James May: New Lego & Meccano Engineering Series

Sure you can. I'm recruiting marshals for this year's fundraiser at the kids' school, so if you can make it for the first weekend in December, that'd be great. For obvious reasons, though, you'll have to make do with kipping on the sofa :D
Well, your location is now Cyprus... so, perhaps not :(

Note: anyone else with a room of scalextric...
 
James and Meccano go back a long way. From the Toy Stories book: James in 1999. :mrgreen:


James1999.jpg

I :lol:'d
Pure gold
 
The viewing figures remain very good for a BBC2 show. :)

John Sergeant's new ITV1 series, John Sergeant on the Tourist Trail, began with 3.6 million viewers, a 15% share, between 8pm and 9pm.

In the same slot, BBC1's Holby City averaged 5.9 million viewers, a 25% share, but narrowly had the better of James May's Toy Stories on BBC2, which was watched by 3.4 million viewers, also a 15% share.

The seventh in the fifth series of Gok Wan's How To Look Good Naked had 1.6 million viewers, a 7% share, in the 8pm hour on Channel 4. The show had another 137,000 viewers on Channel 4 +1.

Also in the 8pm hour, a new series of Five's Sea Patrol UK opened with 1.2 million viewers, a 5% share.


Soup?, maybe you can place an ad in the lonely hearts secion of your local newspaper. "Looking for sweetheart with loads of Scalextric. Please include pic of track." ;)
 
Good Lord this thread made it over 1000 posts! :D
I love that pic, but (like Hugh Laurie) I think James gets better with age - he's a fine wine! :blush:

*off topic* hey my rep points are finally higher than my age ;)
 
Good Lord this thread made it over 1000 posts! :D
I love that pic, but (like Hugh Laurie) I think James gets better with age - he's a fine wine! :blush:

*off topic* hey my rep points are finally higher than my age ;)

just goes to show how popular Mr May is and how he's done a great job with the series. I was thinking during the previous show that if this had been any other documentary without James it may not have done as well as its doing. Some are probably watching because he's 1 part of the Top Gear holy trinity or some are watching because they know of the things that he's talking about. Either way just goes to show how popular he is.

as for the off topic comment, even i know that its best to not make any questions there. last time i did that i ended up i nearly got my head chopped off.
 
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That's James?! Bloody hell. I just showed it to the bloke and he thought it was the bloke off Wheeler Dealers.
 
Oddly, I thought the critics would be gunning for this series, but it seems to be going down quite well. These two are from the papers most likely to be negative: the first a review from The Independent and the second a preview from The Guardian. The Grauniad's Sam Wollaston (well known hater of all things Top Gear) did a longer - grudgingly positive - review of the Airfix ep but I can't get my computer to copy it.

I?m not sure how to say this but [John] Sergeant could learn some things about presentation from James May?s Toy Stories, which may be a tiny bit selfindulgent at an hour, but which is also inventive and unexpected and unobtrusively instructive about British social history. This week, May set out to construct a bridge large enough to carry him across a canal, using only Meccano, a relatively easy task if they?d gone for a dull design, butmade much harder by the fact that he chose a bascule bridge with a rotating swing arm. It seemed a little odd to me that you could make an hour-long programme about Meccano with only the briefest of mentions about its lacerating effect on childish fingers, but it successfully captured the appeal of a toy that wasn?t really a toy at all, but a calculated plan to create the next generation of British engineers. And ? I?m not sure how to say this either ? his script (both impromptu and prepared) made Sergeant?s look decidedly underpowered.

James May's Toy Stories

8pm, BBC2

This really is marvellous: funny, educational, weirdly inspiring and pleasingly whimsical. James May's wilfully quixotic premise is that today's toys are less fun than those available to children of earlier generations. Tonight May wanders wide-eyed through the history and heritage of Meccano (or, as he says of an early kit, "everything that was great about Britain in a big green box"). To demonstrate the enduring potency of the (now French-owned) toy, May goes to its birthplace ? Liverpool ? and builds a bridge out of it.
 
Oddly, I thought the critics would be gunning for this series, but it seems to be going down quite well. These two are from the papers most likely to be negative: the first a review from The Independent and the second a preview from The Guardian. The Gaurdian's Sam Wollaston (well known hater of all things Top Gear) did a longer - grudgingly positive - review of the Airfix ep but I can't get my computer to copy it.

the guardian and the independent? well if the Daily Mail adds themselves to that list i'll start stocking the food and drink because i'm almost certain that its one of the 10 signs that the worlds going to end.
 
So... am I the only person who played with Meccano a lot as a kid and never cut themselves? Seeing as half of mine was some sort of chinese knock-off inherited from a cousin I would have thought injury more likely...
As for creating engineers, there must be something in that, because I certainly didn't get my techie tendencies from my parents. Dad doesn't even know how to check the oil and water in his car. I offered to show him, but he just said the mechanic does it whenever he gets it serviced...
 
Typo

Typo

I thought the critics would be gunning for this series, but it seems to be going down quite well.
Well, The Sunday Times was fairly negative. Nevertheless they made them one of the 'choice'
See:
http://img38.imageshack.**/img38/8918/54664237.jpg

I enjoyed the episode, but not as much as I enjoyed the Airfix Episode. I still maintain that the difference is that Mr May has passion for Airfix, but not for Plasticine nor Mecanno. I'm hoping Scalextric will bring that passion back.


