Living With Madeley
"Living With Madeley" is a nostalgic TV based podcast that attempts to take a humorous look at some of the most weird, wonderful and woeful moments in UK television history.
Titled "Living With Madeley" as neither host can remember a week of their lives where Richard Madeley hasn't been on their screens, join Andrew and Liam as they take you on a journey to TV past.
Living With Madeley
Series 8 Episode 7 - Robot Wars
Do you remember the thrilling clank of metal against metal in the iconic Robot Wars arena? Join us for a nostalgic romp through the grand finale of Series 4, with Andrew and Liam, the self-styled medallion man, as we navigate through the chaos and fun of robot battles. Even with a pesky cold, Andrew’s enthusiasm shines through as we explore the unique commentary style of Jonathan Pearce. His unforgettable lines added flair not just to Robot Wars but also the world of football commentary. Expect clips, laughs, and a few coughs as we unpack the eccentricities of the series.
Robot names like Robo-Savage, Rocky Botboa, and Full Metal Anorak are sure to spark memories of the ingenious creations from the show. We reminisce about the format and its evolution, such as the British Bulldog Games and Tug of War, which brought variety and excitement to the competition. Discover how Robot Wars captivated audiences on both sides of the Atlantic, and unveil a surprising connection to Joe Thomas from the Inbetweeners, who had a hand in building a finalist robot in Series 1. It’s a fascinating look at how the show bridged entertainment and engineering while maintaining its cult status.
Immerse yourself in the world of house robots like Sergeant Bash and Matilda, pondering their roles and the potential for even grander machines. We laugh over tales of near-disaster, imaginative robot designs, and the quirks of football fanaticism, all sprinkled with a dash of irony. As the episode wraps up, Andrew and Liam express gratitude for your patience and invite you to stay connected via Twitter and email, promising more entertaining episodes. Prepare for a journey that blends humor, nostalgia, and the thrill of mechanical warfare in a way only Robot Wars can offer.
Living with Maidly Living with Maidly Living with.
Speaker 2:Maidly Maidly. Living with Maidly. Hello and welcome to Series 8, episode 7 of the podcast Living with Maidly. This is a Nostalgic TV podcast. My name's Andrew got a bit of the podcast. Living With Madeley. This is a nostalgic TV podcast. My name's Andrew Got a bit of a cold. Apologies for that, but luckily I'm joined by self-styled medallion man, liam Marley. How's things? That's me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we were borderline tonight because we hope your cold sounds okay. Yeah, you get, really I had a bad cold and I hated it, so hopefully it's listenable and if not, you know what to do.
Speaker 2:Tough turnover turn it off. Yeah, you get really sort of anal, don't you about people having colds and stuff and they're doing radio.
Speaker 3:But the show must go on. I don't like people eating on radio or if they're ill.
Speaker 2:Do people eat on radio?
Speaker 3:That's like a meal on radio again, like Frank Skinner's, been caught out eating crisps and stuff, maybe that's one of the reasons he's not on air anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, rightly so but anyway, today I'm really excited about this one. It's Robot Wars. We're going to sort of do this episode in a way that we've not really done any other episode because there's that much to go on with Robot Wars. We said last week we're going to look at the grand finale of Series 4, which is from the year 2000, to sort of be a base of what we can go back to and stuff. But we're going to just try. This is going to be a very free and easy way of doing it, isn't it, liam?
Speaker 3:Yeah, this could be the future because we find that a lot of people actually like the ones where we've done little research and we just have a chat just to chew the fat, as they say, but and they're easy for us to do. So it's crazy us doing research on and episodes if actually people would rather hear it fairly relaxed. So yeah, we're going to try it, we're going to see what happens it could be a five minute episode it could be could be two hours special.
Speaker 2:Let's play the theme liam the mention, the theme tune.
Speaker 3:You have compiled a large collection of jonathan pierce clips that we're gonna cut at random not random moments, hopefully, like not mid-sentence, but we will put them in staggered throughout the episode. So you're going to cut at random, not random moments, hopefully like not mid-sentence.
Speaker 1:But we will put them in staggered throughout the episode.
Speaker 3:So you're going to hear some fantastic Jonathan Pearce commentary throughout of Robot Wars. Yeah, If you don't know Robot Wars, he's gone on to do mainstream football and radio, but yeah, at this point I don't think he was huge in this moment was he?
Speaker 2:No, I think it was before he joined the BBC he'd been doing Capital Gold. I mean, I sent you something earlier, didn't I? We'll not play it because there'd be loads of clips from him, but when he did.
Speaker 1:Channel 5,.
Speaker 2:He used to be commentating Channel 5, jp and Shearer scores. Shearer, this is so good. What I did tell you is the second goal he scores. I think it's Teddy last minute and he goes ready.
Speaker 3:Steady teddy yeah, I had it on in the background, yeah brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 2:I love jonathan pierce. I think he's my favorite commentator of the moment to this day. I just think he's just I don't know. I think he's genuinely knowledgeable, but I think he just don't take it that seriously. Do you see that one time when he said something along the lines of and this is something that I've said in many of my commentaries in the past, it's we've got a Desmond on his hands, then he pauses and goes 2-2. And he's so accurate himself as he says it.
Speaker 3:He does seem to enjoy himself, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:He's into the sheep's pen and this could be Lambs to the slaughter, because Bash and Shunt are closing in, and it could be Roast Lamb at that, if the torch comes out and it does.
Speaker 3:Lamb key bag big tangent straight away, but something we messaged about yesterday. Should we say detail on the midweek one? But if, if you know the famous Jonathan Pierce commentary when Canton Art Kung Fu kicks a crowd member, just have a look at the footage or the stills and look out for the coolest man. He's cool as a cucumber, isn't he?
Speaker 2:he's brilliant midweek I'll post when we're doing midweek. I'll post a picture of who we're talking about circling. See if you can spot him before we get to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, yeah see if you can spot some kind of alien or secret agent, or he's just I, anyone?
