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Everything Electric Podcast
From Red Dwarf to The EV Revolution: In Conversation With Robert Llewellyn!
00:57:01
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- [00:00]
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- [00:41]
Podcast Host
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Everything Electric podcast, where today we have something slightly different. Now for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a little while, you will know that a few weeks ago we recorded two live podcasts, the first of which is already out in the open. That was between myself, Robert, Greg Jackson and Rory Sutherland. So do make sure to listen to that episode on after this one. However, after we recorded that session we also recorded a second slightly sillier, slightly more light hearted podcast which you're about to listen to now. So just before recording, Robert and I popped out to Soho, had a pizza, had a little drink, reconvened and recorded this session. And what it is is an interview to go down memory lane to put the big questions to Robert, the founder of course of the Everything Electric show and hopefully it serves as a little bit of audio deliciousness. Well, you will be the judge of that I'm sure. So all of that to come. But first a very quick advert break.
- [01:47]
Robert Llewellyn
Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean energy Tech are funded by our fun packed test drivetastic events in the north west and Greater London and our events down under. Next up, Everything Electric heads to Cheltenham and then Twickenham. All events include a B2B EV day and commercial vehicles.
- [02:08]
Podcast Host
Too many of you in the room are very familiar with Robert Llewellyn and you'll also be aware that you don't really like talking about yourself. Not really. You've got the smallest ego of any man I've ever met, I reckon.
- [02:19]
Robert Llewellyn
Don't know. Yes. Oh, I don't know. No, I'm sure I haven't, but yes, yes. I'm not used to it. It's not overly comfortable but I'll cope.
- [02:29]
Podcast Host
This is deeply uncomfortable for Ronald. He has extremely coerced. But Robert has celebrated A birthday recently.
- [02:37]
Robert Llewellyn
True that.
- [02:38]
Podcast Host
Do you want to disclose what it was?
- [02:40]
Robert Llewellyn
70. There's nothing really you can do. It was a bit of a shock, I admit that, but my two children took me out to dinner in Bristol on the day of my birthday and they paid.
- [02:53]
Podcast Host
Perfect.
- [02:55]
Robert Llewellyn
That was worth waiting around until you're 17 to get that. That was an amazing moment.
- [03:00]
Podcast Host
Well, we thought, given that this significant juncture, that actually it was a nice time to take stock of your career and to reflect on the 16 years. Well, actually I think it's 15 and a half.
- [03:13]
Robert Llewellyn
It's coming up to 16. I think it was June 2010, so it's not long.
- [03:17]
Podcast Host
Yeah, so 15 and seven eighths, let's say birthday of the Fully Charged Show, Everything Electric Show. So let's start with a little bit of an introduction and this is going to make Robert feel extremely embarrassed. So you know, if you want to go to the loo now, you, you can. But I think as we know, Robert is a man of many faces, some of them covered in latex. To millions he is the fastidious head spinning mechanoid Crichton from the cult phenomenon Red Dwarf. And to others he's the soot covered face of engineering ingenuity on Scrap Heap Challenge. And to most of us in this room or listening on the interweb through various sources, he is the face of electric vehicles and clean energy. I think you dispute that one, but then I dispute that back.
- [04:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Okay.
- [04:02]
Podcast Host
But beneath this rubber mask there lies a really interesting kind and inquisitive mind. And over a career spanning six decades, he has transitioned from fringe comedy circuits of the 1980s to becoming one of the most prominent voices in the green revolution. As the creator of the Fully Charged show, he traded the Starbug for electric vehicles. Proving that you can be both a quintessential part of British TV history and, and a futurist looking towards a sustainable horizon. So I am absolutely delighted to be putting my questions and definitely your questions this time. I know we didn't get to questions in the previous session. We will resolve that in this one. And we have a lot of ground to cover. From shoemaking, many of you might not know that. To sustainability and just about everything in between. But in true Kirsty Young or Lauren Laverne fashion, depending on your desert island disc flavor, let's go back to the beginning. So engineering versus academics. This is what I've titled this first section here, I think, and I should caveat by saying a lot of my source of this information is through various car Journeys that we have to various everything electric and fully charged show shoots. And you get little shrapnels of stories which, over the five years that I've been working at the organization, you. You start to piece together and it tells a very interesting tapestry. But one of the things that really strikes me is that you've always had a really profound love of engineering, but perhaps not an immediate love of maths in the formal sense, which meant that that path of pursuing engineering probably wasn't entirely possible. But can you tell us about your early interactions with engineering stuff and when you knew that you loved physical things and contraptions?
- [05:56]
Robert Llewellyn
I would. I'm guessing, because I've seen the photograph. So there's two photographs of me, one when I'm about eight, standing at the side of the M1 when it was being built. So that's. That's. You have to be 70 to be that age. So they were building the M1. And I'm standing there in a pair of shorts and my T bar sandals from Clark's with my hand behind my back. They're like just watching the big road scrapers and the rollers and the dig. I can't. I can't quite remember being there, but the photograph is very reminiscent. And then there's a photograph taken last year, last year in Italy? No, in Geneva, of me standing watching a huge hydroelectric project being put into the amazing river in the middle of Geneva. And I'm in a pair of shorts, standing there with my hand behind my back watching a great big crane lifting something up. And we then discover that there's an Italian term for men of a certain age who sort of retired, who look at civil engineering projects and building sites and things like that. And they stand there with their arms behind their back, like having. And they sometimes give advice to the people working on it. And they're called Umarel. So Umarel is they occasionally get employed as watchmen if they live nearby, or they'll give advice on, you know you want to. If you're going to do that bridge, you want to do that, you know. And so that's become. My family nickname is Umar El. So clearly that started very early, that fascination with civil engineering, in particular with big machines, with, you know, that stuff just was an extraordinary fascination for me. And I can't really tell you why, it just is.
