James May: New Lego & Meccano Engineering Series

Loved the programme - there was such joy positively exuding from every moment.

I know we whinged (ok I did) about stuff a bit, but yes it was amazing. I met some really cool people - I give you HeidiL - had a ball, and of course met the lovely Mr May himself :D

So that's nothing to do with a certain J. May and the vast amount of free publicity that's been given to Lego throughout the year, then?
No, nothing at all :shifty:

I had her pegged the moment I saw her. :)

Told you I was impossible to miss :p

OzGirl, HeidiL -- great job, guys! You came off as totally committed brickheads. I thought the designer was a bit flaky though (kinda reminded me of Jane (Mad) Freud), although I did like some of her designs. And Vic seemed a bit of an unknown quantity a two-faced self-aggrandizing spanner.

FTFY :p He sucked up James' arse at Mach 10 when he was there, then would tell groups of the public that James didn't do any work and that when he did Vic "had to fix it". He said he was only joking but kids wouldn't get that, and we didn't think it was very funny. He was also hateful to GabrielleChurchill, who worked her arse off too.

Loved the design of the house, loved watching the community brick build and found myself totally caught up in James' infectious enthusiasm. My only nitpick (a minor one) would be not seeing more of the finished house and perhaps James' impressions the day after. Would've been nice to have seen some of the Lego volunteers at the housewarming too.

There was one there, but she's not on here.

This whole series has been fantastic, but this Lego episode really kept me entertained the whole time through.

I think the best part had to be Oz coming back to James in his house in the middle of the vineyard. Seeing him go from vine to vine tasting grapes was just hilarious. I really love when two completely different shows link each other like that. Every time James kept breaking something as he sat on it was also equally hilarious.

This series really shows how great of a presenter James is on his own.

Yup, this and the Hornby ep are great for having Oz and James together. Oz and Hugh just didn't work for me. :(

For those who don't have the DVD the Hornby ep is brilliant, even though most of us know what happened it's still great.
 
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Vic might have been weird, I loved Christina.

"We'll get back to you on that one" after James nearly breaks his neck when the furniture collapses when he sits down on it. :D
 
For those who can't wait, or those beyond the range of the BBC, someone started a torrent of a 700MB AVI of the Hornby episode on The Pirate Bay. I just verified that it's a good rip:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5233749

Now I can watch it on Christmas too!

Is there a 700mb version of the lego ep anywhere at the moment, havent seen one yet on my usual torrent sources
 
Just watched the Lego ep...a simply excellent piece of television. I dare say that the entire Toy Stories series has been James's best work outside of Top Gear. The passion and child-like enthusiasm of James and all the volunteers is just a joy to witness and be a part of; it's infectious.

HeidiL and ozgirl, big props for the work you did in building the house...almost choked up at the end after seeing Christina do the same while talking with James. A pity the building couldn't be saved and/or reconstructed, thought :sad:
 
Ok so my solid wall idea was rubbish. :(

Don't say that... the thing is, it got you thinking, didn't it? And it got you asking questions. This is brilliant, and part of the point of the series - it gets you thinking about not only what can be done, but how you might do it. I don't think there's anything rubbish about that :)
 
Loved the lego episode great job to the people on this forum who were in it :) It insipred me also I had to buy xmas presents for kids the other day and at least some of them got lego :D the ones that will appreciate it at least. Real congrats though its tied for my favorite of the series so far, beetween that scaletrix and airfix :)
 
Well I dunno where you had your pizza but the time I ordered from Dominos we ate it on the divan... but I do recall the bed having a stuffing great crack down the middle...
 
Well I dunno where you had your pizza but the time I ordered from Dominos we ate it on the divan... but I do recall the bed having a stuffing great crack down the middle...

On the Bed (green thing upstairs).
I don't think it was the pizza eating which caused the crack. Mind you, there were stuffing great cracks down most things at that time. I take credit for fixing the yellow wall crack (behind the kitchen) but James F had a hell of a time with the front wall.

The divan had the benefit of being totally rebuilt (John - you're a star!) whereas the bed survived pizza-eating and relaxing floor-tile layers for a week before being filmed.

