¶ Robot Wars
Living with Maidly Living with Maidly Living with .
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 .
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 .
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 .
But the show must go on . I don't like people eating on radio or if they're ill .
Do people eat on radio ?
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 .
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 ?
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 .
Let's play the theme liam the mention , the theme tune .
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 .
But we will put them in staggered throughout the episode .
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 ?
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 .
Channel 5, .
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 .
Steady teddy yeah , I had it on in the background , yeah brilliant , brilliant .
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 .
He does seem to enjoy himself , yeah .
Yeah .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
Yeah , okay , yeah see if you can spot some kind of alien or secret agent , or he's just I , anyone ?
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 .
Keep an eye out for him .
I don't know if anyone's ever noticed this guy before .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 ?
I don't have the f***ing idea . I can't think of another version of it .
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 .
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 .
Pug-faced . No , he doesn't say that , does he ?
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 .
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 .
Is it possible they both came up with it in isolation , or do you think , fasher ?
stole it .
I don't know .
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 .
You knob and then Doro O'Brien said I'm sorry , I didn't know it was originally yours .
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 ?
so yeah , I understand his fury if he does know that he made it up .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
Yeah , they whittled it down to 96 . Oh , you shouldn't laugh . Oh dear , oh dear , Poor old William Ryle , he's only 13 .
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 .
You're not going to read them all , though , are you ?
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 ?
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 .
Yeah Well , I've got some here that I wrote down . This is from all the series
¶ Robot Wars Memories and Insights
, 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 .
Yeah , because someone , when I was reading up on some things , he kept talking about Barry and I kept thinking who's this Barry ?
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 .
I must have misheard then . I thought that was the RAF team who come up later on .
Full Metal Anorak . Yeah , psycho Sprout . I love this one . I think it's on this series as well . Suicidal Tendencies .
Yeah , that is in this series , yeah . Such a good name that I don't know if you'd get away with that now .
Suicidal Tendencies , judge Shred , fat Boy , tin Arnold , terminager , don't make Like , doesn't work at all .
It's not . It's neither works does it .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
Yeah , I think it is , yeah , and it's just like it's something like it's a 45-minute show .
This is about 16 minutes , I think , and it's just going through each heat . Who won ? Who went out what ?
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 ? 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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
Yeah , yeah , yeah .
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 .
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 .
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 .
Well , how bad was the vacuum cleaner ? It was just smashing things around .
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 .
It was that amazing robot control vacuum . Yeah , it's a brilliant idea .
I'm surprised you never made one actually .
I thought you'd be right out your wheelbarrow , as I say .
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 ?
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 .
I mean , yeah , he's younger than us . I think he was a bit geeky , wasn't he ?
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 . 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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
Beep Like yeah , well , just like it's on the attitude here , robot Wars attitude here , I think that would have got viewing figures .
It would have actually it did anyway , didn't it ?
I would have definitely turned it into that , but yeah .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
Yeah , I must admit I thought it was a bit of a controversial decision that .
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 .
It's made of plastic .
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 .
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 ?
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 and Robot Wars Memories
house robots .
I didn't know what house robots were until I started watching this so yeah , alright then .
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 .
They can't win it , but they can do damage to robots to get in their territory . 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 .
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 .
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 . 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 .
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 .
I thought it was Sergeant Bash , weren't it ?
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 .
Shunt is one of them .
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 .
Yeah , yeah , I mean that's .
I don't know .
I mean . Magnificent beast though , aren't they ?
Yeah , oh yeah , yeah , absolutely . I mean , where does it end , would you Do ?
you mean , where does it end ?
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 .
Yeah , but I mean , would they be slower ? I don't know , yeah , yeah , why not ? I mean .
Every weapon like nuclear bombs and bombs and lasers and all sorts like fire on the moon . That's probably a bit .
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 .
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 .
I think you're thinking of insects , aren't you ?
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 .
Once it gets so big , it just can't move .
No . What I mean is , though could you build a seven-foot robot and enter it into robot wars ?