Speaker 2:so that's Cantona's kung fu kicking, scissor. Kung fu kicking, should I say this guy Everyone's like. You can see the faces everyone's got mouths open someone's like angry at the bike, there's this one guy in a leather jacket. It's almost as if he sees it every day.
Speaker 3:Keep an eye out for him.
Speaker 2:I don't know if anyone's ever noticed this guy before.
Speaker 3:I think he should be interviewed, rather than the guy who got kicked. Yeah, we'll try and Well we will. We'll share his picture and we might talk about him in midweek. But yeah, back to Robot Wars.
Speaker 1:There must be boys all over the time and space, and they're in the air. They're in the air and they're on fire. Get the fire brigade. Aye, aye, you're in trouble.
Speaker 3:The first thing I'll say is I think I'm a bit of an imposter here, because when we talked about Robot Wars, I said to you oh yeah, brilliant. I love Robot Wars I didn't watch as much of it as I thought, or I just saw very specific bits of it, because the theme tune meant nothing to me.
Speaker 2:No, the theme tune didn't mean anything to me and I've got to admit I've watched odds and ends of this, but I didn't really watch it, to be honest. Do you know?
Speaker 3:I'm supposed to be leading this, but we'll see kind of how extensive my notes are but do you know if the theme tune changed?
Speaker 2:I don't have the f***ing idea. I can't think of another version of it.
Speaker 3:To be honest, I can't think of like. Surely it went like this. I would perfectly accept that that stayed as it was throughout the whole run. Yeah, it's not a memorable theme tune. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not a memorable theme tune. Yeah, it's not a memorable theme tune. I mean, the one that I played is from Series 4, and that's where, obviously, the commentator always, or the voiceover always, came out with something I think about Craig Charles, just as it was coming on and that would say something like popped out of a baby or whatever. He says yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Pug-faced. No, he doesn't say that, does he?
Speaker 3:no, he doesn't yeah yeah, so so we see craig charles. I quite like craig charles, by the way. So pug face wasn't an insult, but yeah, we see. Uh, well, it is an insult, but it's meant in jest. We see craig charles and he's up on a the balcony. So the first few series were all filmed. The crowd were above the platform where the robots were going to do battle and we see Craig Charles looking quite sharp. But I think you've got some notes on Craig Charles.
Speaker 2:Well, not really notes, but we've mentioned this before that he coined. If I said to an old person a wooger, they'd say, ha ha, john Fashionew. No, it's Craig Charles. We've mentioned this before, but I've got a little bit more into it, and Craig Shaw gets really defensive about making up the term wooger. I saw on Twitter that somebody said something like oh, you've nicked this off John Fashionew and he put I used a wooger as the catchphrase on Cyberzone, which has been spoken about by Holly and Red Dwarf, as a replacement sound of a klaxon that we had. We had Fashionew on as a guest and he nicked it for Gladiators the man's a knobbered.
Speaker 3:Is it possible they both came up with it in isolation, or do you think, fasher?
Speaker 2:stole it.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Dara O'Brien then says Awuga was John Fasher and you. Obviously the comedian Dara O'Brien, awuga was John Fasher and you on Gladiators. You know that, though, don't you? To Craig Charles. Craig Charles responds by saying I think you'll find John Fasher, and you admitted he stole it from me in the national press.
Speaker 3:You knob and then Doro O'Brien said I'm sorry, I didn't know it was originally yours.
Speaker 2:Shrugs Always good to hear from you, craig, hope you're well. And Craig Charles said yeah, all good, don't worry, it's not important. Clearly is important Like it's furious. There's a couple of these, there's two or three things where someone will say oh, you've nicked it off, john. Fashion year, would you I? I mean, we're back out right now, don't we?
Speaker 3:so yeah, I understand his fury if he does know that he made it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah would you get that mad if someone said oh, you've nicked that off, andrew, you know, you fucking know that. Oh yeah, but he's furious, I like Rachel.
Speaker 3:Well, there's another layer to that as well, isn't there? Because then obviously I'll go on. Yeah, akibusi with his oh right, yeah, people used to say a wooga to him and he said if anyone does it again, I'll punch him in the face.
Speaker 2:Yeah because people used to go to him in the street and go a wooga, he's never said it. He's never said it. It was Craig Charles. And then it got more famous from Fash the Bash pinching it. What, anyway, improved?
Speaker 1:design Improved design on the last three series. More durable, harder hitting, more powerful flipper, more controllable. It exudes gas when angry. So what? So does my mum.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So Craig Charles is up there. He does a bit of sort of cheeky chat to the camera about what's going to happen. It tells us I mean, it's blew my mind a little bit. This is series four and there were a thousand entrants. So there were a thousand people who wanted to build robots. I don't know if you had to have something built or if you could just send a sketch or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they whittled it down to 96. Oh, you shouldn't laugh. Oh dear, oh dear, Poor old William Ryle, he's only 13.
Speaker 2:Well, we get a list of the robots at the start, and not all 1,000, but the ones who get to the final. Jp goes through them all, like we've got on TV.
Speaker 3:You're not going to read them all, though, are you?
Speaker 2:No? No, but what I'm going to use this for is I did look at some of my favourite. Do you have any favourite robot names that were used in Robot Wars?
Speaker 3:Well, the only ones that stood out to me were ones that I do remember from when I watched it, so Razor and Stinger, but I mean, they were quite like Evil, weevil and Mousetrap.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I've got some here that I wrote down. This is from all the series, not just Series 4. See what you think of these Robo-Savage. Yeah, good, yeah. Yeah, rocky Botboa, are they just robot puns you've picked out here? Not all of them, because this next one's called Tetanus Booster Brilliant, isn't it? Barbaric response. I felt like that. Barry, just Barry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because someone, when I was reading up on some things, he kept talking about Barry and I kept thinking who's this Barry?
Speaker 2:Yeah it's a robot, yeah, yeah it's a robot, yeah. Plunderbird. You're a fan of that, you sure it weren't Plunderbird, plunderbird, I've got written down here that I've.
