Original subtitles

Hello.

These days I spend more and more time in my Wiltshire home, and the pub I own,

thinking about all the big problems in the world, and some smaller ones that

annoy me.

Luckily there's a place I can go to solve them all, or at least try.

My shed.

Right.

It's here that I have the tool.

Let's just thaw some wood up. The tea.

And a couple of other highly competent blokes.

Very good.

Brace yourself.

Who've agreed to help me rid the world of problems.

Is she getting a ticket out?

Great. Early flight, I suppose.

And small.

The cereal has gone soggy. I'll also have to take on other people's problem.

What is wrong with Peter?

He used to make a sound and now he doesn't.

By which I mean the locals at my pub who are always bringing me stuff to mend.

Is it a train set?

So join us and our excitable crew... LAUGHTER ..who will capture our

endeavour... That was epic!

..as we create... ..make... That feels like a terrible thing we've just done.

..repair... So it's never worked.

Not in my lifetime.

..and repurpose...

In my shedload of ideas. What do you think? This is just brilliant.

The Wiltshire countryside can be wonderfully peaceful, but like the rest

UK, it can also sometimes be very noisy.

A noise complaint is made every 70 seconds in the UK, and even here we're

immune to annoying noises from our neighbours.

That sounds like a right barney.

Let's go somewhere else.

It's a domestic.

Don't start drilling.

Nobody ever says, why don't we soundproof Britain?

In fact, you don't even need to soundproof the whole house, do you? You

need a... It's just like a small room.

If you want to play the trumpet or have an argument, you go into the room that's

soundproof and then it doesn't bother your neighbours.

Actually, that's not a bad idea, is it?

Could we make a soundproof box?

The World Health Organisation says noise pollution is a major concern, so this

is a serious problem.

Let's see if we can help neighbourly relations everywhere by making a

box or room that will keep annoying noises contained within it.

First things first, Tony the Tool is going to help me investigate the best

-absorbing materials.

Right,

Tony has made a very simple rig in order to test the sound -absorbing qualities

of various items that you would find around a typical household. This is a

In the top of the box goes the decibelometer through that convenient

hole. In the middle is a shelf on which we put our materials, and in the bottom

there is a Bluetooth speaker which will play a sound from this phone.

Obviously some sound will be transmitted through the box, we realise that, but

what we're looking for is the difference between these materials. This will give

us some idea of how we can make our soundproof box.

There's a door.

And it is sealed with a clamp.

All we need now is a suitable sound.

So I thought if you could give a blood -curdling, murderous scream, Tony, we

could use that. Are you ready?

Yep.

That was excellent.

Right, so to begin with, if we turn on the decibel -o -meter and put his little

Sly and the Family Stone head on...

Right, that's holding max, so the maximum reading will remain frozen on

screen. So let's try it first with nothing.

So we shut Tony's carefully engineered box with this beautiful piano hinge that

you see typically on Chippendale furniture.

There is the door shut.

OK, so this is controlled. Quiet, please.

107 .7 is the reading on the decibelometer with nothing in the box.

Now, remember that decibels are a logarithmic scale, which means an

three is double the noise as far as your ear is concerned.

Let's begin with... Well, let's go through what we've got. We have a

pillow, some furniture -moving blankets.

Some egg boxes, a breakfast cereal. We're not allowed to say which one it

It's very popular.

It's also very snappular and crackular.

And build a stand.

Which would you like to go with first? Shall we go with... Let's go with egg

boxes. Normally they're half them, don't they? And have that bit sticking out.

Do they? I think, yeah.

Let's do that.

People do stick egg boxes up in things like their home recording studios and

home cinemas, don't they?

Quiet, everybody, please.

101 .5.

Interesting.

Next, we try a pillow.

102 dead.

Then, a furniture blanket.

88 .2. Excellent performance from the blanket.

The popular breakfast cereal, which we happen to have in the kitchen, was my

idea because, I don't know, I feel they will move about and absorb sound. They

will also deform very slightly and they are full of air.

It's not particularly tremendous reasoning, but this is an experiment.