- [07:34]
Podcast Host
But you have also told me a tale that you built a geodesic dome. Yes, I'm quite obsessional about creating this geodesic shape.
- [07:44]
Robert Llewellyn
So I want to give you the background because it was impressive. My dome was not rubbish. So I was very impressed with the work. I'd read a couple of books, one of which referred to a lot of work that was done by Buckminster Fuller.
- [07:57]
Podcast Host
Winston Fullery. Yes, Buckyballs.
- [07:59]
Robert Llewellyn
Buckyballs. And he came up with the concept of the geodesic structure in a geodesic dome. And I was just. I have no idea quite now why I was fascinated by it, but I wanted to do something. And so I was at school in a town called Whitney, which is in Oxfordshire, not that far from Bryson, which is a big air base. And one of my friends, dads was an RAF pilot and they have deliveries of some. It may be components, I can't remember what it is. And they had huge sheets of cardboard, like 4 foot by 4 foot, and they had tons of it. So we got a tractor. Pete Toft, who was the son of a farmer, got his dad to put all this cardboard on a tractor trailer and drag it down a bloody school for Robert. He's going to build one of them domes. And so we then cut triangular shapes out of that stuff. And I got the tape that the RAF used to secure loads, some special glue that we. I can't remember where the glue came from. So we take them together into sort of. I can't remember quite how a gedesign works now. And we built this big thing. So it was quite a big unsupported structure made of cardboard. And we then painted it and it was in the school playing fields, in the corner of the playing fields. And I. That's, you know, what a positive, amazing child to do that. And when the teachers supportive of this extraordinary thing. And then I got expelled because I was such a. I was a. I mean, if I'd been a teacher that had to deal with me, I would have expelled me a year earlier. So I wasn't a good kid in that sense. And I'm not saying that, you know, oh, they did unset me. I was a complete pain in the ass. And there was some graffiti. I don't know how it got there. On the front wall of a school that was built in 1606. It's a state school, it's not a private school. It was a grammar school when I was there, it's still there now, and it's an amazing school now. And it said on the front of the wall, not in very big letters, all schools are prisons and prisons were spelled with a Z. Oh, how pioneering. And then on the front cover of my French book, God knows how it Got there. All schools are prisons and so they use that as evidence that I was a. You know. And there was a sort of whole movement about liberating school. We still had corporal punishment when I was at school, so I was caned numerous times. And then eventually I said, you can't do that anymore. And I walked out. And then it spiraled out of control. But yeah, so we don't go into that. But the speech day after I'd left, I only heard this from my mates who were still at school. The headmaster, who was an ex submarine pilot from World War II, had a dent in his head the size of guttering. God knows how he got there. So he was our headmaster. He dropped dead in a pub two years after I left school. Poor man. Mr. Robinson. Unrelated, unrelated.
- [10:44]
Podcast Host
Unrelated, we should say.
- [10:45]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, well, it was drink based. But anyway, his daughter was lovely. I knew his daughter. Anyway, forget all that. He went on and on about how amazing this fucking geodesic dome was that one of the pupils made. Forgetting that he'd actually explained, expelled that pupil.
- [11:00]
Podcast Host
Anyway, I think they're very smug about that. But you did go on to do something pretty practical and you moved to London and you became a shoemaker. And I'm always curious about this space because you, you talk about it with a great fondness, but equally, I wonder if you had a sense that you wanted to be well known or to be in a more creative space.
- [11:19]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, no, not genuinely. Not at all then. No. Absolutely no idea of it. No desire, no interest in, you know, I just. Yes, absolutely not there at that point, you know, I was. I wanted to not have a job in the traditional sense of a 9 to 5 job. And so I thought if I could make shoes and make a living making shoes, then I could live wherever I wanted to and how I wanted to and not have to do that. And so actually I was an apprentice just up the road here off Marylebone High street, the company is still there. James Taylor and Sons Shoemakers. And there's actually a photograph that was taken around the time was there, although I never saw him, of James Taylor the musician standing outside. They've got it in the shop. James Taylor, the shoemakers. I mean, James Taylor was in sort of 1850 that the company was started. So they made bespoke. Made to measure footwear and they also made orthopedic shoes for people with. With, you know, disabled people. Yeah, and that was an amazing experience. And the two men that taught me, I think I may have mentioned this, were survivors of the camps. They had the Numbers on their arms. And they were in their 60s, maybe late 60s at the time. They taught me and they were just extraordinary. And the shoes they made were exquisite. I mean, just incredible craftsmanship. It was like the bottom of their shoes looked like the body of a beautiful violin. They were so beautifully shaped. So they were very hard taskmasters and I was never up to the standards that they did, but they. That they wanted to do. But, I mean, they were a great. They were great mentors and very funny guys.