Speaker 3:I must have misheard then. I thought that was the RAF team who come up later on.
Speaker 2:Full Metal Anorak. Yeah, psycho Sprout. I love this one. I think it's on this series as well. Suicidal Tendencies.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is in this series, yeah. Such a good name that I don't know if you'd get away with that now.
Speaker 2:Suicidal Tendencies, judge Shred, fat Boy, tin Arnold, terminager, don't make Like, doesn't work at all.
Speaker 3:It's not. It's neither works does it.
Speaker 2:No, no, arnold Terminiger er Saint Agro and Axe Cden. Yes, he's got an axe on it and obviously one of my favourites is one of the house robots, which is Sergeant Bash.
Speaker 1:I love Sergeant Bash all of despair can be seen inside war, as the front comes off, and then dead metal and the wedge hog come on, the wedge hog, the wedge hog yeah, so for this series, we're told.
Speaker 3:This is why I'm glad we decided to not do this as a run-through of what's happening, because this is is now how many is it? Is it 16 heats?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is, yeah, and it's just like it's something like it's a 45-minute show.
Speaker 3:This is about 16 minutes, I think, and it's just going through each heat. Who won? Who went out what?
Speaker 2:happened, which is great by the way for someone like me who never saw it, and great, by the way, for someone like me who never saw it and you get to see how they got to the final. This won't work nowadays, because more people binge watch things, aren't they?
Speaker 2:so you're not going to want to watch 15, 20 minutes of stuff that you've already just seen. So if you're watching robot wars now, imagine you'll binge watch it like and watch all the episodes in a row or whatever, but with this the whole half of the episode is basically just stuff that you've already seen.
Speaker 3:if you've watched the series, yeah, yeah and I suppose, obviously, you'd just skip that bit, wouldn't you, if you'd kind of come from there. But yeah, I found that quite painful really, and actually as a hindsight watch, if you were going to watch this particular episode, I don't think there's any reason to choose this one in particular. I think probably well, as we'll come to.
Speaker 2:I reckon because of the final, but I did look into this and people said series seven or series four were the best series, but no one actually said the grand finale was the best one, because a lot of them like team the road watchers get smashed to pieces and but these are the best of the best that we see, aren't they of this series?
Speaker 3:so the bit I found interesting. And again, as someone who thought I watched a lot of robot wars, I don't remember a single one of these events, but from Series 1 to 4, after that. So presumably I watched it after Series 4, I can only guess, but they used to have in the heat, so in the early rounds they weren't just a battle of the robot against the robot to see which one was kind of won. They had the British Bulldog Games.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Football Labyrinth, Snooker, Stock Car Racing, Sumo, Basho, Joust, King of the Castle, Pinball, Warrior, Skittles and Tug of War. So they're probably a better watch, I would say, if they've got like a mix of different events in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like. Yeah, I mean I always remember it as, like I say, I wasn't a big keen viewer of anything like that. Do you know what I was amazed by doing some research into it is it's miles bigger than I ever thought it was. I knew it was like a bit of a cult classic or whatever, but I mean, obviously it's still going. People go around the country and stuff like that to watch it and it's massive Robot Wars or BattleBots as it's called in America.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, so it started in America first. I love this bit, it's made me laugh this. So Robot Wars was a brainchild of Mark Thorpe and this is in the USA. So it was designed and working for Lucas Toys, a branch of Lucasfilm, obviously Star Wars. In 1992, he had the initial idea for a robot combat sport after unsuccessfully attempting to create a radio control vacuum cleaner. I love the idea that the vacuum cleaner wasn't doing what he wanted, so he thought you know what? I'm going to put a face on this and make another robot to just smash that one to bits.
Speaker 2:Well, how bad was the vacuum cleaner? It was just smashing things around.
Speaker 3:His vacuum cleaner went wrong, so I think he just invented something else to smash it up. I think that's where he got it from. It's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 2:It was that amazing robot control vacuum. Yeah, it's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 3:I'm surprised you never made one actually.
Speaker 2:I thought you'd be right out your wheelbarrow, as I say.
Speaker 3:I wouldn't have the ability or the patience, I don't think, to keep it repaired and maintained. Do you know who did it?
Speaker 2:actually In Series 1, joe Thomas, who plays Simon in the Inbetweeners. He was one of the students who built. One of the finalists in Series 1 called Tracer. I can imagine that. Yeah, yeah, he must have been really young then Series 1.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, he's younger than us. I think he was a bit geeky, wasn't he?
Speaker 2:There's a lot of sort of yeah, I mean obviously Lots of big glasses and like sort of bearded men like wandering about in the background.
Speaker 2:It's interesting. It seems to mix the ones I've seen. It's almost like a mix of sort of old men with glasses on, sort of like. Obviously they're in the I don't know, just like building things, like certain people do, or whatever, and this is like their domain hobby, and then a lot of students and kids and stuff like that. You never really see, or I didn't see when I was going through it, what your class is like, I don't know, like a football going fan or something like that, or do you know what I mean? They're all like quite uh, eccentric.
Speaker 3:I think it's fair to say, yeah, I reckon you could pick them out of the lineup, couldn't you like? There's, yeah, five people here. Two of them made a robot wars robot, but I like the trash with a beard and the kid with the thick glasses don't mess with the rear end of matilda.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's a grisly place to be there. There's no life in the Sabre Zoo now. Oh, they need a good drummer out there Phil Collins anywhere?
Speaker 2:No, he's not here. I like the trash talk, though you know, like before games. I mean not in this one as much, because obviously these four are all great, although Pussycat quite cocky in this one, but I like that we're going to take them down and all that. You quite cocky in this one, but I like that we're going to take them down, and all that shit I mean before, like wrestling, it's terribly done though a lot of it. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:Desperately trying to build up this sort of drama and they almost wanted bad guys and like the audience to boo them and stuff. But they were like yeah, we that Like pouring oil over kids' heads and stuff, like get out of my fucking way, I don't know what you're turning it into.