Remember.

Very disappointing from the breakfast cereal.

Hang on, that's higher than the control.

That doesn't make sense, does it? No.

It is a noisy cereal, though. It is. It's amplified, the noise.

It's 108 .6.

And finally, we tried Builder's Sand.

Oh, no.

That is disappointing.

101 .2.

It's better than the egg boxes, though.

Very slightly better than the egg box.

So, the conclusion is that our soundproof room within a room

should be insulated with... Blankets. Blankets.

88 .2.

Right, onwards.

So, after buying a shedload of blankets and picking up Timmy...

We three return to the workshop to begin making our soundproof room in a room,

which will be a supersized version of Tony's soundproof box.

Say when.

First, we demonstrate the result of our noise research.

Here's one more. Brace yourself.

Which looks like workplace bullying.

Well,

it's definitely getting quieter. Maybe a little scream?

Right, OK.

What we decided, viewers, was that the best sound deadening material of those

things that you might have around the house is the removal blanket.

Now, here we have a pile of 150 of them. There's going to be a frame.

Yeah. And then we're going to make blanket walls.

Yeah. And the blanket walls will also be filled with blankets.

Right. Let's just saw some wood up.

Yes, let's do that.

If this works, people could take our prototype concept... What you're seeing

here, viewers, is the basic element of mass production.

...and turn a room in their own house into a soundproof room.

Nicely done.

We're constructing a very simple wooden cube, but crucially, we're leaving a

small cavity between the inside and outside walls.

There can't be any physical connection or as little as possible between the

inner wall and the outer wall because the dense wood would transfer the sound

you've got to avoid that you've got to keep the gap all the way around Then we

can fill it up with the sound deadening material which in this case is blanket

If you hadn't worked it out already viewers you can

probably now see what this is going to look like

There it is.

Okay, so now we're going to curtain the inside.

Hold it there, James.

I'm holding it. Hold it there.

There are people in the world who like to claim that men can't wrap things up.

We're proving them wrong. Look at this.

Do we want the door towards one side or in the middle?

Like, why do we need the door?

Otherwise you can't get in.

I'll go in from the top.

Why don't we stand on a step ladder and put a screw in from the top?

Yeah.

Good idea.

Rather than cutting these, because they're a bit of a pain, there might be

of folding them into each other.

Yes. Or is it a bit like folding a piece of paper seven times?

It might well be.

Shall we try a sausage?

Shall I try a sausage?

Try a sausage.

Just in case.

It's like that thing, isn't it? You can only fold a piece of paper so many times

before it becomes impossible to fold.

Did you just say that? I did. Yeah.

Seven times, I think. Well, I said it before, but I was in there. I couldn't

hear you. Yeah. Ah.

Tony,

just put your head behind there and say something.

I think that's working a bit.

I didn't hear a thing.

Is there a case for simply making a load of curtains?

And just hanging them?

Yeah.

That would be a lot easier, wouldn't it?

We had seven blankets over your head earlier, and we could still hear you,

though it was muffled, so we need at least seven layers.

So we're halfway there with one blanket?

Yeah. OK, so that's not as drastic.

I'm all for, you know, speeding things up.

I think we should do a big wall.

Yeah, I think you're right.

So these are whole blankets now.

I think we should fold it and put it in these widths along the wall.

Oh, like that?

Yeah.

Oh, that's quite nice.

It is quite nice.

Why are you always surprised?

You know why, Tony.

We'll leave Tony to finish his brilliant blanket layering solution, and who

knows, perhaps we'll never hear from him again.

Back in Wiltshire, you join Simi and me enjoying a little time out in my pub.

But we're not totally off -duty.

The locals know I can easily be persuaded to open up my toolbox and take

at their broken stuff.

Today, pub regular Piers has something he'd like us to try to repair.

Hi, nice to meet you. This is Phimmy. Hi, nice to meet you.

It's a toaster. It is.

I was told that this was something of great sentimental value.

Well, it gets used every day, but it doesn't function properly.

So the timer...

which is about their jams occasionally.

I have virtually the same toaster, as it happens. It burns taste.