- [12:56]
Podcast Host
And if ever, if you ever watch the almost breaking news episodes or any of the podcasts that you film, you may see in the background. Yeah, yeah.
- [13:05]
Robert Llewellyn
So there's the very first pair I ever made as well. One of them is up on the shelf. And there's the one I made for an exhibition that was at Northampton Museum, which is a shoe museum. And so we won a prize at some sort of Pride. We got given a prize by Princess Margaret. I remember that. Can't quite remember what for, but there's a shoot, there's a black brogue and it's really beautiful. There's only one. There's not a pair. I only ever made one. I'm going to waste time making two for an exhibition.
- [13:33]
Podcast Host
But as it happened, you then sort of stumbled into the Joeys. And for those who may not be familiar with the Joeys, I wonder if you could describe. Because Google describes the Joeys as an alternative theatre group, which I'm not sure you'd like that description.
- [13:49]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I mean, we weren't really. I don't know what we were. We were sort of a cab, sort of cabaret music group. So my then girlfriend's sister's boyfriend was one of them. So that's how I met.
- [14:02]
Podcast Host
Girlfriend's sister's boyfriend. Yeah.
- [14:04]
Robert Llewellyn
Bernie and Graham Ranath Theater. That was underneath the workshop that I made shoes in. And he was sort of. He was very theatrical and involved in. He did mime and dance classes and things. And they. And I. They were funny, they made me laugh. And I wrote a sketch for them about RAF pilots in the war. It was a kind of jokey, a bit Monty Pythonish. So. And it was about. One of them was gay and the other one wouldn't accept it. And, you know. And it was all about sort of homophobia and masculinity, but set in a wartime setting.
- [14:40]
Podcast Host
And, I mean, that feels very contemporary in this current age.
- [14:44]
Robert Llewellyn
One of the. So one of the performers was. Chris was amazing. I was gay, he was gay and the rest of us were heterosexuals. And so but then the whole idea was it needed more people in it because it had an air crew. I didn't know anything about writing or how, you know, I just went, well, it needs a rear gunner and it needs a pilot and a co pilot because my father explained how that worked. And it needs a, you know, front gunner or whatever and. But also it's four engine plane. So the opening was at the end. One would go, would make the noises. So we all learned to do the noises, which was basically the starting up of a. Of the motor.
- [15:21]
Podcast Host
So do you want to do a little damage?
- [15:23]
Robert Llewellyn
Well, I can do it. It's very spitty, so you're. Well, you're good. But it was along the lines of that's what you did. And then you try. We try and mix our. So that it was a constant sound so when one run out of breath, the next one was already doing it. So it was a lot of rehearsals to get this constant sound. And if we had microphones, which you didn't always have, it was awesome and people loved it. And then we would take the positions for our pilot y thing and it was stupid sketch. But, you know, the first time we did it, I was just mortified with terror. I don't think I vomited, but I couldn't sleep the night before. I was thinking of any excuse to get out of it. I was going to run away and hide. I just didn't want to do it because people would be watching. And then they laughed at the stuff that I wrote on my own. And that. That's when it turned. That's when I went, I want to do this. Honestly, before that, I don't think I ever had any desire to. It was only because of knowing them and them encouraging me and them saying, you can make really good sound effects.
- [16:23]
Podcast Host
But was it. Was it the joy of performing and making people laugh or the joy of something that you'd created made people.
- [16:31]
Robert Llewellyn
I guess it's got to be a combination of the two, isn't it? But it was certainly an experience I'd never. A feeling I'd never had before. There was no other. So even if, say I made a pair of shoes and someone go, I love these, these are wonderful, you're all good. But now you're going to shag them up and walk in them and you know, all that effort I've made to make them look lovely and you'll go, so I never got that much stuff. But you stand on a stage and there's 200 people or a thousand people, or you know, I think the biggest audience we ever played to was five and a half thousand. That is extraordinary experience. You don't forget it and you go, God, that is incredible. And it does feel like a privilege to me. I always feel that that's incredible privilege to be in that position and to have that happen. And this happened so long before the Internet, so long before. And you know, when we were very kind of radical, we didn't want to do television. Television was bourgeois or fascist. And I was. The weird thing was I was. I had been friends with a lacto who. I'm sure you all know Nigel Planer from before he was on tv. And because I'd seen him do. He did Neil, the character of Neil from the Young Ones on stage, which was. And how horrible his school was, because he was. When he was at school, his teacher would go kneel and he'd kneel down on stage, stand, and he'd stand up, kneel. So really shit jokes like that, but very funny. And then he suddenly was on telly and he became this famous person on the telly, which was such a strange experience to sort of get that second hand, you know. And we're still mate. I was with him. I had dinner with him a couple of weeks ago.
- [18:04]
Podcast Host
For your birthday?
- [18:04]
Robert Llewellyn
For my birthday dinner. No, he was lovely. Yeah, he came along to that.
- [18:08]
Podcast Host
But it is interesting because I think in a world of doing things live, it is. It is a privilege to hold people's attention. And it's a strange world in which we live now where we can capture that attention in different ways, which I'm sure we will come to at some point. But you thought TV was bourgeois, you ended up there. And it's an interesting story because from what I understand, you did a monologue at the Fringe, I think it was called. Was it called Maman Robot Born of
- [18:34]
Robert Llewellyn
Bull two hander two? Yeah. I've just written a really important actress out of history.
