Unconventional Brits: Episode 3
This week, we meet a real-life Johnny 5, a blind artist, a stuntman and we go on the hunt for long lost Dr Who episodes
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00:00In the bustling tapestry of Britain, where centuries-old traditions blend seamlessly with modern life,
00:07there exists individuals who march to the beat of their own drum.
00:11Unconventional Brits is a captivating film series that dives into the lives of these extraordinary local characters
00:19who defy the norm with their unusual hobbies, quirky lifestyles and fascinating pastimes.
00:26Meet the inventors, the dreamers and the eccentrics whose daily lives are anything but conventional.
00:33Whether you're inspired, amused or simply amazed, this is a programme that reminds us all of the beauty in being different.
00:43Coming up this week, Johnny Five is alive, we meet a blind artist, a daredevil stunt performer
00:49and we go on the hunt for long-lost Doctor Who episodes.
00:55MUSIC
01:12Hi. Call me Johnny Five.
01:16Meet Johnny Five, star of the 80s sci-fi film Short Circuit,
01:21who has been discovering what he's made of at Metals for You in Wetherby.
01:25The team are supporting his creator, Ryan Howard, in building a second robot,
01:29following the huge success of his first.
01:31I've been a fan of robots since I was a kid.
01:33I mean, one of my earliest favourite memories was going to the Toyota factory
01:37and seeing a robot arm put a door on a car.
01:41And it really sort of sparked my love for robots and anything robotic.
01:45I didn't do very well at school, unfortunately, but I knew I had a brain in there somewhere
01:49and I wanted to prove to myself that I could build a robot.
01:51Ryan developed his passion for electronics during the pandemic
01:55and built Johnny Five with a 3D printer, online templates and a fair bit of metal.
02:00He's since taken the replica to over 70 conventions,
02:03while building a global fan base who are following his journey to build a companion for Johnny Five.
02:08I built him, but he saved me during the pandemic.
02:10He was great for my mental health.
02:12And, of course, I came out the other side with a fully working Johnny Five.
02:15Metals for You have given me an opportunity to be able to build a second one,
02:20but this time show people the process and what it is,
02:23you know, all the trials and tribulations of building a robot.
02:27It's the kind of project that we really do try and encourage and support,
02:31because it's innovation from what is taking very simple bits of metal
02:35and transforming them into something that's really quite fantastic.
02:39And that's what we've seen today,
02:41it's just something that's really brought metal to life.
02:44It's been the most incredible journey.
02:46And, of course, she'd kill me if I didn't mention her.
02:49I'd like to thank my fantastic wife for standing by with me.
02:52I'm sure most wouldn't tolerate having or living with a robot in their life
02:59and having to do the stuff that she does.
03:02Next, an artist that was told he was going blind at 32,
03:05but since then has been joining all the dots of a spectacular career.
03:10When we talk about sight loss, even today,
03:12a lot of adults just don't know how to deal with sight loss.
03:15They think that sight loss is complete darkness, you know.
03:18I mean, every blind person sees, 93% of blind people see,
03:23and we all see differently, we're like a fingerprint.
03:25And obviously, it's a lovely sunny day outside,
03:27you know, people are loving the sun.
03:29I hate it because there's too much light
03:31and my eyes just can't take that light and transform that light into imagery.
03:35People say to me, how do you see?
03:36So I, being from Portsmouth, you know, see is very important to me.
03:40It is like looking underwater.
03:42Well, strangely enough, what I get is,
03:44whoa, you're looking at me.
03:46Well, because I can still, even, like I said,
03:48we talked about shadows, right?
03:50So even though I don't see any of your detail whatsoever,
03:53if you looked underwater, you still see a shadow of a shape, isn't it?
03:58And the brain is a magical thing.
03:59So we see with our brains, not with our eyes.
04:02So I have 30 years of sight.
04:04So I have, I know what people look like.
04:06I know what a silhouette looks like, right?
04:08So I'm 31 and I'm told I'm going blind, right?
04:13As a creative, you'd think that would be the worst thing ever
04:16because, you know, I'm a visual person, you know.
04:19Art's been my life for, you know, 20 odd years
04:22and now being told you're going blind,
04:24you're going to lose the ability to do something that you love.
04:28I was made homeless because I was blind.
04:31I was made homeless because obviously no fault with eviction.
04:35My daughter was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
04:37I was diagnosed with sight loss.
04:39I mean, my life couldn't get much worse, could it?
04:41Three things I miss going blind, right?
04:44One is reading a book, flicking through a page
04:46and absorbing that information.
04:48I miss that so much.
04:49I miss driving because it gives me the freedom
04:51as a person to be the artist.
04:55But the biggest thing I miss is I will miss my daughter growing up.
05:00She's 10 years old now,
05:01but I only have a memory of her as a six-year-old.
05:05So that's when I had the most sight.
05:07So I get quite emotional when I talk about it.
05:09So I would only see my daughter for our, again,
05:13we're talking about conversations,
05:14for the conversations that I have with my daughter.
05:16You know, I would see her growing up through,
05:20I would never see her.
05:23I know if she didn't want to walk down the aisle,
05:25I'd never see her in her wedding dress.
05:28I would miss those moments.
05:30And I suppose any dad with a daughter,
05:32they can understand that feeling.