And then I'd get a telling off from my wife.

Does your wife currently hate you because of the toaster? Not every day.

Shall we plug it in and have a look at... I think there's a socket down

I've got some bread in my toolbox.

Look at that.

And I would give that sort of two and a half minutes.

Light is on.

Heat is rising off the toaster into my face.

And it smells of bread.

I think it works fine, Piers. You've wasted our time.

If only that were true.

It's sticking.

Oh, it is, yes.

Have you ever taken it apart?

I think it's had some WD -40 in it. Oh, you're a toaster!

I'm not a technical person, and we've managed.

Life is a compromise.

Toast is the stuff of life, so it's quite important.

We've still got another 30 seconds to go. That's going to be burnt.

Yeah, but the point is you can then turn the elements off and remove your toast

when you need it. But that requires you being present the entire time. If you...

just walk away from it and say it's going to stop in two minutes.

Ah, because the timer sticks.

Because the timer sticks, you end up with white smoke.

The toaster, as a toaster, works perfectly. The problem is with the

this is what is destroying domestic bliss for you. So we will take the

away. We won't touch any of that because it's fine.

We will extract the clockwork timer, check it for wear.

Burden, the escapement, that sort of thing. Give it a good clean, reassemble

and can I commend you for bringing it in and not simply throwing it away and

buying another toaster?

Absolutely. It means that my wife isn't going to give me grief about half

-burned toast.

It will be fantastic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The world thanks you. Your wife, however, hates you.

Now I've promised to fix Piers' toaster, and with it his marriage too, I'd

better get on with it. Yeah.

So Simi and I head straight for the workshop.

And at the time it takes to make a piece of toast, we're there.

Ooh, OK, look.

I have a toaster very similar to this, and I seem to remember it going through

the bottom.

Then behind there, there is the timer mechanism.

That's very intricate, isn't it? It is.

A tiny, tiny, tiny bit of tag.

And that's just enough to make the teeth stick. If we could make something that

acts on the end of that spindle, it will push it ever so gently in the direction

of the less worn part of the escapement.

That something is going to be a tiny strip of phosphor bronze that we'll

with a teeny, tiny screw.

Some people enjoy high -octane action movies with car chases, fistfights and

guns. Bad news, if that's you, because the next bit involves two blokes trying

to solve a problem on an almost microscopic scale.

We're talking about maybe, you know, less than a hundredth of a millimetre.

But there will be tension.

Is that actually cutting?

No, it wasn't.

Fascinating observations.

What is going?

Highs. Oh, look at that. It's gone in.

And the odd low.

It's stopped.

But after several nail -biting hours... Oh, we are

so good.

Right. We are so good.

To the relief of the crew, we're ready to try our ingenious solution.

So what we have done is we have successfully opened up and then

That tiny little hole there, and now we have drilled a clearance hole in the end

of this strip of phosphor bronze that the screw will just pass through

and now I'm going to hold that without losing it. This is turning me into a

nervous wreck.

Snip that off, tidy up the end, and then screw it into position and it will do

its job.

If the tense music hasn't already started, now might be a good time.

Oh, my God, it's so small.

What's it going in?

Yeah? Yeah, it's like this.

Let me just check that. Is it actually acting on it?

That's what we've achieved.

It doesn't look like much, but it's destroyed us.

Well, let's test it.

I almost don't want to now.

If it, for whatever reason, it doesn't do a full thing, I will cry. I'm going

wind it all the way. Here we go, everybody.

Very well done, toast.

We have achieved... We've achieved greatness.

We've actually done it.

And we can't even see it.

It worked.

That's one of the greatest triumphs of my life. And we've been at it for

four hours. But it was worth it. What else would we have done with those four

hours?

Right, we're going to now reassemble this. You don't particularly need to see

that. Next time you see this toaster, it will be in the pub with Piers, and he

will be astounded. Astonished.

It's stopped.

It's got to the end. It went all the way to the end.