- [18:39]
Podcast Host
I have.
- [18:39]
Robert Llewellyn
So sexy.
- [18:40]
Podcast Host
I've accidentally handled someone. Who was the other Deborah?
- [18:43]
Robert Llewellyn
John Wilson. She's incredible. I've just found her again. She lives in Edinburgh. She's the most amazing woman. I haven't seen her for years. She is. She was a. An amazing singer from Los Angeles. Her brother, some people are going to know her brother was Yafet Koto, or is Yafet Koto, who was the big dude in the original Aliens movie. And that was her brother. And so she had a very similar presence.
- [19:07]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [19:08]
Robert Llewellyn
And she would sometimes, if we were. When we were rehearsing and if I Did something wrong. And she looked at me with a slightly angry face. I was really worrying. She was quite scary, but she was amazing to work with.
- [19:21]
Podcast Host
But it was that sketch which meant that you went on to be quite in.
- [19:26]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. So it was a play about. It was. Okay. So very, very brief history. I went to America for the first time, stayed with some friends that I knew from here who were American hippie special effects people. And they did a lot of, like, animatronics. Well, no pyrotechnics for weird theater companies. And they did a lot of exploding stuff. And then they went back to Los Angeles, where they were from, and I stayed in the house and they made robocop's right leg, where he. Which opens and he's got a gun in it, and he takes the gun out and shoots people. And that was their prop. So we went to the premiere, when I was staying with them of RoboCop, which was quite a, you know, an intense experience to see. And I'd never been to a premiere and I'd never seen RoboCop. Anyway, it was good. So I wanted to write a play called Robo Yuppie, which at the time, the young urban professionals yuppies were big thing. Like we heard from Rory with big phones being told they were wankers. So it was around that era.
- [20:24]
Podcast Host
If you weren't here, listen to the podcast, you'll get the reference.
- [20:27]
Robert Llewellyn
That's true, but. So it was a Robo yuppie then talking to Deborah, who I'd known for a long time. The Joeys were occasionally her white boy backing singers.
- [20:38]
Podcast Host
Right.
- [20:38]
Robert Llewellyn
So she would do this amazing song and she said, bring up my whiteboard racking singers. And we'd all come on, go, and we'd do a little, you know, there was a song she called Uptown Girl with a Downtown Feeling. And we would do the chorus of that anyway, so that we knew her well and she was amazing. And I said, do you want to do this? And the idea was a black woman couldn't go into the city in London to make money at that time, and so she needed a white man, so she made one and that was it. And so the robot was her. Her creation. And that was me in a suit and doing silly walks.
- [21:11]
Podcast Host
Oh, my goodness. But it was that that got noticed to then lead on to Crichton.
- [21:17]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes.
- [21:18]
Podcast Host
And I'm sure we have some Red Dwarf fans in the room. Yes.
- [21:23]
Robert Llewellyn
Didn't know anyone watched.
- [21:25]
Podcast Host
A lot of people watched it. And it was also a time before cgi, which meant you spent many Many, many, many hours in a makeup chair. But aside from that makeup chair, I wonder if you could share some of your, your fondest memories of that time.
- [21:42]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, well, the sort of early series were, was. I mean, what I think was remarkable is the, the speed at which I was accepted into that little clique of actors of Craig Charles, Chris, Barry, Danny, John, Jules, you know, I didn't, I knew I'd met Chris, I think, and I knew of Craig, I didn't know Dan at all. And it was like within a couple of weeks it was, it was just, we were just a sort of thing and it just, the chemistry worked, which was great. That said, just to balance it, Craig Charles, still in 2026, refers to me as the new boy.
- [22:18]
Podcast Host
Oh my God.
- [22:18]
Robert Llewellyn
You know, so if, like, if we're on stage together and we're answering questions and he goes, and they're. What about that, Robert? You don't know that he's the new boy. Don't ask him. You don't know anything. So I'm still the new boy of 34 years later or something.
- [22:31]
Podcast Host
How many seasons did you do after you joined? I mean, that's an impressive.
- [22:35]
Robert Llewellyn
I can't remember. Well, 14, I think. 14. Have we done 16 or. I can't, but it's hard to tell because some of them are like specials that are now called a series. Well, there was only three of them, so, you know, I don't know. But yeah, quite a lot of them, yeah.
- [22:48]
Podcast Host
What do you think was its particular magic that made it such a cult success?
- [22:53]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, it's so hard to know. I mean some of the peculiarities of it are. So the first year I worked on it, we worked in this incredible building that was in Acton which has now disappeared. It's all. It was a tower block which was just rehearsal rooms for the BBC. It was owned by the BBC.
- [23:10]
Podcast Host
We drove past it and you.
- [23:12]
Robert Llewellyn
And so we were on the top floor and on the next room to us were Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth, the last series they made. So it was this extraordinary time with these two incredible shows and of course, oh, I haven't done that. But Ben Elton was, was the Joey's warm up man for many years. He would go on first do a half hour of brilliant new material every week and we do. Then we go on and do exactly the same material we do for two, six months. He was an extra. I got to know him quite well. So he wrote, he was writing that. So there were people in that cast I knew. Anyway, everyone in Connection with that cast, other than Ben and Tony Robinson, were Oxbridge. And it was a very. Oxo. The producers, the directors.