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 .
Yeah , yeah , yeah concerns .
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 .
No .
Julia Reid , who the voiceover calls Jules quite a few times , I think .
Yeah , yeah , jp's obviously having a bit of banter with Philippa and Jules and Jane Middlemas did , didn't she as well ?
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 ?
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 .
I was going to say it worked so well . She's now a snake charmer or something like that .
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 .
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 .
Was it a comedy show Like a sitcom ?
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 .
Sorry , it was a little bit like it was random .
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 .
This sounds great fun . It was absolutely brilliant television , yeah .
I've seen it in my sister actually .
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 .
Pork
¶ Robot Wars Controversies and Insights
. Mmm , can you smell the barbecued pork ? I'll have a loin .
Would you entertain the idea of AI-powered robots ?
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 ?
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 .
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 ? 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 .
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 .
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 .
No , I wouldn't want to win it that way . If he was immobilised , fair play to the two who did that .
Did they win any money ? I ?
don't think so . No , they don't talk about any prize money . They don't talk about .
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 .
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 .
And there's a lot of repeats . Down comes the axe missed . Down comes the axe missed . Down comes the axe .
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 .
Yeah , see Pussycat on this one I watched came second , and that were a massive shock , because I think it was seeded 19th .
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 ? 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 .
Yeah , yeah , I think Pierce wanted that to happen as well , didn't he ? To be fair .
Yeah , and he sort of says three times previous they've managed to do it .
But not today .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
So somebody we've mentioned previously .
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 .
The cold hand of control .
Maybe a metaphor for what the government are doing .
Oh , um , oh go on . Metal meets metal .
Neil Oliver .
Yeah , of course , neil Oliver , what's your name ?
Well , did I actually lose , though , or is that what the government wants you to think ?
A spinning disc of metal or a spinning disc of controversy from the government ?
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 . 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 .
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 .
Yeah , yeah , yeah .
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 . 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 .
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
¶ Robot Wars Commentator Continuity
. 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 ?
yeah , I read that and the production was shut down . And then they got bulletproof uh glass into the latest series .
Yeah , I'm not even sure if that'd stop a saw at 200 miles an hour .
That's the reason he left , isn't it ?
he says Well , do you know what Good day at work I've had better 200 miles an hour sore at my head .
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 ?
suppose Clarkson he's from Donny . Of random way he over extends certain words .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
I reckon you'd guess that were him , though , wouldn't you well ?
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
Imagine that I can't go it today . I don't know why I'm doing that . I think I mentioned the war .
It's his life . Yeah , I cannot go today . I am watching Robot Wars again .
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 .
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 .
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 .
¶ Robot Wars Banter and Reflections
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 .
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 .
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 .
yeah , hasn't got enough power still up coming in , but holding the seesaw down .
Oh , that's demonic and that's evil for evil for a panic attack as it stands , he's in my top 10 humans .
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 .
Fucking hell . It's maddening .
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 .
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 .
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 ?
Just Dyspraxia man .
Dyspraxia .
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 .
Yeah , no , I don't know what to do . He's left the door open .
Oh my god , he's not going to be happy about that . Just go off to loads of flames he's self combusted again .
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 .
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 .
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 .
He's like he's just .
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 ?
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 .
Yeah , just sort of skulking around waiting for the other ones to knock themselves out .
I bet it's really fast . I don't know why , like , oh he's swimming around the Maidling Machine .
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 .
Yeah , I think .
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 .
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 ?
to bits . Think how much you'd be blaming everyone else as well for it .
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 .
You could call it that , yeah , the cinnamon machine or something , the cinnamon , I don't know .
Cinnamon from Canada .
Cinnamonator .
Yeah cinnamonator .
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 ?
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 .
Oh yeah , this one , this one . I thought that and they just hit that .
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
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 .
He probably is an expert . He's got to be , isn't he ?
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 . 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 .
¶ Podcast Episode Reminder and Contact Information
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 .
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 ?
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 .
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 .
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 .