Merry Christmas HeidiL.
I hope you won't be celebrating it by eating pizza in bed!
 
Don't say that... the thing is, it got you thinking, didn't it? And it got you asking questions. This is brilliant, and part of the point of the series - it gets you thinking about not only what can be done, but how you might do it. I don't think there's anything rubbish about that :)

Quite right. James May would be proud I'm sure. I know I am. This is what the series was supposed to do - get people thinking again about engineering challenges and pushing the boundaries a bit. (Sorry - is that sounding pretentious? I'm an engineer surrounded by media luvvies!)

When I worked for the BBC a couple of us technical bods went into a local school to help build a vehicle from stuff the kids had brought in. It was amazing how this fired their enthusiasm (and ours!) and shows what is lacking in the modern, target-driven, exam-results-led national curriculum. No wonder all we do now is make money out of money, man call centres and build shopping centres! Any new James Watts or IK Brunels out there?
 
When i first time heard about the lego thing i thought it was just some BBC special show, but didn't know it was actual series. Watched 2 episodes and absolutely loving it. Are there anymore of the series than these 4 episodes i have found? :(

EDIT: Actually found at least 5th episode and i guess 6th if that's the lego episode.
 
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When i first time heard about the lego thing i thought it was just some BBC special show, but didn't know it was actual series. Watched 2 episodes and absolutely loving it. Are there anymore of the series than these 4 episodes i have found? :(

EDIT: Actually found at least 5th episode and i guess 6th if that's the lego episode.

Hurry - the BBC is in the middle of repeating the first 4!
Full schedule on www.legohouse.co.uk. Hornby on Christmas Day (actually episode 5 but rescheduledby the beeb at the last minute). Lego repeats on 30th.
 
I have to say I enjoyed the Lego episode the most of all the episodes thus far, and not just because it was cool seeing HeidiL and ozgirl. :D Even without reading the back story in this thread, Vic did come across as a major twat.

Is it just me, or is that interior designer bird oddly attractive in a slightly insane cougary sort of way? I also thought that engineering bird was cute, too. Intelligent women are sexy. She'd have no problem stiffening my beam ... ;)

Whilst this post continues to decends into a splinter of the 'Most Distracting Audience Member' thread, I managed to pick out at least one hard core Legoista ... the 30-something dude wearing the Thundercats t-shirt came across as a full-time Lego enthusiast :lol:
 
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^ I didn't recognize anyone, so don't worry about me taking bad screencaps... :lol:
 
Another new trailer for the Hornby program on the 27th December, which I?ve only seen this evening.

It?s a triple show trailer with Toys Stories, Top Gear* and Steve Coogan thing on after.

Probably be on youtube soon, if it?s not already there now.

*Top Gear spoiler:
The Bolivia Special showing more clips than the previous trailer did.

:)
 
The thundercats shirt I think was James Fenton, known while there as "Lego James", and I believe he was a consultant on the house itself. John - who I spotted in the background a couple of times, rather large chap - was also quite an enthusiast and responsible for doing most of the really impressive interior stuff, such as the washing machine and most of the furniture.
We had a few hardcore brick-heads turn up, and the ones who identified themselves as such were generally a bit awkward - whereas most people were happy enough to build whatever we needed at the time, some of the brick-heads thought basic structural pieces were beneath them and wanted to work on the furniture and more complicated things, and that's probably why we rarely saw them come back for a second day. Unfortunately, while I'm sure they would have been useful on the fancy stuff, I needed people on those projects who'd be around long enough to complete them and preferably still be around to modify/repair them if needed, which meant dolescum like me, and people like John, who put his driving-instructor business on hold to work on the house.
I know John was upset seeing the house come down because he often keeps his own completed lego projects, and he had put in a lot of work on things which didn't get the attention they deserved in the show - though I believe some of them are featured in the book - but personally I enjoyed helping demolish it. When I was a kid I used to build entire towns and destroy them again in time for tea, so what's one house? Plus, I don't often get to hit things with hammers. It was, as James would probably say, quite therapeutic.
 
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