This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today: He reads books, you know — it's Chris Joel!
Quarrelsome quislings questing quickly through quixotic questions are we.
— Nice! — Aaahh!
Thank you, thank you. That's why I was in the loo so long.
Bounciest man on the internet — Matt Gray!
Hello YouTube.
And everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan!
I rode the Queen Mary and came third in the derby!
How many queens were alive at the time to be the Queens' Derby?
'And up front it's Elizabeth! It's Elizabeth the First in the front!'
In front of me I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point and a ding [DING],
and the special prize for particularly good answers which is...
Oh! Sorry. Yes.
Yeah. I've got a buzzer this time!
How louche are you today?
Oh, I do... so obliged, gentlemen.
Can we just get you a cocktail glass while you do that?
I usually am, it's just the different table setup. You don't see me so much, darling.
Yeah. Can we make reference early on in the episode that we have moved from Matt Gray's kitchen...
Today, we're live from SPACE!
THE MOON!
We need a greenscreen, guys. It's curtains.
It's just the blackness!
Today we are talking about the SS Bessemer.
Is that to do with the smelting process?
Now there's an intro to any kind of thing.
Why would you say that?
Because it's the Bessemer steel smelting process!
You're gonna have a point. [DING]
Whoa!
Because it is named after and invented by...?
Bessemer.
Thank you. [Laughter]
Sorry — 'Named after and invented by?' 'S.S.'
Sir Henry Bessemer, who... you were talking about steel there?
Well, I'll defer to my...
Sorry, before I go 'Right Honourable Member', you do realize this looks a lot like Question Time?
I will defer to my honourable friend here, the member for Sheffield...
The member for Rotherham.
I don't know what you've heard! It's lies! All lies!
Ha!
— You just got 'Member for Sheffield' there, haven't you? — Yeah.
Steelmember!
That's what they used to call me!
Sounds like a South Yorkshire Bond film!
ALL: 'Steelmember...' [Trumpet riff]
'Bollocks! We're not using gold, it melts too easily!'
'We'll go down there, get 'ot steel!'
It's just a scrappie! James Bond versus the local scrappie.
Bond is strapped to a slab of old railway locomotive,
while Steelmember comes up with a gas torch, and just very closely —
'I'll get your nadgers in a minute if you don't give in!'
I was imagining him on the windshield of a smashed-up car.
[Gas torch sound] 'Might take 'alf an hour but we're gonna get there!'
'I'll turn t' wipers on!'
Thump! Thump! Thump!
'Oh! Oh! Oh!'
[Sean Connery voice] 'Shtop it! That's enough!'
[Sean Connery voice] 'I'm starting to quite enjoy thish. Does it have two shpeeds?'
'No, Mister Bond. I expect you to f**k off!'
A long time ago...
...in a galaxy far, far away in Rotherham...
Sir Henry Bessemer.
I don't know.
So is that the name of the article?
No, the article is 'SS Bessemer'.
Ship with a steel-clad rather than an iron-clad hull,
or steel hull or something like that...
Ooh, it was certainly first ship with something, but...
Made by that... it's the, erm...
No holes in it.
Outboard motor.
Ship-sized diesel engine.
Massive whacking great outboard.
Takes ten men to steer it.
Never mind that, it takes ten men to start the thing. [Motor noises]
It's like a tug-of-war.
Huge blokes charging up the deck.
I think you'll find the first outboard motor was a Viking, paddling.
On the end of a stick.
'Sven! Your turn.' 'Ugh...'
'Ulf! Faster, Ulf! Faster!'
[Paddling noises] A little backstroke — a little front crawl...
'How long to this "Enga-land"?'
Bessemer, though, it's the steel crucible.
That was the thing he invented was the steel crucible, where you would —
Yes. Have a point. [DING]
You put pig iron into it...
What did he do? What's the difference in his process then?
It removes impurities.
By...?
Er... hotness.
No!
It's on a steel... A crucible is a big bowl, innit.
— Yeah. — That'll do 'em right!
