sir, the tongue that rolled so roundly in thy head." "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" "Assuming Mr Dawes has a heart," "I got him right in it." "'Duelling then, as now, was frowned upon by the authorities." "'They were often fought at first light at locations well away from 'the eyes and ears of the local magistrate.'" "We are in a field, that's all I know." "Under Rule 17, the challenger decides the distance at which shots will be exchanged." "I have chosen 20 paces, to give the new boy a sporting chance." "Gentlemen, as you know, I have the conduct of this affair of honour." "Mr May, Mr Dawes has said that he wishes to apologise to you." "If he does so, sir, will you accept that as satisfaction?" "No, sir." "There can be no apology." "I require satisfaction or death." "Very well, gentlemen, if you are resolved to fight, then so be it." "'Mr Television Executive clearly hasn't read Clause Two, Rule Five." "'The only way he can stop the duel now is to invite me 'to thrash him soundly with a cane while he begs my forgiveness." "'And that never happens in TV." "'Unless you're Frank Bough, allegedly.'" "Mr May, cock your pistol, please, sir." "Mr Dawes, cock your pistol, please, sir." "Take aim." "You will fire on the signal." "SIRENS WAIL" "Let us focus now on solving a problem affecting a small yet vital area of the Man Lab." "You know how it is." "You've got the next five minutes all planned out, so you can read a paper, pick your nose, you've just got started." "And then you glance around and to your horror, you've run out of bog roll." "For some reason, even though we may have done this many hundreds of thousands of times, you never think to look." "So what we're wondering is, some sort of alarm that sounds if you put the seat down and there's no or very little bog roll left, but doesn't go off if you put the seat down and there's plenty of bog roll left," "i.e. it's a no bog roll left alarm system." "The technicalities of this is we need some sort of switch system that can distinguish..." "So that is off... and that is on." "Ready to ring the buzzer... when the seat goes down." "You need a switch that makes a circuit when that's gone from that to that." "Yeah." "But that's still got enough." "OK, a bit less than that." "That's like, you know, the fuel warning light on your car." "It's not over yet, but it will be soon if you're not careful." "You wouldn't set out on a long journey in the car with a fuel warning light on." "You wouldn't sit down for a vigorous number two with only that much bog roll left." "It could be risky." "And we have to make it a rule of the Man Lab - it is contrary to the normal rule, I know - but you leave the seat up." "Because men go for a wee-wee more often than they go for a poo-poo." " That's just a fact, isn't it?" " A fact." "And women definitely do, because they only go for a poo about once every two weeks, don't they, as far as I can make out?" "They can go on holiday and think, "I don't like the bogs in Spain." ""I just won't have a poo until we get home"." "That's two and a half weeks later!" " How do they do that?" " THEY LAUGH" "While I pondered the mystery of woman kind, Sim began to turn our vision of the world's first intelligent bog roll into reality." "Testing, one, two, three." "PLAYBACK: 'Testing, one two three.'" "So when the switch is activated, the alarm goes off." "We'll have a flashing red light." "The plan is, we found this klaxon noise..." "KLAXON" "..which we are now going to put onto the alarm." "PLAYBACK OF KLAXON" "With the alarm set, and the electronics tested, it was time for the first human trials." "When you put the seat down, it triggers a switch, which sets off the klaxon and the red flashing light." "But not...if there is bog roll on the holder, because that lifts up this lollipop switch and breaks the circuit." "However, if there is no bog roll left, that switch is down, the circuit is complete, and the alarm goes off." "We do have an opportunity to test this for real, right now, because" "I happen to know that Dan, one of our editors, is on his way down from upstairs to have a number two." "So let's see if he's paying attention." "Let's see, in fact, if our alarm will save him from one of man's worst traumas." "'To gain access to the bog," "'Dan has to raise our specially designed pneumatic railway bridge.'" "And he must remember to lower it again after entering." "Or else the train can't get through." "KLAXON" "That can only mean one thing." "Someone is in the cludgie and in distress." "Needs bog roll." "Depart." "Here it goes." "And I hope he remembers, even though he's in distress, to press the bing bong for me to stop the train." "Bong when running, stop." "# Alleluia, alleluia" "# Alleluia, alleluia" "# Alleluia... #" "So, there you go, once again, mankind's lot in life improved by organised and efficient working practices." "Anyway, if you thought that was interesting, wait until you see this." "'Earlier on, in a counterblast against today's obsession 'with settling minor disputes through litigation," "'I revived the lost skill of duelling." "'However, before I could obtain satisfaction... 'today's obsessive health and safety litigation intervened.'" "Following the earlier incident, the health and safety officer has said that we may no longer use our 19th-century pistols, and that we must now fight a more symbolic duel." "That is what we are going to do using a French version of the pistol duel known as the duel a volante." "Here's how it works." "Two lines are marked on the field of honour, 20 paces apart." "The combatants start from a position 15 paces beyond these lines, in my case, over here." "On the command, which is the drop of the handkerchief, the combatants begin to walk forwards towards their lines." "They may stop and take aim at any point, but they may not fire until they reach their line." "This means you can walk quickly and enjoy the advantage of firing first, but, if you do that, and you miss, you have to stand your ground until the other man reaches his line and enjoys the advantage of firing from closer range." "That's what makes it exciting." "'Even though we are not allowed real guns anymore, our duel must continue 'until we have satisfied Rule 22, 'which states that any wound sufficient to agitate the nerves 'and necessarily make the hand shake must end the business for that day." "'That's why we're using paintball guns." "'I'm told they really hurt.'" "Oh!" "If you've suffered from impertinence, at home or at work, and it wasn't your fault, why not get in touch?" "Our team of experts will try to help you achieve satisfaction." "No win, no fee." "Write to us at manlab@bbc.co.uk" "And please remember to mark your subject line," ""Damn you, sir, I will run you through"." "Good night." "'Next week, in my quest to restart the stalled evolution of man," "'I launch my own space programme.'" "'The Man Lab band brings the house down.'" "'We attempt to rid the country of airborne pestilence.'" "BANG" "Well, that got rid of some of the wasps." "'And I try once again to rescue this bloke from a French beach.'" "# What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" "# What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" "# What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" "# Early in the morning" "# Hoo-ray and up she rises Hoo-ray and up she rises" "# Hoo-ray and up she rises Early in the morning..." "# Put him in a barrel and..." "hose pipe on him" "# Put him in a barrel and hose pipe on him" "# Put him in a barrel and hose pipe on him" "# Early in the morning. #" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"