- [23:53]
Podcast Host
Blackadder.
- [23:53]
Robert Llewellyn
Blackadder, yeah. Very, very Oxbridge. A lot of the BBC executives would come and sit in the black heather. None of them ever came into the Red Dwarf rehearsal room. No one involved with. With Red Dwarf, the producer, the directors, the writers, the actors have ever had any connection with pretty much any education institution at all. But definitely not Oxbridge, which at that time still had a pretty firm grip on the BBC. On the higher levels of the BBC was very Oxbridge dominated.
- [24:21]
Podcast Host
And it's interesting because actually Red Dwarf garnered a bigger audience and. Yeah, I think.
- [24:27]
Robert Llewellyn
I don't know if it. Then. I don't know if it garnered a bigger audience than Blackadder then in its full time. It definitely did. I mean, it was. Yes, it's the. It's still and it will always be the most watched show that the BBC2 have ever put out. It can't be.
- [24:41]
Podcast Host
That's a. I know.
- [24:42]
Robert Llewellyn
I think that's pretty good. But it's kind of ignored and, you know, more. Let me say this just for the. For my own bat of ego more than Top Gear. And believe me, I have told that very tall man with curly hair, but I won't tell you what he said
- [25:00]
Podcast Host
back because it's very rude into his enormous face. Yes.
- [25:04]
Robert Llewellyn
His face is like. It's like a catering uncooked pudding, isn't it? It's just like great big thing.
- [25:10]
Podcast Host
Sorry, Renault. I know you probably, you know, might want tempted to respond. I'll stop.
- [25:15]
Robert Llewellyn
No, he's very, very funny. He made me laugh till I nearly wet myself. Yeah.
- [25:20]
Podcast Host
But I think that kind of relationship between Blackadder, Red Dwarf, the BBC is an interesting one, which we will come on to in a little bit. But one of the things that I. I have also read and you've not necessarily told me this, so this has come from the Internet, so who knows how this. How true this is, but you were pretty keen to ensure that anything covered on Red Dwarf was at least a little bit grounded in scientific accuracy.
- [25:45]
Robert Llewellyn
I don't think I was. I think the writers were. And I think we supported them on that. I don't think we were saying, you know, we were saying, oh, let's just make it a wibbly, wobbly thing that, you know, we wanted them to. So we would have encouraged it. I seriously don't think I. I was the instigator of that. I don't know.
- [26:03]
Podcast Host
And this is why you shouldn't trust everything that you read on the Internet.
- [26:06]
Robert Llewellyn
I would love to be able to claim that, but I think, I mean that's one of the things people assume that we sometimes improvise stuff. There was zero improvisation. It was scripted brilliantly and occasionally very like one or two times in my entire experience with Red Dwarf, I would come up with a silly line at the end of a scene and it would be discussed and then it would be put in. But boy, that's happened literally one or two times. I mean, it's very rare. So it was very, very beautifully scripted and rewritten. So we would read it on the first day we see in the script, we'd read it and we go, that's brilliant. Oh, that's so funny. All that would change, you know, that would be rewritten completely. The amount of work that went into those scriptures. Extraordinary.
- [26:46]
Podcast Host
What's interesting about going back and watching it now is that it does feel like you're watching a play and it has the pacing of a play.
- [26:53]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [26:53]
Podcast Host
In a way that a lot of content that's created now is. Is around pacing for 15 second bursts here and there. So it's a real joy to watch it and absorb it in that way of.
- [27:03]
Robert Llewellyn
Has a structure. I mean, I think the thing. One of the things I've said about it which I think is true is it was never fashionable. So if you think. I mean the one person I've spoken to this but about this is a really lovely man is Julian Clary. He's just a really sweet guy and I've known him before he was famous and I didn't see him when he was famous. I met him a couple of times afterwards. But he said, you're so lucky because you were never fashionable. And he actually meant me.
- [27:31]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [27:31]
Robert Llewellyn
He also said red door. So if you're never. So he was very, very fashionable for quite. And you can only be fashionable for quite a short time, particularly in showbiz. And then you're not fashionable. And then he has survived and he's done fine. He's okay in it. But you know, that was a really clever observation that Red Dwarf isn't. It wasn't fashionable in 1989. A science fiction comedy show. Wasn't hip. It was a bit off the wall.
- [27:56]
Podcast Host
I used the word hip, I have to say.
- [27:57]
Robert Llewellyn
Oh, nobody says it anymore. No. But we said hip hop back in those days when I had my own teeth. But so that. I think that is one of its. On why it still kind of goes on now because it's not Fashionable now, but it's good.
- [28:12]
Podcast Host
That's so fascinating. And you know, if only he could see your shacket that you now own, which I'd say that is pretty fashionable. Now. In 1998, Scrap Heap Challenge launched.
- [29:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes.
- [29:02]
Podcast Host
And this really feels like perhaps the first time that your love of engineering and your joy of entertaining, presenting comedy were able to come together as you pitted groups of engineers against a 10 hour clock. Did it feel like, oh my gosh, this is like the perfect fully crafted job at the time?