Now Pierce's toaster is no longer toast, it's time for me to head back to the

pub, where once again I'm thinking of ways to help pubs all over the UK get

puns in it. And I've identified a potential twist on a well -known game.

that involves combining two of my favourite things.

Hello, you join me apparently about to tuck into a delicious cheese board, but

actually, no.

I'm here to address an age -old problem, one that has blighted society for many

generations, namely cheese and biscuits.

The usual problem, the cheese runs out, the biscuits haven't. You have some more

cheese, then the biscuits run out, and then the cheese hasn't run out, so you

have some more biscuits and so on, and it never ends.

We wondered if one way round this problem was to gamify cheese and

I wondered if we could have a game of cheese chess.

Because, let's face it, both come on a board.

The word chess is very similar to the word cheese. If you take the first F of

chess and turn it into an E and add another E on the end, you have the same

word. And that can't be a coincidence, can it?

I thought, using this convenient rubber mould, we could use some of these

cheeses to make chess pieces, mount them on coloured crackers. We have black

ones and white ones. They're actually grey and beige, but, I mean, the

difference is apparent.

And then you play chess four pieces of cheese.

And we've selected cheeses.

Very carefully. We have, for example, king of the castle.

So that can be the king.

Thinking bishop, I guess that's going to be the bishop.

This cheese is an Italian one called caciocavallo. So that cavallo means

So that can be the knight.

Castle blue, that can be the rook. This cheese is actually Norwegian, and it is

often marketed under the name ski queen.

And this is good old -fashioned mousetrap cheddar, which can be our

case anybody thinks that we're getting a bit pretentious with the cheeses. Now,

these moulds, I believe, will allow me to fashion cheese into chess pieces. I'm

then going to invite Tony and Sim to have a match.

And the winner, I mean, you eat a piece if you take it, but the winner at the

end eats all the remaining cheese.

Now we just need to mould our cheese into chess.

I think I might hand this job over to a researcher on minimum wage.

Ethan?

Hello? How do you find making some chess pieces out of cheese?

I would love to.

It's a great chat -up line, after all.

Of course, if this should ever catch on, the...

Staff would be quite annoyed because it's quite a laborious process, but

it will be a special.

You know, cheese chess.

Cheese chess board will have to cost something like £250.

Oh, you can cheese.

Oh, please nobody tell Ethan, but just now, when I was just picking at the

cheese, I accidentally ate a bishop.

I don't think he noticed.

Oh, I said that.

Why was I so cocky about that?

I'll start again.

Oh, that's very runny and dicky.

That's not going to work.

Look at that. That's absolute rubbish.

Yes!

That is beginnings of a cheese chess set. It's pretty good, isn't it?

You saw it here first.

And once we've filled the other moulds and left them to set, we may actually be

able to have a game, if I haven't eaten it.

You join us back in Wiltshire, where I am solving problems big and small, as

well as thinking of ways to help Britain's wonderful but dwindling pubs,

mine by the way, bring in more customers.

and I've invited Tony and Simi over to showcase my latest idea.

Action. Several hours have now passed, and Ethan and I, by which I mean Ethan,

has produced what we believe is the world's first cheese chess set. And

here it is.

Very good. Can you recognise all the pieces, except I know you're going to

it's Bishop?

Yes. The bishop is made out of stinking bishop, which cannot be moulded into the

shape of a bishop. So it appears in this version of chess as a blob.

That's right.

But as long as you remember, blob, bishop.

B, blob, b, bishop.

Exactly. The rules of the game are the same as the rules of chess.

The difference is that if you take a piece, you can eat it. This is

cheese board disguised as a game of chess.

So, without further ado, let the tournament begin.

Go!

What have you done there?

I've just realised a flaw in this segment.

Surely there's no flaw.

Cheese or not, we're now watching a game of chess.

I don't want you to move it. No, you've touched it, I'll move it, that's the

rule.

The bishops are out. I'm starving, I want to eat it. I don't care.

I really wanted to try a bit of bishop.

Well, we got to eat him quite quick.

Okay, so you've both eaten the bishop.

Nice. How did the bishop taste?

Lush.

Your go, Tony.