05:34It's like learning.
05:37I love learning every day.
05:39I mean, that's that creative brain.
05:40It's like every day is a new day because I'm learning.
05:42I'm learning to navigate new buildings.
05:44I'm learning to navigate across the country,
05:48going to schools and teaching kids about Braille.
05:50I'm learning about myself.
05:52I think that's really important.
05:54Every day is a testing day for me.
05:58Now we join a former paratrooper from Hampshire
06:00as he attempts a world record for jumping out of a helicopter.
06:11I'm John Flying Fish.
06:13Yeah, I'm a, predominantly I'm a rope worker,
06:18a stunt rigger and a daredevil performer.
06:23That's what I like to do.
06:27The way all my stories came around,
06:35or the way I became, you know, doing these performances,
06:40was I was doing a lot of stunt rigging.
06:42So I was rigging stunts, preparing stunts,
06:46coming up with ideas and stuff.
06:48So for some of the world's leading adventurers
06:50all around the world, it was good fun.
06:53It was really good.
06:55You know, I'd become quite a good rope tech,
06:58and so performing, rigging these stunts was great.
07:01And I was watching people and I was thinking,
07:04maybe I could do a bit more.
07:06You know, maybe I could go that bit further.
07:09And there was something in me all along,
07:11thinking, you know, I could perhaps do something great.
07:15And yeah, so I thought I'm going to go for a big performance myself.
07:19And I thought the world's highest jump from an aircraft into water
07:23was one to keep people smiling, keeping them entertained.
07:26And he's giving me the thumbs up, and I remember just there,
07:29I took a few deep breaths, and I felt good, I felt strong.
07:33I thought, yeah, I'm going to go for it.
07:35But then I jumped, and the wind coming in, it took my legs.
07:38And I was going down, and I thought, ooh,
07:41I thought I'd better brace up before I hit the water.
07:44And yeah, it was all right.
07:47So when I surfaced, I came up, and I got the boat sped round,
07:52and we all got together, and we all climbed in the boat.
07:55And I really felt my backside was quite sore.
07:59And I said to the guys, I went, how was my entry?
08:03And a couple of the lads kept quiet and just ignored me.
08:07And one of them turned around and went, yeah, it was awful, John.
08:10That was probably one of your worst jumps.
08:12Someone shouted, John, how did it go?
08:14And I said, swimmingly, you know, just thinking it was great.
08:18The feeling before you jump,
08:20it's actually known as a thing called the flow state.
08:23So what happens with that is your body,
08:27your in-body, your mind,
08:31you get an out-of-body experience.
08:34It's sort of, you just go on adrenaline.
08:38But the feeling you get is just, there's none like it.
08:42Not a single worry that you had is on your mind.
08:45Everything, you're focused on this and nothing else.
08:48And it's a real escapism. It's good fun.
08:59Finally this week, who better than a time lord
09:02to help us go back to rescue lost episodes of Doctor Who?
09:06When legendary British TV show Doctor Who
09:09reached its 60th anniversary in 2023,
09:12all existing episodes from the show's back catalogue
09:15were made available to view on BBC iPlayer.
09:17Why do I say existing episodes?
09:19Well, Doctor Who, in common with a great many British TV shows
09:22from the 50s to the early 70s,
09:24had a huge number of its master videotapes wiped.
09:27However, a number of serials
09:29that would at one time have been considered lost
09:31are now among the range that is available to watch.
09:34So I helped with about seven animations for the BBC
09:39on Reconstruct and missing Doctor Who.
09:42Obviously I've been a big Dalek fan, as you can guess.
09:46But that's how I ended up getting the job on the animation range,
09:51just from doing animated Dalek tests and putting them on YouTube.
09:55And a producer at the time saw them and said,
09:58well, I like this style, can you do it for an actual BBC production?
10:04I was asked to work on the animations back in 2016.
10:08I was working full-time,
10:10and I would just try and fit these in around free time,
10:14much to my wife's annoyance.
10:16There have been entire books written about the ways
10:18in which lost TV episodes have been recovered,
10:20so we won't go into those details here.
10:22Rob, who lives in Sunderland, worked on the animation of episodes
10:25that have never been recovered, but whose soundtracks survived.
10:29Basically, fans who did want to relive the episode,
10:33and that would be through either holding a microphone up to a television
10:37and just recording the episodes that went out live,
10:40on those instances where you would always hear
10:42family members in the background, dogs barking.
10:45But you would have some fans who were really clever
10:49and would take apart a TV set and hardwire cables
10:53from an audio recorder into the speaker output of the TV.
10:57So we've got these fantastic audio recordings of a programme
11:00that sadly the visuals don't exist, but the soundtrack does.
11:04Doctor Who's got the fan base, and the fans who do want to see
11:08these missing stories brought to life.
11:10You know what, I always get asked how I would feel
11:13if an original episode turned up after we've done one,
11:18but I would be absolutely okay with that.
11:21You know what, I would be fascinated to put the two side by side
11:25and see how close we were with some things
11:27or how miles off we might have been with other things.
11:31And obviously people could still watch both,
11:35but it would be really important if the originals did show up again.
11:39There's one story in particular which was called The Macra Terror
11:42which was about giant alien crabs,
11:45and I could tell you now that we did the crabs better
11:48than how they did them in the 60s.