Ever since he became a teenager, conversations with our son have become few and far between. All communication has been reduced to a series of primordial grunts and grimaces, peppered with a generous sprinkling of profanities. So I was surprised when he walked into the kitchen and wanted to talk to me about something.
“Daddy, I’ve discovered an amazing bloke on YouTube. His name is Colin Firth.”
Suddenly the heavens opened and the vista of a joyous, harmonious future appeared before me. Could it be that, thanks to the fabulous thespian, his eyes had been opened? Had he now deserted gangsta rap and Call of Duty and discovered the elegant fiction of Jane Austen and the sly humour of Helen Fielding? My dream was soon to be shattered.
“Mega flame throwers. Enormous explosions. High speed shopping trolleys. Wow! The dude is dope.”
I was very confused. Had the elegant star of The King’s Speech been moonlighting and suddenly developed an interest in powerful explosive devices? Would he now be starring in the new Michael Bay blockbuster? Could Bay be planning a reboot of Jane Austen in his own inimitable style: Pride and Extreme Prejudice?
Of course not.
Junior was referring to Colin Furze, a completely bonkers inventor who has carved out a rather successful niche for himself on YouTube. Imagine the manic enthusiasm and lunatic disregard of risk of a teenager combined with the technical skills and financial resources of a 35 year old bloke. Not likely to become an AW favourite, but I can see why he has become such a hit. A shrewd operator. Not only has he earned himself a few entries in the Guinness Book of Records, he’s also created inventions that tie in with the world of computer games and comic books, notably Assassin’s Creed and X Men.
20 years ago he’d have been a bloke who lurked in his garden shed and was a thorn in the side of the local constabulary. In 2016 he’s a minor celebrity.
If Heath Robinson had lived today, what fame he might have achieved.
Anybody else got any favourite inventors, real or fictional? Or other examples of somebody with a rather eccentric or outré talent who has become a celebrity thanks to canny use of the Tube,
This is all very perplexing to someone who grew up in the genteel toilet roll and squeezy bottle world of Blue Peter.
Here’s one I detonated earlier?
Your teenage son calls you “daddy”? Are you minor members of the Swedish Royal Family by any chance?
He, of course, does not call me Daddy. I just felt that his usual cheery greeting of “F ++cking Motherf++cker” wasn’t sufficiently genteel for the AW.
Phew. Sorry KFD, I didn’t mean to appear rude.
You weren’t being rude at all, JC. You were right on target. He hasn’t called me Daddy for the past 9 years. That was me being nostalgic.
He usually doesn’t call me anything at all. Just grunts.
Social graces are not his strong point.
psst,JC, he actually calls him Pater, but they are both a bit embarrassed about it.
…and as Queen once said, Is This The World We Created?
Kill me now please.
Great stuff, cheers KFD.
I’m not sure how popular Croatian Zlatko Grgić’s Professor Balthazar kids cartoon was in the UK.
It’s a delight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-txG8jkre4&list=PLdPW_violOG0EgTBTcbqP3of0P-8fwuRh
This is fantastic! I’m retiring to the shed immediately to build my own.
No inventors to hand, but parents of teenage boys might identify with this particular number
Bullseye!! Thanks Sniffity. That’s it in a nutshell.
“I think you’ll find this present a valuable addition to our modern lifestyle!
They’re “Techno Trousers. Ex-NASA. Fantastic for walkies!”
Can’t do inventors and leave out Wallace!
As a Pinner boy, I feel it is my duty to post this documentary about Heath Robinson: Suburban Subversive.
Elton may be more famous, but WHR is far more interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMqjyynNYaM
When I were a lad you could by all the ingredients for thermite, gunpowder and a host of other assorted interested concoctions over the counter by the ounce from the local pharmacy.
These days the pharmacist would be locked up for a century on child abuse grounds and the poor young experimental demolition technique researcher would be surrounded by armed police five minutes after posting the first explosion on FarceBerk.