You've got to keep the speed up according to the producers because

this is quite dull.

Okay.

I think I'll take it. Oh, how are you? I think I'll take this piece here.

James, you may as well try that piece.

It's a delicious piece of cheese.

The Italian cavallo cheese. I didn't try this during the manufacture of the

pieces.

Mmm. Yum.

That's pretty good, huh?

I've spotted another flaw in the game of cheese chess.

Before long, eating cheese takes over.

Do we like cheese chess? Love cheese chess.

Love cheese chess. It stops chess being boring because you become obsessed with

the cheese rather than the chess.

Cheese is the best bit.

You have to get a barrel of chess if you want the cheese. Exactly.

This makes you earn your cheese.

Earn your cheese.

That's fine.

No, I'm afraid that, sir, is an illegal move and you have eaten a piece of

cheese incorrectly.

You've laid your king into check and eaten the piece which you erroneously

I call that declaration.

There you go.

I didn't realise I was just gone for the cheese.

Simeon Oakley, the field of cheese is yours.

Fantastic.

James, would you like to share some cheese?

I would love a piece of cheese. What would you like? I'd like a king.

You'd like a king? I'd like a vanquished king. Would you like Tony's king? I'd

love Tony's king. I would like my king, because I quite like the cheese.

What about me?

Well, you've lost.

What about gentlemanly conduct?

No.

Okay, we're all...

That's not gentlemen's game.

That's poor form, Tony.

The lust for cheese overcame any thoughts of strategy or tactics or even

cunning. All the things that you associate with a really intellectual

chess. It's just cheese, cheese, give me some cheese.

And it's great, isn't it? What do you think? Fantastic.

Cheese chess.

Thank you for watching.

And before we crack open another packet of stinking bishop and lose all sense of

reason to cheese, we should get back to our soundproof room.

Now fully smothered in blankets and ready to silence those noisy neighbours.

Let's see if it's as good as it sounds.

Hello, I'm James May from Bat Jacket and Volvo Estate Agents, and I'm here to

show you around this character property that has become available in the south

-west of England.

It is, as you can see, clad in furniture blankets.

It's also insulated with furniture blankets, and it's lined with furniture

blankets. The roof is made of furniture blankets, and the floor inside is

beautifully finished in furniture blankets. Not this floor. The floor

they fool.

We're going to test it with some well -known noises.

outside and inside to see if it makes any difference. The noises are an

between Tony and Simi about whether or not Simi qualifies as a builder because

he built an extension on his house himself, trumpet practice, and

a noisy power tool.

On the stick right there is the decibel meter.

So here we go.

We're going to have half a minute of arguing in three, two, one.

I don't think it was an argument.

It was more of a discussion.

Yeah. You said I didn't build a house when I did build a house. You didn't

a house. You built an extension on a house. No. You didn't build a house. No,

no, no. You didn't build a house. I built a house. You added it onto the

I built a house.

Half a house. It's a half a house. It's not a house. I win. Almost.

Almost a whole house. Almost.

And time.

Thank you very much.

So, Lucy, argument outside is 87 .6.

Now, if you wouldn't mind going inside the sweaty, fetid tent.

Thank you.

And I will close the door.

You went through the wrong way then, Simmy.

Here is the multi -layered curtain door.

Can you hear me?

Sorry?

Go. Okay. So, all right. I kind of get what you're saying, but... Ah, there you

go. But I did build quite a lot of a house. Okay. We're getting somewhere

Almost a house. Half a house and half a roof.

Now I'm just going to get Charles fucking... Enough.

You can come out.

Lucy, the volume outside of the rail room was?

87 .6.

And inside the rail room, gentlemen, you peaked at 36.

36!

That's quite a difference.

That's massive.

Let's try trumpet practice.

And I've just remembered something. It is crucial to all of this. Okay. Is that

I can't play the trumpet.

Oh, brilliant.

And in fact, I've never tried.

It's all about embouchure, isn't it?

It's plenty difficult playing the trumpet.

What was the reading?

90 .3.

Oh, that's quite loud.

It's quite loud.

I'm going in.