- [29:22]
Robert Llewellyn
No, the first series, I love doing it, it was absolutely incredible. So we did the whole. So stupidly done. We did the whole thing in one session. So we'd wake up really early, we'd get the teams ready really early and it was the same teams each week. So it was a slightly different format. The first series, and then we get them to build a machine and then we'd have supper and then we test the machine all in the same period. So often I would get to the site at six in the morning and I believe at four the next morning and. And there were where there's a big pharmaceutical company head office that you see to your left as you drive on the M4 going out of London.
- [30:01]
Podcast Host
Tsk.
- [30:02]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes. So that was the site, that was a scrap yard. When we made that, that site was a big scrap yard right there. And there was. And it also was an aggregate store for road building. And I discovered one night when there was a long wait for the test that if you need to. And doesn't often come up in life, but if you need to, it's 5 mil is what you want. 5 mil aggregate, if you're going for 4 mil, you slide down it and 8 mil is too rough and you can't line it. So I found that a big pile of aggregate, 5mil, you can lie down, you fall asleep really, really quickly. 1. That is so comfy. 5 mil aggregate. It's just brilliant.
- [30:39]
Podcast Host
What was it? I can imagine.
- [30:40]
Robert Llewellyn
Sorry, that's a very silly way of saying. It was a daft way of doing it. And what it felt like was at that time I'd done a show called I Cancorder, which was about how to use your camcorder. I'd done a load of stuff for the Open University, which nobody watched. You know, some people watched, but very few. And now I've done this weird scrappy thing. No one's gonna, why can't I have a hit show like all my friends are doing and they're doing really well and then, and then it did carry on. I was. The biggest surprise for me was when they said, when I got a phone call, they said they've recommissioned it for next year. I went, you're kidding. Because it was, it felt so chaotic. Half the machines fell apart before they even did anything. You know, it was the same two teams and they were, by the end of it, they were all fighting and hating each other and there was a lot of stress and we did these ridiculous periods of. I don't think it would be allowed now.
- [31:25]
Podcast Host
You know, health and safety definitely, it would definitely come under a different kind of scrutiny. But, you know, we meet engineers on pretty much every single shoot that we do across the uk, across the globe, who grew up on a diet of scrap heap challenge. And for many it's, it's why they became engineers and pursued those careers. I think I know what you're going to say, but do you have an absolute favorite standout episode?
- [31:49]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, it is, it's very hard not to. You know, it was such an extraordinary experience. 2002 flight special, which we did in America, which was three teams. French team, British team, American team built aircraft using period tools. It was, it was to, to commemorate the first flight. The Wright brothers. So they, we were all in period costume and we, they only used hand tools. There was no, so there was no grinding, there was no welding. You know, it was all very, very basic stuff, mainly timber and, and cloth to build the planes. And it was so lovely. It smelt nice. It smelt of wood shavings and things. So they had, they were literally planing bits of timber and shaping wood and everything like that. They had to use real microlight engines and propellers. I was hoping we'd have like old Ford Prefect motors and a hand carved propeller. There's, I think there's health and safety issues around very fast spinning bits of wood anyway, so they all, they were all issued with that one quick side note. When they built the planes and they wanted to test them out, the Americans couldn't get the engines to work. The American motors. The French couldn't get the engines to work. The British woman from the RAF knew how silly. And the guys go, oh my God,
- [33:07]
Podcast Host
how'd you do that?
- [33:08]
Robert Llewellyn
So, yeah, he was very cool about that. So the British team were three RAF technicians and their pilot Billy Brooks, who I've checked today, he's still alive. There's a reason behind that. Billy Brooks is a hang gliding test pilot. And just think, if that's your job, you're a hang. Wait a minute. You're a hang gliding test pilot. So you strap some aluminum and canvas to your back and jump off a cliff, which is exactly what he does. And then it flies and then he's fine and then it. He proves that it works.
- [33:37]
Podcast Host
I mean, his life insurance premium must be phenomenal.
- [33:40]
Robert Llewellyn
Barking mad. Anyway, so there were three planes. The French one bounced into the air and stayed in the air longer than a pram would if you bounced a pram. So it sort of flew. Ish. Not for long, maybe 50 meters. It was up in the air. The American one was a remarkable piece of aerodynamic engineering. You get that because the faster it went, the deeper the grooves it made in the. In the salt flats. We filmed it in the Mojave Desert salt flats and it was just fantastic. You know, we drove along in a pickup truck next to it looking, and it got deeper and deeper until it was like it just drove this thing into the ground. And the pilot guy was desperately trying to do it. Their wings just sort of folded down like that and just pushed. So they didn't do terribly well. They were lovely guys. And that was based on a real design made by a bicycle engineer in like 1904 that did fly. And there's. Theirs didn't quite. And then the British Billy Brooks sat on a children's deck chair gaffer taped to a piece of wood. He had a broomstick in front of him which was joined on with leather so it moved. And that had little eye screws and bits of string to all the control surfaces on the wings. And they didn't have time to do a throttle control which they had a design for. They didn't make it. So the throttle control was a piece of leather in his mouth. That's how he controlled the speed. Move his head back and he got. The engine went faster. So he did this thing where we ran along. I ran along with it, holding up one wing and then it sort of rolled. It had one wheel underneath it, but it was a biplane, so it had two wings and it went. And I was going, this is just going to be so embarrassing. And then it went. Then it went up in the air. No one, no one expected. He didn't expect it, the guy who's flying the bloody thing. So just quickly, there was amazing aeroplane which. I'd love to find out what that was. A kind of glider with an engine with two seater with a gyroscopically controlled camera underneath it. So if you think now that would just be a drone. It cost 500 quid. This is probably a hundred Thousand. A million pound plane. So they took off like a scramble in World War II and caught up with him. And they were ra. They were the only contact we had with him. And he. We had permission from the Federal Aviation Authority for the planes to fly at 50ft, which was such a joke because as if they're going to do that, you know, they might get to 10 for a couple of feet. And we got this amazing message to say, what can you tell them to. It's not safe. We can't see him. We're not getting camera footage of it. And they said. And we said, how high is he? And I always remember this. We're at 3,500ft, sir, and we're still climbing. What do you want us to do? And they were so flat. These American pilots were so, so. And they. Can you tell him to come down? He said, we are pointing in a downward direction, sir, and he is waving back at us and smiling. But we don't have. There's no footage of. There is some footage of him in the airplane, but there's. You know, he was a dot by then. But the great thing was the Federal Aviation Authority guy, it was so cool. He looked like Clint Eastwood. Mirrored shades, peak cap. And he was standing there, you know, he'd been very involved in the whole thing. And I said, is this a problem? And he just went, I don't know. And he just walked and got in his pickup truck and just was like this.