Nevertheless, all the episodes have been better than much else on TV because of Mr May.
(And I'm not just saying that because I *ahem* 'admire' Mr May*
 
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So... am I the only person who played with Meccano a lot as a kid and never cut themselves? Seeing as half of mine was some sort of chinese knock-off inherited from a cousin I would have thought injury more likely...
As for creating engineers, there must be something in that, because I certainly didn't get my techie tendencies from my parents. Dad doesn't even know how to check the oil and water in his car. I offered to show him, but he just said the mechanic does it whenever he gets it serviced...

i was given it once as a christmas present from my parents. i must have been 12-15 or so (i honestly don't remember) but i looked at it as a more advanced form of Lego and i never really caught on to it. By that time i had discovered comic books and my interests were going in a very different direction. Mostly the meccano set just remained locked and hidden away and wasn't used. Eventually it ended up going on a carboot sale.
 
Unfortunatly she already has a boyfriend.. :lol: Yep women engineering students are a rarity..


*raises her hand*

I'm working on my degree right now!

I also used to sell and install Home Theater...and Car Audio. I also love comics, beer and even have my own Transformers fan website. :p

We really do exist. :)
 
I just hope that the young lady in question doesn't find getting taken seriously too difficult once she's out in the workforce. I found that while there's plenty of geeky blokes who will do just about anything for a techy girlfriend, there's also plenty who can't accept that an attractive woman is competent at anything technical without a lot of proof. I once had someone drunkenly explain to me that women couldn't be good with linux because it requires a big bushy beard.
 
I just hope that the young lady in question doesn't find getting taken seriously too difficult once she's out in the workforce. I found that while there's plenty of geeky blokes who will do just about anything for a techy girlfriend, there's also plenty who can't accept that an attractive woman is competent at anything technical without a lot of proof. I once had someone drunkenly explain to me that women couldn't be good with linux because it requires a big bushy beard.

My experience is been about half and lahf.

Not to bad really:)
 
Those old school types who think that woman that are the problem are idiots heh.. I know a second year aerospace student, he also holds a PPL, who doesnt know which way the elevator moves to pitch an aircraft up :lol: ... When we started on the bridge there were also people who didnt know what an Allen key was.. They're are going to be released into the world as engineers in a couple of years.. Scary heh..
 
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Every profession is like that. I work with people that are so dangerous with what they do not know it is unbelievable. Somehow, most things work out for them.

And it is the same thing whether it is the engineering field or the medical field. Sometimes I am really left with my jaw hanging down at some of the things I see.

for example, the other night I was going in to work. We have 4 ER rooms. As I walk by Rm 1, I can, from the hallway, tell the lady is having a stroke. There is an LPN from the floor in with her who would make a wonderful housekeeper, but she sucks as a nurse. I go look for the RN. He is in Rm 3 trying to sweet talk a faking 16 yr od into letting him put an IV in. I hit the ceiling. After we got Rm 1 sent out by ambulance and Rm 3 sent home to playact somewhere else, he has the nerve to come to me and say, "You act like you are mad at me Ms Judy". I told him I was not mad, but when he worked with me, we would take care of the emergency pts first, and not have some LPN that cleans house from the minute she gets to work until she goes home attending an acute pt. He still has no idea what I was talking about.

And for the record, I despise being called Ms Judy.
 
Those old school types who think that woman that are the problem are idiots heh.. I know a second year aerospace student, he also holds a PPL, who doesnt know which way the elevator moves to pitch an aircraft up :lol: ... When we started on the bridge there were also people who didnt know what an Allen key was.. They're are going to be released into the world as engineers in a couple of years.. Scary heh..

Terrifying. How on earth have they managed to get through life without ever owning Ikea furniture? ;)

Trouble is, it's not just the oldschool types or it'd just be a matter of waiting for them to die out. So long as there's a few of the 'Maddy' type women out there, some people will persist in believing that all women are like that. I also once had someone tell me that I *must* have gone into IT in order to pull and that I'd be a shoe-obsessed heat-reading airhead if only I were pretty enough. The really depressing thing is, it was a woman who said it.
...which is exactly why Barbie and the like should be banned and all children, whatever their gender, should be given *proper* toys. I don't think I've ever encountered a woman in IT who didn't have Lego, Meccano and the like as a kid, but I've yet to work out whether it's because they were already that way inclined and demanded the toys, or whether the toys turned them techie. I'm tempted to assume the latter, as I was perfectly happy to wear pink frills and pretend to be a fairy princess when I was three, and then got a load of hand-me-down toys from cousins, and by the time I was seven thought girls were silly and would only play with boys...
I'm not likely to ever have kids of my own, though, and friends are strangely reluctant to let me experiment on theirs, so I suppose I'll never get a real answer. :)
 
Every profession is like that. I work with people that are so dangerous with what they do not know it is unbelievable. Somehow, most things work out for them.

Probably mostly because there's almost always someone more competent around to fix their messes. And they're the people who don't get promoted because they're too damn useful where they are.
 
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