Speaker 2:Beep Like yeah, well, just like it's on the attitude here, robot Wars attitude here, I think that would have got viewing figures.
Speaker 3:It would have actually it did anyway, didn't it?
Speaker 2:I would have definitely turned it into that, but yeah.
Speaker 3:So the four semi-finalists Hypnodisc is playing Pussycat in the first round and Stinger against Chaos 2, who was seeded number one and actually won it the previous year. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I've read that the big three in the original run before it came back, because obviously it didn't go off air for a bit, and then came back with Dora O'Brien, funnily enough weren't it who presented it. The big three, the original run, or the three most popular were Chaos 2, Razor and HypnoDisc. And we get Chaos 2 and HypnoDisc in this one, yeah.
Speaker 3:HypnoDisc comes back, actually the following series, but again only finishes fourth. So the closest they ever got was runner up the series before this, where they lost to Chaos 2.
Speaker 2:I think it's a bit I mean, I don't know the rules here. If there's proper Robot Wars fanatics out there, I massively apologise for both of us here for not knowing much about this, but at the same time I watched was it HypnoDisc versus Pussycat? I think it was, yeah, and I don't know how HypnoDisc lost that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I must admit I thought it was a bit of a controversial decision that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it went to the judges. I must admit I thought it was a bit of a controversial decision that yeah because it went to the judges. I think it was that one. It might have been the other one, but I think it was that one Made of plastic.
Speaker 1:It's made of plastic.
Speaker 3:So yeah, if it goes to the judges, it's based on aggression, damage control and style. They're the four categories that they score them on. And I must admit, yeah, I thought the same. I thought it was a bit of a poor decision there. But we're not experts, are we? Sorry, it's.
Speaker 2:Chaos 2 versus Stinger. I thought Stinger Chaos 2, I can't remember which fucking one it was, it wasn't Hypnodisc. Hypnodisc did get hammered, I think, by a pussycat, but it was the other one. I think Chaos 2 beat Stinger. Sorry, yeah. Yeah, you're right, that's right. Sorry, yeah, the Stinger would be my favourite, isn't it?
Speaker 3:so Stinger was made up of. They're huge, these things, by the way they're all like 80 kilos. They're like the weight of a full grown man, like the but hamster robots are even bigger though, aren't they? Yeah, well, again they break their own rules in the middle. That can swing around and bash things. But yeah, I thought, yeah, I hope Stinger wins and I thought it did enough, but did no get Do you want to actually elaborate on what the because we're saying house robots.
Speaker 2:I didn't know what house robots were until I started watching this so yeah, alright then.
Speaker 3:So, and in the arena, I think it was a rectangle initially and it became a square later on, but you're talking a big area. I wrote down somewhere so it started off as 10 by 15 meters series one to three. It was quite a big platform and there were different areas of them, but there were bits where spikes came up, there were pits that you could fall into and once you fell into one of those, you were immobilised. There were things on the floor that could flip you. But also, what they had is certain areas of the go on. It's called I've definitely written this down somewhere. So there's certain areas, control patrol zones or something like that, cpzs or I'll correct that if I see it as we're going. So there's certain areas. If you stray into the area, the house robots can get involved with the fight and they are controlled by people in charge of the game.
Speaker 3:They can't win it, but they can do damage to robots to get in their territory.
Speaker 3:So we've got various different examples of those Corner Patrol Zones. They were in CPZ, yeah, so they didn't have to be under 100 kilos. So Sergeant Barsch had a flamethrower, which was against the rules of contestants because they couldn't have a projectile weapon. Cassius Chrome, who was only in the first series, 250 kilos. They had Dead Metal, growler Matilda, and this one just blew my mind. They had a robot called Mr Psycho. I think it was just in one series, 750 kilos. That's just crazy. That's like a car driving about in there. Yeah, so they were there.
Speaker 3:I seem to remember it being a bit of injustice at times, because yeah, well, I've gone on Reddit they could get involved and just like smash one to bits, like chop it off, and it just just like, oh well, that's. I went on the.
Speaker 2:Reddit community in BattleBots, which is basically the American version of Robot Wars. I think it's pretty much similar. They don't have house robots and their fans often come onto the Reddit site of the Robot Wars and say you know the Robot Wars Reddit site? I should say and say stuff like why do you have them all? Why do you have these? They just ruin it because they just come out and just smash things. They ruin the actual game because they're that more powerful than you know the other two robots.
Speaker 2:Fucking overpowered robots are killing this game, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know if Chad's listening, I think I have one American listener. Let us know if he watches BattleBots and what he thinks about it. But it's very. But the English Robot Wars fans the British Robot Wars fans, should I say are very like protective of the house robots. They're like this is how we do it here.
Speaker 3:They're a big going on between the two. So I get like in some of the early series where they had sort of the non-violent ones almost, there was one called Sumo Bash where it was a house robot.
Speaker 2:I thought it was Sergeant Bash, weren't it?
Speaker 3:I can't remember who you were up against. I'm not sure. I don't think it was actually, but you had to try and push it out of the. It might be shunt or something like that, but you have to try and push it.
Speaker 2:Shunt is one of them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you have to push it out of the circle. I think there's only one that did it, so it was all about how long you could stay in there. But yeah, that's fine. I think that's good entertainment. But I think if one is it Sergeant Bash, it just picks it up and just carries it to a hole and just drops it in. It's like, yeah, it's easy, easy mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean. Magnificent beast though, aren't they?
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, where does it end, would you Do?
Speaker 2:you mean, where does it end?
Speaker 3:Well, obviously it's kind of faded away, but how would you bring it back? Would you watch them if they were bigger, if these were like massive, like the size of houses? Surely that would be brilliant to watch, that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean, would they be slower? I don't know, yeah, yeah, why not? I mean.
Speaker 3:Every weapon like nuclear bombs and bombs and lasers and all sorts like fire on the moon. That's probably a bit.