- [36:45]
Podcast Host
Oh, my God.
- [36:46]
Robert Llewellyn
Had no permission to fly and he landed and he didn't die. Extraordinary.
- [36:50]
Podcast Host
I think that's the thing that makes me most stressed, is that he'd have got up and been like, cool.
- [36:54]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [36:55]
Podcast Host
And then he'd have had that moment of, oh, no, we've got to come
- [36:58]
Robert Llewellyn
down, we've got to come down. And I'm sitting on a children's beach deck chair with no, I mean, seat belts and parachutes. We thought it would go, you know, like that. That was. At the most. It was just insane.
- [37:10]
Podcast Host
And a leather belt in his mouth.
- [37:11]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, yes, he did go fastest. He was like, yes, like, he did do a loop round, because he can't go like that because the engine will slow down and he's steering the bloody thing. I mean, it was just bonkers. Yeah. So that was a bit of an exceptional moment.
- [37:25]
Podcast Host
But I remember when you told this story, we were at some event, I think, at Warwick Castle, and you said something like, I don't know if he's still alive. And a guy in the audience went, he's my mate, he is alive.
- [37:36]
Robert Llewellyn
Billy Brooks, Yes. Yeah. No, he's quite well known in those aviation circles.
- [37:40]
Podcast Host
Yeah. I mean, I bet after that kind of feat.
- [37:43]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [37:44]
Podcast Host
But after Scrap People, there may have been Smebelap. Actually you began carpool, which is a format that has been emulated.
- [37:54]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, emulated, yes.
- [37:55]
Podcast Host
In various guises. James Corden, we're looking at you. But what do you think it was about that, that format that people were like, this is cool, we could run with this.
- [38:06]
Robert Llewellyn
It is. So they're very closely linked, scrap heap and carpool. So on Scrappy we used things, the camera crew called them suicide cameras. So they were like a lipstick camera that. Like the size of a lipstick with a wire that went to a little box and that's where the video was recorded. So basically a camera and a string and so they would strap that to a machine where. Where it could go wrong. And occasionally you'd find, you know, we'd be testing something out on a Runway and you go, oh. And you'd see all these bits of broken plastic and a smashed up box. And that was a. That was a suicide camera that didn't make it. So I bought two old suicide cameras from them because they're so small. They were, you know, not much bigger than your finger. I put them in the corner of a Prius that I was driving at the time and you could drive it without. You'd forget they were there. And I did one journey with my son which I've still got the tape of and he's just looking at things in the countryside and swearing and saying he wish he lived in London.
- [39:01]
Podcast Host
How old was he at the time?
- [39:03]
Robert Llewellyn
14, I would say.
- [39:04]
Podcast Host
I can imagine.
- [39:05]
Robert Llewellyn
And I just wanted to say that all the swearing came from his mother, not from his father. And then I recorded Judy and I and it was so revealing of our relationship because at the beginning she I don't want to have bloody cameras. I don't want to be in your silly weird stuff. And then she forgets and then I forget. We genuinely forgotten. We're driving along and she's looking at a map and then we swap drive and then she's driving and then, you know, we say the most. It's. I would never show it. It's just drivel. You know, there are a couple who've been together a long time, you know, on a long drive and it was so I thought that is fascinating because we're not conscious of it. You know, if Judy and I sat in the kitchen with two cameras, we would be either playing up to them or she get in a bad temper and, yeah, turn them off, you know, whatever. So it was quite intriguing. So then it became. Then I thought I could try it. And also the reason of that is that it was. I could do it myself. Didn't need anyone to help. Didn't need a cameraman or anything. The sound was hugely problematic because those cameras didn't record sound. So I had to have the most appalling microphones that didn't work. And, yeah, it was very scrappy to start with, but it got better.
- [40:12]
Podcast Host
But I guess it, as you say, it's that sort of intimate format that people relax a bit. Well.
- [40:17]
Robert Llewellyn
And you're facing. Particularly for men. Yeah, that you're in a car and you're facing forwards and so you're not having to look at each other. You can dance, but you don't. Because it's too awkward. Men can't look at each other when they're talking. It's too dangerous.