— Yeah. — On a windey thing, what tips over,
'A windey thing!'
and all t' hot metal comes out, into a box,
and that makes... knives.
Yeah.
[Laughter] Yeah!
I went to school!!
Sheffield, there. Sheffield summed up...
Sheffield steel summed up in a few important words there.
It's a big bowl with stuff that comes out of it. Yeah.
...what makes knives!
You need to be the narrator on How Things Are Made.
Steel... knives!
It goes in this box and knives come out.
There is something else that goes in with the iron. Into the crucible.
Men!
A lot of it. It has to be pumped through constantly.
— Max Bygraves. — Air.
Air! [DING]
There is a market for pre-1940s steel.
As in scrapping it and re-selling it.
Why do you think that might be?
T' olden days air were cleaner!
— Yes! [DING] — Wahey!
What was it cleaner of?
Sulfur.
No. The clue is in '1940s'.
About 1944, 1945, specifically.
Whoa!
— Radiation. — Cool!
Bingo. [DING] Cobalt.
Well! I push my glasses back and say, How's that!
Background amount of radiation increased enough
that if you're making radiation detectors, or anything that goes in a radiation-sensitive process,
you need pre-1940-something steel.
— Well, there you go! — Cool!
So you have to go back in time,
and forge your forgey thing...
That's iron, isn't it.
Or you raise a sunken ship.
[Singing] 'So I can make accurate meters...'
[Singing] 'You raise me up...'
And big boxes of knives.
'Boxes of kniiives...'
You don't need pre-radiation knives.
This is not a significant amount of radiation.
I want a post-radiation knife!
'Cooks the steak while you slice it!' [Sizzling noises]
I'm fairly sure that at some point in the Victorian age,
after the discovery of radiation,
but before the discovery of radiation-induced cancers,
someone will have made a radiation knife.
— Radiation was all the thing. — Yeah.
It genuinely was.
In any treatment you would just give someone a bit of radiation.
I know for a fact that when my uncle was at school,
the popular prank was to get the little bits of radiation
and shove it down boys' arse-cracks.
Ohh!
What, like pennying someone?
Pretty much, yeah. Just with deadly, deadly radiation, that's all.
'Plutoniumed your bum!'
'Ooh, it burns!' 'Aaaargh, that's gonna sting!'
One of my old physics teachers claimed that he'd found a radium blanket in his loft.
It was a blanket infused with radium, because it was warming.
Well, one of the products, one of the most radioactive ones, early 20th century, is watches.
— Yep. — Yes.
I were taught that one at schoo-wel!
So was I!
'Glow in the dark, you say?'
'Yeah, that's fine. Dip there, lick the brush, you'll be fine. Just paint it on.'
It's like we're all the result of the same education system, isn't it?
How strange!
I thought you were schooled up a mountain by a Buddhist master.
That's just Rotherham Comprehensive.
It was still a state school! I'm not posh!
State-funded Buddhism?
You know what, I'd be in favour of that.
Yeah.
Everybody just needs to chill out.
'Now you have learned the wisdom of the writing and the metal-making
with the box with the knives.'
And now you move on to the next mountain of Rotherham,
where the Chuckle Brothers will teach you —
NO! NO!
Oh, secondary school was awful.
Rotherham Steel, with a gigantic crucible of metal: 'To me, to you, to me...'
'Oh! We've burnt several people to death.'
'Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.'
And sports was just David Seaman.
If you're American, don't Google the Chuckle Brothers.
Or Rotherham.
No, no, no! Do! They're childhood comedy legends.
That's true. Don't Google their single with Tinchy Stryder from last year.
Do!
A long, long time a go, we talked about Henry Bessemer,
who invented the steel-making process named after him,
established the town of Sheffield as a major manufacturing centre.
But he had a lot of other inventions. A lot of other patents.
Plate glass, making a continuous ribbon of plate glass...
Of iron!
'Makes a better door than a window.'
The SS Bessemer was one of his less successful inventions.
Was it a box of knives that sank?
'It's made entirely of metal! Left to right, all the way through! Solid!'
I mean, you're right — SS is Steam Ship.
So we haven't actually got what it is yet?