Speaker 2:But I think as well. I think obviously the great thing about it is anybody can enter it, so you could build one of these. You couldn't build a seven-foot robot, could you in your own house? Maybe you could. I've seen some of your snowmen that you've done before, Very impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I almost built an igloo, yeah, I remember you building an igloo so you know it could be done. But realistically it's obviously for the contestants who go in and they can build these little robots. You know what I'm imagining. So I'm building a seven-foot like robot in the shed just to go on robot wars. Is there like a cut-off point where, like I certain, weight.
Speaker 3:I think you're thinking of insects, aren't you?
Speaker 2:Like insects, can't be over a certain size or a certain skeleton, it doesn't work. Yeah, exactly, I think like a robot's the same.
Speaker 3:Once it gets so big, it just can't move.
Speaker 2:No. What I mean is, though could you build a seven-foot robot and enter it into robot wars?
Speaker 3:As long as it was under 100 kilos, yeah, I don't think you're breaking any rules, none that I read maybe maybe it has to fit within certain dimensions. So possibly, I don't know the one, the main ones that I read, with the weight and that the, the, uh, oh, go on, uh, certain safety things, I think they brought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah concerns.
Speaker 3:But yeah, the weight and the non-projectiles, they were the main things. There's the rear quarter if the left and over goes, alligator well, I've never seen an Alligator turn itself up and over. I've never actually seen an Alligator, you understand the co-presenter in this one is not actually Phillip Forrester, is it? No, it.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Julia Reid, who the voiceover calls Jules quite a few times, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, jp's obviously having a bit of banter with Philippa and Jules and Jane Middlemas did, didn't she as well?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think just one series at the end. I don't know anything about Julia Reid. Did she go on to do anything else?
Speaker 2:No, I looked at a Twitter page, a Wikipedia page, and there weren't nothing much there. To be honest, I mean, I've not really got much from Philippa Forrester, who's obviously a much more famous person, but she did see the hypnotist Paul McKenna once on her show On his show, should I say and he helped her get over her fear of snakes and it worked so well that she got his self-hypnosis, hypnosis tapes to relax herself.
Speaker 3:I was going to say it worked so well. She's now a snake charmer or something like that.
Speaker 2:No. So it goes to show you know a lot of people you know they don't work. I've met a few people who've got hypnotized, like get over anxiety and depression and things like that, and apparently great results. So give McKenna a ring if you're feeling a bit low. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think actually we probably should do an episode on Paul McKenna, the old ITV show. Do you ever watch that? He'd load people up on stage and get them to do stupid stuff.
Speaker 2:Was it a comedy show Like a sitcom?
Speaker 3:No, but it was like Laugh Out Loud, like he'd say to somebody oh right, I thought you meant he was in a sitcom.
Speaker 2:Sorry, it was a little bit like it was random.
Speaker 3:But like you're going to be furious every time the audience clap, you're going to think that they're insulting your family and you're going to get furious. And then the next one would say every time she gets furious, you're going to think she's turned into, like I don't know, a monster or something like that.
Speaker 2:This sounds great fun. It was absolutely brilliant television, yeah.
Speaker 1:I've seen it in my sister actually.
Speaker 2:A festival, a Leeds festival, and they got like seven people on stage and, yeah, really good, really funny. But after about ten minutes I was bored for a moment and I went to see a low-rate indie band probably.
Speaker 1:Pork. Mmm, can you smell the barbecued pork? I'll have a loin.
Speaker 3:Would you entertain the idea of AI-powered robots?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, would they take over? Do you think? I don't know? Because I like the idea that you have to control your robots, because I think that adds an extra bit of the competitiveness for me, because there's one I don't know if it's pussycats or hypno-dissers because they're saying which one's controlling it and it's like, right, I've got to be on my A game. It's going to be very nerve-wracking. That gives the human element to it, doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, that's what I was thinking. Do you think it needs to maintain that If these were just computers? Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:Because then you're just watching robots smash each other, and that's what you are anyway. But at the same time he gets into a bit of difficulty, like gets into one of the house robots grabbing hold of him. So I've watched a few now and they can sort of get out of those massive grips that they've got these house robots and stuff, and obviously that's the person with the remote control doing it, and I think they're some of the most exciting bits yeah, fair enough, fair play didn't you say your favourite robot was Razor?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, yeah. It didn't enter for Series 7 after a controversial battle against Tornado in the European Championship. They won the judges' decision, but the team vetoed 2-1 to concede the match on the ground that they'd been immobilised and Ian, the team captain, who was the one who went against it, led to the team breaking up. And that were it, even though we're one of the most famous and best robots Razor won it in Series 6, which I would say.
Speaker 3:I was definitely watching that and it was runner-up in sorry won Series 5, runner-up in Series 6. That was a tornado battle apparently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in Series 6, even though the judges went for him, two of the Razor people who were controlling the Razor or whatever said no. To be honest, we lost that one. But Ian, what would you do? Would you take the plaudits? I'd definitely take the plaudits. Yeah, it's like you're winning with an offside goal, isn't it? You go, well, that's football, mate, that's Robo. That's what the officials said. I wouldn't want to win. Do all the football clichés thing. Yeah, at the end of the season.
Speaker 3:No, I wouldn't want to win it that way. If he was immobilised, fair play to the two who did that.
Speaker 1:Did they win any money? I?
Speaker 3:don't think so. No, they don't talk about any prize money. They don't talk about.
Speaker 2:They get like a little trophy, don't they? Yeah, just the glory. I mean they genuinely do take it sort of the people who are in it like they say you've come second at Robot Wars and they go. I can't believe I'm second. It's not like you go on quiz shows and you go oh, I've had a great day and stuff like that. They're genuinely like proud, understandably so. They've gone through like they beat a thousand other people to get to second place or whatever.
Speaker 3:I mean. I've not got any evidence to counter this, so possibly there, possibly, there are some exceptions, but it seems to be the high up seeded ones. Do well every year.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of repeats. Down comes the axe missed. Down comes the axe missed. Down comes the axe.