I'm sorry, I've lost my strength.

72 .2.

Oh, what was it before?

I think it was 92 .3.

I know, it's 72.

72 .2.

That's not a bad result, is it? That's only about a quarter of the noise that

was. But let's see what happens with the power tool. The most annoying power

tool we have is the saw.

Are we ready?

84 .8 for power tool external.

Okay, Tony, into the...

medieval tent of heat and horrors.

Finger off trigger.

You can come out now.

I was worried you were going to put your hand through and do that.

So,

55 .8.

Play the game.

84 .8.

That was noticeably quieter. It was noticeably quieter.

I think this is quite remarkable because the greatest effect was, in fact, on

your row.

That was the biggest difference in volume between outside and inside, and

primarily what it's for. More people have arguments than are learning to play

the trumpet.

But similarly, if you have one of these in your house and somebody starts

playing the trumpet or having a row, you can go in there...

and be at peace.

Insulation works in both directions. When I go in here, I can't hear what you

lot are talking about.

You insult me, and I won't be able to hear it.

Oh, thank God he's gone.

God, he's just rubbish.

Awful.

Overrated has been.

That's weird, I could hear all of that.

That's fantastic.

Isn't it? It's really good. You can make this at home easily. You just need some

wood, two mates, some power tools, a big open space, lots and lots of screws, a

staple gun, 150 blankets, some fairy lights, a lamp and a film crew.

And you could do all this as well.

And it works.

We've done something that works.

Well done.

For once.

I'm happy to blow my own trumpet.

Back in Wiltshire, we're in the workshop where we spend our days coming up with

incredible inventions to solve life's annoying problems.

But sometimes, just sometimes, we like to kick back and relax.

Do you reckon if you were in the dark or blindfolded, and I handed you a

selection of tools, but you can only... Touch the handle.

Okay. And see if you can guess what it is. We could call it... Can you handle

the truth about tools?

Fair enough.

Do you want to play can you handle the truth, Timmy? Yeah, go on then.

Okay. Blindfold on.

Mm -hmm.

It's an, um, marking gauge.

A bit more specific, please.

A bit more specific?

Yeah.

An adjustable marking gauge?

You're a woodworker.

That's what you use power tools for most of the time in a CNC machine.

A double adjustable marking gauge.

It's a mortise gauge.

That's right, no points for Tony.

Half a point.

Half a point for getting... That's a mortise gauge because you set the

from the edge of the wood and then you set the size of your mortise.

He's got a blindfold on, hasn't he?

Oh, very good.

And that's the handle.

Yeah. Not pliers, is it? They're one of them things you punch holes in leather

with. Oh, that's pretty good.

Hey, can I keep it if I've guessed it right? No.

That's a rubbish game, this.

There's no prize.

Come on. You ready?

It's very light.

No idea.

What? What is it?

Well, you can take the blindfold off now because you've got nil plus.

OK, so you got one and a half out of three. That's 50%. That's

a C.

Now it's Timmy's turn to don the tea towel.

This is what I've done for a million years.

It's the tap -it adjusting tool for a Honda CB750.

That's a bit difficult, James. Yes, it is. But he's going to do that to me, I

know.

Handle only.

I'm going to say that's plastic, and it's for doing something up, but I don't

know what it is, and I don't know what it's called.

That's a zero, then, in my books.

It's the tappet adjusting tool for a Honda CB750.

Of course it is.

And it was for adjusting something.

Well, actually, yeah, you can have half a point for that, I think. Oh, come on.

Yeah, you can have half a point.

Ooh, good choice, sir.

Hand out.

Handle only.

That is a bevel of some sort.

Yes.

Ooh, you can only hold the handle. Oh, that's heavy.

All right, that is some kind of driver drill thing.

It's a drill. It's a drill, yes.

Very good.

I've got two and a half to beat. That's quite tricky.

Blindfold on?

Blindfold is on.

That's a wooden handle with some rivets in it.

Is it a marking out knife?

Perfect. Is it? Yeah.

Oh, yes.

That, oh, I know exactly what that is. That's the spokes change.