We have reduced the capacity for our children to experience the simple, childish joy of home-grown, extreme hyperthermic reactions to the flat banality of watching YouTube videos.
Domage rather than damage. The risk-averse will inherit the Earth it seems.
A young lad in the next street to us decided to make a weedkiller and sugar bomb, but unfortunately chose to use an old empty gas cylinder for the casing. He got hit by some shrapnel and had to have half his stomach removed.
Me and my mate Ed, aged about 15, made a cannon from a yard-long section of army-surplus brass radio aerial, nailed to a bit of scaffold plank.
We filled it about half full with old faithful weedkiller and sugar mixture, tamped it down a bit and put a little ball bearing in on top. Drilled a little hole near the butt end, which had been previously hammered flat and lit it with a match.
With a nice sharp crack and a puff of smoke, the ball bearing went straight through his mum’s greenhouse and embedded itself in the pebbledash just below the dining room window about 50 feet away. His mum and dad were not best pleased.
“Not best pleased” is the understatement of the week.
Amazing tales, Mike. One of my best mates at school got expelled for his sundry explosive experiments. He’s now a headmaster!
Even more dangerous is the potassium chlorate and sulphur mixture, which will self-ignite if roughly handled. Countless digits and a few eyes have been lost to unguarded experiments (which is why, obv, times have changed).
I once mixed up a small amount of this evil concoction and gently poured it into a depression in a large rock that sat in the border in our back garden. I fused it with saltpetred string and covered it with a few handfuls of earth and pebbles, I lit the string and retired to a safe distance. Five minutes passed, and it seemed certain that the home made fuse had dithered and died, so I walked back towards Ground Zero.
The explosion made me jump out of my skin, as half a kilo of earth and stones was sent 30 metres skywards in a gentle arc through a huge cloud of white smoke, depositing most of itself on the garage roof with a clatter.
It took my Dad an hour or two to hoik the bits off the roof, and my “chemistry set” was confiscated for some time to come. I dread to think what the effects of a more rapid return to the charge might have been.
Not quite true Vulpes. Yesterday I spent quite a while in a hardware shop as The Teenager, inspired by a YT vid, wandered round collecting the components to make a home-made blowpipe. Where there’s an ill will there’s a way.
Fairly harmless stuff. We’ll be fine as long as he doesn’t into a tribe of Amazinian rainforest Indians.
As for you Ernie! I’ve got a bone to pick. There’s a small mater I need to discuss with you.
When it comes to YouTube celebs, DaveHax is a god with the (young) kids our house, thanks to his short little videos of usually with household hacks and tips. You virtually never see him though…
Thanks Dr J. That’s just the kind of thing I was thinking of. Not quite such an egoist as Colin Furze, is he? The clip is about the thing he’s making rather than about him.
But Furze is good value for money too. Very entertaining. This clip should appeal to AW guitarists. Not!
A fine article about Heath Robinson. Well worthy of the museum in his honour which is being planned in Pinner Memorial Park. Delighted to read he had a cat called Saturday Morning .
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/heath-robinson-deserves-a-museum
The article also mentions a cartoonist called Rube Goldman who was the US’s counterpart to HR and also designed crazy machines. Here are the band, Bravery, performing surrounded by one of them.
Ok Go had a Rube Goldberg inspired video
Thanks Paul! That was great fun. Despite the fact that I’d never heard of him, Goldberg seems to be far more famous than Heath Robinson.
Here’s a good article about him and the fascination for new devices in the 1930s.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/history_of_innovation/2014/04/rube_goldberg_heath_robinson_and_the_history_of_fictional_inventions.html
It includes this clip featuring one of Goldberg’s contemporaries: I M Nuts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45K4MToPuqU
You may also enjoy this newsreel clip of new gadgets for the cocktail hour. Some stunning frocks!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcDxvUEqc6k
Aardman has a endless fascination with all those inventive gadgets that Q Division made for James Bond. Here’s an overview.