Speaker 3:So, like Chaos 2 that won, this one was the winner of the previous series. Razor as we just said, has come back. There was Tornado comes back. Firestorm 3 becomes Firestorm 4. Yeah, the last two series 9 and 10, Carbide won and Eruption was a runner-up, and then Eruption won and Carbide was a runner-up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see Pussycat on this one I watched came second, and that were a massive shock, because I think it was seeded 19th.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, but actually all the final four were seeded, weren't they? And yeah, the bit again I found is quite dull in this show. So what they did again, because it's the final end of series one, they gave out all different awards as well, but it's a bit dull, they did a most original, yeah, but we're all the same robots again, weren't it basically?
Speaker 3:sportsmanship, best design, best engineer, best newcomer. And then they did Sumo Bash, sumo Basho Award, which was for the one that did best in Sumo Bash, Sumo Basho, yeah, pinball Warrior. And yeah, I think. I think it goes on to the final after that. So we've already mentioned the winner, but Chaos 2 wins. It nearly flips, putty Cat out of the ring right at the end I thought that would have been a good ending that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think Pierce wanted that to happen as well, didn't he? To be fair.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he sort of says three times previous they've managed to do it.
Speaker 1:But not today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, really good. I wouldn't say watch this episode. I'd say maybe have a look at some old Robot Wars if you've never heard of it, because it's pretty good. But yeah, there's not tons for you in this particular episode.
Speaker 2:But I really enjoyed it. It was something that a couple of people have asked us to do and I thought I don't know, I didn't really watch it, but I can absolutely see why it was so big. Did you know? Obviously it went off air. Did you know? When they got rebooted they had a celebrity special. Have you read this?
Speaker 3:I did see there was a celebrity special. I didn't read anything about it, I've got some guess who one of the contestants was.
Speaker 2:Did they have to actually build it? I don't know really. It just said it featured celebrities. Sorry, they had robots designed for them by and they mentored them during the special, so they controlled it.
Speaker 3:So somebody we've mentioned previously.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll give you some of the other ones. I don't really know Olympians Alistair Brownlee and Johnny Brownlee, maggie Eden Pocock, susie Perry, jordan Stephens, scott Mills, robbie Savage. And if I sayie Perry, jordan Stephens, scott Mills, robbie Savage, and if I say to you the cold hand of control.
Speaker 3:The cold hand of control.
Speaker 2:Maybe a metaphor for what the government are doing.
Speaker 3:Oh, um, oh go on. Metal meets metal.
Speaker 2:Neil Oliver.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, neil Oliver, what's your name?
Speaker 2:Well, did I actually lose, though, or is that what the government wants you to think?
Speaker 3:A spinning disc of metal or a spinning disc of controversy from the government?
Speaker 2:So as I look at it, I thought, oh my God, he's been on it all of it. His Wikipedia page is unbelievable because he starts off just in being a normal TV presenter. He was a coast guy weren't he for ages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and it's just like. Yeah, and it's got like I don't know. Three small paragraphs about his career and then Political Views takes up three quarters of his wikipedia page. It starts off with scottish independence and he says, and like he's going on about that for ages. And then he said, uh, the scottish national party, oh sorry, all of a sudden, the scottish, he didn't want scottish independence and he says it was a cancerous presence. He says I'm a british citizen and this covid19 world government, climate change. It's incredible how he just switches from this fairly normal TV historian to all this mad stuff. And he's arguing with the board of British Jews and things like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolute madman. I mean he's quite entertaining though, but yeah, it'd be interesting to see him on that, just to see whether there was any any signs of where he was going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Something else that I've made some notes on was the, the controversy. So I think you've sort of seen this as well, but the third series was the third wars, as they called it. It was marred with multiple behind-the-scenes incidents.
Speaker 3:I have not seen this actually no go on. So it ended up with a guy called Rex Garrard of Team Cassius who actually walked out of it and he said that the standards were shocking. He said that one of the safety executives they had no understanding of what they were supposed to be assessing he said he was drilling a hole through some plastic Pyrex, not Pyrex, like I don't know, some kind of plastic material with a small drill bit. He said like unbelievably safe and somebody came and told him his activities weren't safe.
Speaker 3:And he said well, perhaps you should look at the fact that some of these robots don't have a cutoff switch and that you know some of them are actually really really dangerous. But you know some of them are actually really really dangerous, but you don't seem interested in that. And he said they just didn't want to get involved with the big issues. So she ended up walking away from it. But actually, what I found in the notes as well, that preceded that. So in the first series I love this. How casual this is. There are a few notable incidents occurred during the filming of the series of the first wars. Host Jeremy Clarkson was almost killed when dead metal saw detached from the house robot flying at more than 200 miles an hour and embedded in a concrete wall behind where he was standing. Yeah, it's outrageous, isn't it?
Speaker 2:yeah, I read that and the production was shut down. And then they got bulletproof uh glass into the latest series.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not even sure if that'd stop a saw at 200 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:That's the reason he left, isn't it?
Speaker 3:he says Well, do you know what Good day at work I've had better 200 miles an hour sore at my head.
Speaker 2:I suppose that's not too bad, I suppose, as a Clarkson. Yeah, it's quite an odd one to do, isn't it I?
Speaker 3:suppose Clarkson he's from Donny. Of random way he over extends certain words.
Speaker 2:It's more like Simon, isn't it? It was the hardest accent to do. I think just to talk about this, richard Hammond is quite hard. Do you know the sort of people who don't really have any sort of thing to the voice? I can't really.
Speaker 3:If you only kind of exaggerate, you'd have to kind of hey, hey, I'm Richard Hammond. He's not high-pitched, is he?
Speaker 2:No, he's not no, you could get James May fairly. I mean, I can't do it, but I can imagine it must be so hard. Impressionist I don't know. There must be.
Speaker 3:That's why they all do. I do not agree with that. In the workplace I did that as Michael Caine, which is not even In the workplace, You're not surprised the bloody door's off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't forget it. Yeah, send us in. Actually it's obviously a sand gym, but send us in people who you don't think it's possible to do an impression of.