Okay, so the confession with this one, James, is I've got no clue what it is. I

know exactly what it is. Do you? Yeah.

Am I right in saying it's right -angled?

Yeah.

Is it cabinet scraper?

I think that's a veneer hammer.

Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah, nilpoir.

That means to me as well.

Join us next week for another thrilling episode of Can You Handle the True?

And now we must down tools and head over to the pub, as Piers is on his way back

to find out if we've managed to fix his broken toaster.

and along with it, perhaps restore some marital harmony to his home.

So this is Piers's toaster, which we have mended. It's quite difficult.

I mean, there was an easy way of mending it, which was just buy a new one of

those, but we didn't want to do that because we're not defeatist. And it

and this will transform his life, because so far he hasn't been able to

away from the toaster and leave it unattended. Let's bring him in. Where is

Piers is here!

James, hi.

Look at that.

Well, all you can see so far is that it's shiny.

Yes. That doesn't mean it worked.

Just before we go into this, I just want to say it is okay to become emotional.

Don't bottle anything up.

Your life was fundamentally ruined because you could not leave a toaster

designed to be left unattended.

Unattended. Absolutely. That's basically the problem, wasn't it? The good news

is that after, well, it was over four hours of painstaking work because we

didn't want to replace any of the original parts.

We could easily have just bought a new timer there, something like 25 quid.

But we discovered...

Having examined it very carefully, the timer works on a simple escapement

mechanism which has two pallets which work against the reciprocating gear

which was slightly worn out, and there's a little bit of end float in the shaft

associated with it, and if we push that with our fingernail, then moved it up by

about a quarter of a millimetre, the thing ran perfectly.

So, we made a phosphor bronze leaf spring from a bit of scrap I had in my

toolbox.

re -tapped an existing hole in the mechanism to take an M1 .5 screw and

the tension so that the shaft was pushed up by a quarter of a millimetre, and

now it works.

James, fantastic.

I think my toast will never taste the same again. Would you like a piece of

toast? You must have a bit with you. Well, we have some bread.

There's some bread.

Here is some locally sourced British butter.

There is a napkin, and here is some red jam.

Let's make a very exciting bit of television where a timer counts down.

Have you put it on the two -toast setting?

I always leave it... No, you mustn't do that.

You must have the two -toast setting on, but not the bun slot, otherwise you'll

overheat the elements and burn them out. And then you'll be bringing it back to

us to mend again.

OK, and we go for two and a tiny bit.

So now, basically, I could just walk away, make a cup of coffee, do whatever.

Try it.

Try walking away.

I don't need to, I trust you.

But you've been traumatised by this. You feel you can't. Just walk to the other

side of the pub. Righty. I'll walk away. There we go.

You have to go into the other room where you can't see it.

This is the first time in years that Piers has been able to walk away from

toaster while it's toasting.

Piers, you can come back in.

You haven't touched it. You're on one.

We haven't given it a nudge. You could have made your coffee by now.

And it smells like toast. There's nothing wrong with this bit. The

all working beautifully.

These things are infinitely repairable, as we've proved. And you enjoyed doing

it, didn't you, James?

Yes.

Now to see whether the timer will do its job and stop the toaster toasting.

Oh, there we go. It's got to the end.

Ah, perfect.

Look at that.

You tuck in.

So... I'm pleased to see you cut rectangularly. Yes, not triangles.

Triangular people are untrustworthy.

Right, here we go.

That's fine. It's the start of life, isn't it? Yeah. That's brilliant.

Everything is complete. Are you at peace?

I'm a happy man.

Well, we've made somebody happy.

And really, you can't ask for a greater privilege in life than that.

It's like saving a life, in a way. In fact, we sort of have done, haven't we?

Literally. Great.

Well, we'll probably call it a day at that, then, because it's good to quit

whilst you're ahead.

Absolutely.

Sim, thank you so much. James, thank you so much. It was really, really a

pleasure. Our absolute pleasure.

So, that's another successful repair job, and who knows, perhaps also...

A marriage restored.

Let's toast to that.