Not yet, no. We are a good half, two-thirds of the way through.
But we have talked about Henry Bessemer, and the steel-making process.
Is it one of the ones that's got the rotatey thing on the back?
So we've got a crap boat.
Ooh... we have an experimental boat.
I'm gonna say, is it something to do with steam turbines or something like this?
Thinking of the industry or anything, or it might have been steam engines...
No, this is...
You wouldn't expect it to be coming from someone who had so many successful inventions.
Hovercraft.
This is to designed to combat a common problem if you're on a cross-Channel ferry.
Did he build it in Sheffield so that there was no chance of getting wet?
Um...
A common problem on a cross-Channel ferry... people on booze cruises weren't allowed on?
It was built in Hull, just to, er...
Ugh.
Were no French aboard? [Laughter]
I mean, not initially, no...
It's a common problem in the Channel.
Cross-Channel ferry, full of them.
Was the duty free actually cheap?
Was it a flat-bottom boat?
To stop it grounding?
Ooh! No...
Because there are sand deposits in the Channel, I think.
There are, but no.
Was it an attempt at bow-loading doors or anything like that?
Bowel-loading doors?
Bow-loading, not bowel-loading.
It's a very easy mistake to make.
'Roll on! Roll off!'
Is it Henry Bessemer's giant mechanical arse,
crossing the Channel, made of steel?
Steelsphincter!
Sorry... Steelsphincter is another Bond film.
No, no, he's like Jaws. He's like a Bond villain's henchman.
'Don't put your fingers in there! He'll have them off!'
[Slicing noise]
He's eventually vanquished by the fact that someone has a giant magnet and he flies arse-first onto it.
Yes. Yes.
We're looking for a common problem with cross-Channel ferries — with any ferry, really.
Seasickness!
— Point! [DING] — Right!
— An anti-seasickness boat?! — An anti-seasickness boat.
What's the point of being on a boat?
Exactly!
I'm sorry, getting seasick is not the point of going on a cross-Channel ferry.
It is the prime experience! [Laughter]
So was this like a boat with like, a thing that kept level all the time in it or something?
[DING]
Aha! A whole kind of thing to counteract...
Like you used to get for your CD Walkman in your car?
Yeah, basically.
But for people.
That's something that a lot of our audience are gonna be a little bit too young for there.
Oh, **** off. Really?
CD Walkman?
The international sign there for a CD Walkman.
It's the gimbal...
Wobbly CD Walkman. Woooo!
You see, children... Hello.
In the old days...
we used to have to take our music with us
on little plates that looked like a little shiny disc.
You would put them in a machine, and when you walked,
if you walked too fast, the music would jump, like Spotify when it's s***.
Can you believe, children, that you could only listen to one album at a time?
A small bit of our audience is post-MP3.
Like, they were born after the —
Why would you post the MP3 when you could email it?
Out.
Well, you have to print it out first, don't you?
You are entirely right. It was an entire cabin.
The saloon of the boat was suspended on gimbals
and kept horizontal so you weren't rolled about.
That's gonna be worse, isn't it?
That's gonna be like the old British Rail APT.
Advanced Passenger Train, yes.
Because your brain is gonna go, 'Hang on a minute, I'm moving but not moving,'
and the net result is: Heulgh! Everywhere.
'I can see that I'm moving... but I'm not.'
Yes. And the other problem is, it only stopped roll.
It didn't stop pitch,
and it also didn't stop surge, I think it's surge — or heave.
Heave, that's it.
I think heave was the problem we were trying to get rid of.
[General heaving sounds]
The technical ship term is 'heave', which is the up-and-down,
the kind of feeling that gravity is increasing and decreasing.
So you're just in this saloon...
...that's not moving in one axis, but is moving in the other two.
Yes.
Sorry, I'm just imagining someone called Serge and someone called Heave.
Yves?
The butler with the inner ear problem: Ask Heaves.
'Well, sir... oh. Oh God.
'Erm, I could give you — blergh!'
Ask Heaves! His little icon is a butler who's going:
— Slightly green in the face. — Yes!