Speaker 3:Well, we could. We said we'll do a mid-week Accent Wars, but we so we'd have to. We'd have to. If anyone wants to send us any accents on Twitter, we'd have to call it Accents War as a DM?
Speaker 2:yeah, send us some slides, and then we won't open it until live in the episode maybe yeah, I mean realistically. How do you do, phil Schofield? I'm an egomaniac doesn't sound anything like him but it's his.
Speaker 3:I reckon you'd guess that were him, though, wouldn't you well?
Speaker 2:yeah, be in my top three. Yeah, definitely. I mean like Mabley's got like yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Sometimes it's speech pattern more than it's action isn't it.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's those people who don't really have. Craig Charles always stuns me because he's always more scouse in real life. Yeah, sometimes it's speech pattern more than it's action, isn't it? But yeah, it's those people who don't really have. Craig Charles always stuns me because he's always more scouse in real life than I remember.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I wrote this down. I've got rid of it now, but I wrote that down and I thought am I being stupid? I'm glad you said this because I thought, Craig, I thought he's always been that scouse. Craig Charles, it's going to be great today. Can't wait for the teams to get involved. It's going to be fantastic. It's going to be a fantastic day today. Craig Carragher, Craig yeah, Craig Charles, he didn't come back, did he? For the final series? Obviously, as you said, Dara O'Brien took over. I think JP is the only one who actually did both series, because obviously, it's been cancelled again now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, that's. It's been cancelled again now. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Jp's the only consistent one throughout.
Speaker 2:Do you think he, and do you know he don't watch them live as well? Jonathan Pearce, he, like, watches a recording of it and then commentates on it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can believe that because it said that series we watched took five months of filming. There's no way he's there every day for five months is there?
Speaker 2:Imagine that I can't go it today. I don't know why I'm doing that. I think I mentioned the war.
Speaker 3:It's his life. Yeah, I cannot go today. I am watching Robot Wars again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he got hammered around this time for his Channel 5 commentary because people were saying that he was too excitable and stuff like that Turns.
Speaker 1:There's nothing lazy and layabout about these students. It's up and at them and in the corner and the cpz infernal contraction could get us a kilowatt slam any moment. Get out, get out, wake up, get out of bed.
Speaker 2:I know you probably haven't heard that too often in your student lives, but I'm telling you to do it now I was talking to ben your boys probably today actually when we were talking a little bit about robot wars and I said that I think for his last year before he retires he should go back to that way of commentating.
Speaker 2:Well, just like absolute madcap again yeah it was entertaining it wasn't ridiculous, like go out in a high World Cup final, give it JP, england versus Germany. And Tommy, tactics, tuchel has tactics, tuchel, has Tactics Tuchel. I don't know what he does. You know what I mean? Just mad stuff.
Speaker 3:Harry Kane is on the plane, but he's off the plane and he's giving pain. People have compared Thomas Tuchel to Pinocchio in appearance, but he's pulling the strings tonight it's brilliant.
Speaker 2:Some of them, like when he's on this, because you can tell he is, although he's not there live, he's watching, watching it live Because some of his anecdotes and things or whatever just don't work, he'll just say I'll just tail off. He'll say something like I don't know, and he has got it all over his face a little bit like well, I don't know what, like actually. Then he'll just say that at the end they're like brilliant Ghost in a machine, a gremlin in the works.
Speaker 3:yeah, hasn't got enough power still up coming in, but holding the seesaw down.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's demonic and that's evil for evil for a panic attack as it stands, he's in my top 10 humans.
Speaker 3:Jonathan Pearce oh wow just another very casually mentioned incident. So another incident in series 2 occurred in Heat B when Wheelasaurus knocked off Sergeant Bash's flamethrower during his gauntlet run, causing the evacuation of the whole building due to butane canister being punctured and leaking gas.
Speaker 2:Fucking hell. It's maddening.
Speaker 3:You took your life into your hands, weren't you? Because early on you were above the robots, as we mentioned. But one thing they had to bring in bulletproof glass. Initially it was just Perspex, but then it became bulletproof glass around the arena. There were several incidents. I mean, these had really heavy metal discs spinning and smashing bits off other machines. And yeah, in a way it's kind of lucky nobody ever got serious there.
Speaker 2:Really Well imagine if I were in there I don't know if I mentioned it, obviously, but my dyspraxia, I mean actually we were talking about this before. I don't know what yours is, but we were talking about if we were doing his own robots, what would we have? And obviously I'd be dyspraxia man as my robot.
Speaker 3:We said, like what we'd build into yours. It's quite clever because it's like a random number generator where it doesn't know what it's going to do. You might try and drive it forward, but it decides just to go left and swing like a weapon or something like that. It has no concept of what it's going to do. What would you call it?
Speaker 2:Just Dyspraxia man.
Speaker 3:Dyspraxia.
Speaker 2:Man, you could do like a Dysprax Robot. I don't think there's much you can do, is there D Disprax machine? Disprax machine. You could do that. Disprax sake instead of for facts sake. Absolutely shy. For facts sake, for Disprax sake, yours has got to be like the Irish Rover on it where I don't know. It just gets easily irritated. Imagine that. Oh, he's irritated. It's like sort of burning up, like sort of set up, like sort of set on fire or something oh, the other machine's moved and he's not happy, you can see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I don't know what to do. He's left the door open.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, he's not going to be happy about that. Just go off to loads of flames he's self combusted again.
Speaker 3:um, burning rubber. I like he's self-combusted again, burning rubber. In all seriousness, I like the sort of flipper ones. I like the ones that can do the flips. I think they were the good ones. I liked Razor because it looked like it kind of could be a flipper. It was like a sharp V but then it had the big spike on the top that could come down and close down and stuff Well on the flipper.
Speaker 2:This is not one of the audio clips that we've been putting in, but there's one where because it's a bit too long, is where JP says, oh, he's flipped him into the air. In the air tonight, someone get Genesis. And he goes yeah, can someone get Genesis? We're coming in the air tonight. It's a Phil Collins solo song for a kick-off. It don't work and it's just, it's so shit how he does it.
Speaker 3:I like that though, because that's clearly it's not like one of the well rehearsed lines he's written it down before and said I'm going to get that in somewhere.
Speaker 2:He's like he's just.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm talking about, jp oh, that's not too much of a weapon, is it really? Oh, and that is, look at, look at that Japanese blade thrusting down Lee-Bot Pepper-Bot. You could pour pepper out of that Lee-Bot machine now, what do you think Maitley would go for?
Speaker 2:I think it'd be a suave like sort of I can imagine it sort of having really good sort of defence but not much attack.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just sort of skulking around waiting for the other ones to knock themselves out.
Speaker 2:I bet it's really fast. I don't know why, like, oh he's swimming around the Maidling Machine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just yeah, I think you're right. I can't see it being that sort of like out for the kill, just out to survive, almost.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:Porky Parry is Well, they do offer it drunk, don't they? So it just fall apart. I think as soon as he started going there, he started blaming ref.
Speaker 3:I think there'd just be that many weapons on it, It'd just be like a spinning chain that'd get tangled in a blade and it'd just crush itself in minutes, wouldn't it Like just smash itself?
Speaker 2:to bits. Think how much you'd be blaming everyone else as well for it.
Speaker 3:Well you, can't, can you, Because you can't have projectiles. It'd be brilliant if you could have a cinnamon gun like a sprayed out cloud of cinnamon.
Speaker 2:You could call it that, yeah, the cinnamon machine or something, the cinnamon, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Cinnamon from Canada.
Speaker 2:Cinnamonator.
Speaker 3:Yeah cinnamonator.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's only more you can think of. Let us know, but have you got any more, Liam, or have we wrapped up for Robot Wars?
Speaker 3:I could think of more, but I haven't got any more. Yeah, I don't know, I don't think I would. Like I said I don't think I would want to do it. I can imagine the behind-the-scenes stuff, because there's a bit actually where there's supposed to be a third and fourth place final.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this one, this one. I thought that and they just hit that.
Speaker 3:Hitting of this basically says, yeah, no, he's damaged the gearbox and probably not going to be ready. It's a couple of days work to fix. I just spent a couple of days just exclusively on that, fixing it.
Speaker 2:I could not be bothered with that. I didn't like that because they got third place by default. Again, would you take that third place if it's by default?
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, if they can't compete, that's not. You're not exploiting a rule there. They're not fit for purpose, are they? So yeah, I would accept that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fair play, anyway. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Someone who didn't watch it before. Obviously we're trying to cover 19 series, so if you are an aficionado, we've obviously not touched the surfaces.
Speaker 3:But as someone who didn't watch it in its prime or even when it came back, I really enjoyed that yeah, and these sort of slightly random chats about certain things might be a way we can touch on some of the bigger things that we stayed away from, some of the multiple series that we can just talk about our favorite characters or moments. So we'll see, see how we get on, but yeah, we might. We might go back to slightly more researched me. To be fair, there's never a lot of research, is there. So next week it's a big. It's a big one for me. I don't think it is for you, is it.
Speaker 2:I like this guy. I've never watched it and I don't really know why, because I think I would enjoy it but so you referred to JP in that episode as one of your top 10 favourite men.
Speaker 3:I think that's pushing it a bit, but this guy certainly is one of my top 10 favourite TV men. We're going to do Steve Irwin Now. For those who don't know. He's an Aussie animal. I don't even know if he's an expert, he's just an enthusiast.
Speaker 2:He probably is an expert. He's got to be, isn't he?
Speaker 3:Well, we'll see. We'll delve into him and obviously we're going to look at. He's slightly madcap, though we're probably I'm not entirely sure what we're going to watch, because we're not Again, we're not going to stick to a specific episode. I'm going to try and find some clips to send to you of his best moments.
Speaker 2:Probably, if you go on YouTube, steve Irwin, best moments is probably what I'll send you, but I don't think I exist yet. So what did he actually do? He only did the crocodile on the diaries, didn't he? I think, didn't he?
Speaker 3:er, yeah, but it weren't just crocodile, like there's one where he takes his pregnant wife, like running through some fields and there's some Komodo dragons chasing them and he says, if you're wondering where the wife is, she's a bit behind me because she's pregnant, like that. Just some absolutely mad moments in it.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's the wildest. He must have done loads. I remember him for the. I know he wasn't just a crocodile on there but he went up to do a little too.
Speaker 3:Oh, I didn't know that. So yeah, that'll be interesting. My favourite line before we get to the research, my favourite line I've ever seen him do, is he's walking along on some rocks somewhere and they're filming him talking to camera. It looks genuine, I don't know, but he kind of goes oh god, what's that? He dives into the water and then there's all sorts of splashing and stuff and he comes out about I don't know. Say 20 seconds later he pops up again with like a sort of smallish crocodile in his hand and he says God blimey, it's like being caught in a washing machine with razor sharp rocks. He's got a little crocodile in his hand he's absolutely brilliant absolutely fantastic man he's quite an iconic character.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you probably recognise him by his image, although obviously we'll touch on it. He tragically passed away, so he's not been on telly for a long time, but fits the brief of Nostalgic TV. So that's where we're going.
Speaker 2:Yep, see you very soon and thank you for everyone who's listening. Thank you for putting up with my cold and we will see you for that, yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, this doesn't make sense. We do this a lot. We should probably do this off air, but do you think will they have heard a midweek before this? I would hope, do you think?
Speaker 2:They'll have heard a midweek before this episode. We're recording a midweek tomorrow which we're going to put out. If you haven't heard a midweek before this, something went wrong and you'll definitely hear one after this, but you should have heard one before this.
Speaker 1:Yeah but you won't hear one after this about that, you'll know. You know more than us as you're listening. Yeah, so on that note, if we just yep, see you soon.
Speaker 3:If anyone wants to get in touch with us, send us anything. Find us on twitter at livingwithmade1, or you can send us an email at livingwithmadely at outlookcom.