If anyone does want to quickly Photoshop that up... yeah.
So the ship, it was actually made, it set sail.
It went from Dover to Calais. What happened when it got to Calais?
Crashed!
Point! [DING]
Just kept going.
It quite literally did.
Right now it's somewhere in Austria.
You can have a point for that as well [DING],
because it failed to answer the helm, and just hit the pier.
'It's ringing! Someone pick up! Helm!' 'Hello?'
You know that gag from Airpline! where the plane just comes through the window?
That and the Calais pier. It just kept going.
At which point did it stop, Sir Henry Bessemer pokes out and goes, 'Partial success.'
'We got over, and we f***ed up a bit of France.'
'Turn round!'
I like how you went with Airplane! rather than Speed II.
Where it happens with a boat.
Yeah. Okay, yes, that's true.
After two attempts to enter the harbour,
it crashed into the Calais pier *again*, this time demolishing part of it.
Erm... the ship remained in dock,
and then was sold for scrap.
It did actually have a trial with passengers on board,
but one important bit didn't work.
The passengers. They were all on strike. [Laughter]
The wiggly thing.
The wiggly thing, yes, exactly right. [DING]
So it's SS Bessemer's non-wiggly wiggly thing.
Yes.
So it worked better on the way back when it was broken...
Than on the way over when it was working.
Yup. What happened to the saloon?
Because the saloon was really well appointed — not the gimbal bit,
but the actual sort of really lavish drawing room?
Shipped to shore and used as a restaurant or...
given to a hotel or...
Yeah, [DING] I'll give you a point for that.
His house?
I'll give you both a point. [DING]
The designer had it moved to his home.
But it still kind of kept level even though it wasn't really moving.
You could have it as a flight simulator!
Or boat simulator.
'When you are in an earthquake,
'you will want to be in this room,' was what he said.
'For you can have all the experience of earthquake,
but without the roll.'
Yes!
'Have you ever wanted to experience just two-thirds of an earthquake?'
'A vast improvement, sir! A vast improvement!'
What eventually happened to that saloon? The last surviving bit of the ship?
Sold for scrap.
Well, again, it had a slight problem in about the mid-1940s.
Did it get all blown up?
Yes, have a point. Direct hit from a bomb in World War Two. [DING]
And it wasn't radioactive until that point.
Because all the furniture was made of uranium.
A warming seat.
Oh, that'd be horrible, wouldn't it?
You know that unnerving warmth when you take over somebody's seat?
Just a seat that has that all the time.
Just sits in the room with people going, '...ooh. Oh no...'
'Ooo.' 'Oh.'
On that, congratulations Chris, you win the show...
[Laughs] Seems unlikely.
You got points.
Eh, whatever!
On that note, congratula —
Gary got the biscuits.
Yeah, but the biscuits aren't points.
Oh no, yeah, you got points.
The points are points.
You may have gathered, viewers, that this entire show is bulls***.
[Laughter] Yeah!
In so many different ways.
Except when he wins. Then it's really good, you'll notice.
Then it's brilliant!
Congratulations Chris, you win this show.
You've won rum and lime-flavoured Mexican food cooked by the star of Taxi and Matilda.
It's a Danny DeVito mojito burrito.
That sounds all right, actually. Do I get to meet the chef?
Sadly no, it was shipped over. It's a bit cold now.
Awww.
With that, we say thank you to Chris Joel,
to Matt Gray,
Goodbye, YouTube.
...to Gary Brannan.
I've been Tom Scott. We'll see you next time.
...no.
That would be part of the 'Reckless'.
...no, it didn't. No.
What, like a hippo spray? That kind of thing?
Oh, don't — I've seen that.
...Doctor Bradford Crayne, which —
Bradford!
— just sounds like...
Bradford Crayne.
'Hello, Bradford Cranes...
'yeah, we've got a 9-ton, a 14-ton,
'and erm, Maurice Micklewhite.'
...Where's the hyphen in that?
I'm trying to diagram the sentence...
[Laughter] Yeah!
Anywhere you can put a hyphen changes it.
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