- [40:31]
Podcast Host
But then I think it's interesting that you had that. That kind of experience of dealing with, well, creating something yourself, which now is entirely normal. And everybody does it. Everybody on Oxford street is probably doing it. But at the time, extremely pioneering. And it's, I guess, was what sort of led into the fully charged show.
- [40:49]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [40:50]
Podcast Host
Which 16 years ago. You were obviously in your 50s.
- [40:55]
Robert Llewellyn
God, was I? Yeah, it was, yeah. Jesus.
- [40:57]
Podcast Host
But set up a YouTube channel and to be filming it yourself, like, that's a pretty tech savvy, smart thing to be doing. Did it feel that way?
- [41:06]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah, I mean, I think I was. I had the advantage of spending a lot of time with the. The same camera crew on. On Scrappy, and they were all camera nerds. And the camera there's amazing guy. Spud Murphy is an Australian camera technician and he was very encouraging to me. And he'd set up my laptop with editing stuff and he'd show me how to ingest footage from tapes, which we had to use at the time. So I got good mentoring, if you like, in that world. So I was tech savvy enough to understand what he was saying, but utterly incapable of doing it without him. So he was very key to showing me how to do that. And also the technology was changing, so, you know, it became possible that you could. Like, the first edit suite I ever used was a sitcom that we haven't mentioned that I wrote and produced and was in, was a really good sit. Just didn't have any comm. And so it wasn't terribly. One of the very early shows on Channel 4, when Channel 4 started. But I sat in an edit suite on Tottenham Court Road, just up the road from here, and that edit suite cost like three and a quarter million pounds. It was like insanely expensive and really rubbish. It couldn't do anything. It was really slow. And that's what changed. So the technology kind of led to that, which kind of. I felt tied in with what we were talking about, which was electric vehicles, a different technology, and it became plausible for someone on their own to effectively produce a TV program. And I. I was absolutely obsessed with that. Certainly.
- [42:36]
Podcast Host
Yeah, I guess was part of that obsession of having that independence because of relationships with traditional broadcasters and perhaps specifically the BBC.
- [42:46]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes. No, but I. But I'm a very, very devoted supporter of the BBC. Yes. Because I went to the BBC. Am I going to remember a name? No, I'm not. But anyway, I went to the BBC in 2009 to pitch fully Charged as a BBC show, and the whole idea was the antithesis of Top Gear. It wasn't to counter Top. It wasn't to sort of ruin Top Gear. It was just that there is another world that's emerging and they just didn't know what I was talking about. And I'll very briefly say that I joked, his name's going to come to me in a moment. The producer I was with, who I'd worked, who'd worked on Scrappy, he had been the main executive producer behind Top Gear when it became the show.
- [43:31]
Podcast Host
The Grand Tour.
- [43:32]
Robert Llewellyn
No, no, pre. Grand Tour, when they. When they. When they sat on the chairs and they were the audience behind them and then they do. That was his thing. He was there. So he had a re. And he was a BBC employee and so he didn't make 150 million out of. He's quite bitter.
- [43:48]
Podcast Host
I imagine his.
- [43:49]
Robert Llewellyn
His anecdotes about the Top Gear crew. I won't cast. I won't say anything about. But they weren't. He wasn't a big fan. Yeah. Anyway, but that's besides the point. So. So I had a really good in at the BBC and they wanted me to do something and it was good and I suggested this thing and they just didn't know what I was talking about. They said, is it. What do you mean milk floats? Or do you mean. Do you mean disability vehicles? You know, they just did not know what it was. And I made a joke at the end when he kicked my leg, because I was being a bit too cheeky, but I said, what about if we get a catering van and we convert it to run on electricity and batteries and put solar panels on the roof and we drive around with famous chefs cooking meals for choirs. And then the choir, so it's called Sing for your supper. And they go. And they loved that idea. They were going to go for it and it was like a joke because what does the BBC do? Choirs cooking, house renovations. I threw in a bit of house renovating on the way as well, but we do it in a solar powered van, which would have been impossible then now. Yeah, I think it's not a bad idea. I think we should pitch it again.
- [44:48]
Podcast Host
Do you know what? And I feel like it would tick every single box. They'd be like, come on in, let's make it. But safe. Say they didn't commission it. And 16 years on, I wonder if there are a couple of people there being like, that could have been a good idea.
- [45:00]
Robert Llewellyn
Don't think so.
- [45:02]
Podcast Host
No, I don't think back in, in 2009, 2010, extremely pioneering because there were like two electric vehicles that you could.
- [45:09]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [45:09]
Podcast Host
Very small amount. So I wonder if you were to go back and whisper in mid-50s, Robert's ear and say, by the way, you Fast forward to 2026, this happens.
- [45:19]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [45:20]
Podcast Host
What do you think you'd say? What secret would you share?
- [45:22]
Robert Llewellyn
I mean, you would have gone, I don't. I wouldn't have believed them. I said, it'll all be hydrogen. Because that's what everyone was telling me, it'll only be hydrogen. All the buses and all the diggers, everything will be hydrogen engine.
- [45:31]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [45:31]
Robert Llewellyn
And I didn't know. It sounded plausible to me and it was much better than burning diesel and petrol. So I thought that was great. I just would never have thought this would happen. It didn't take long for me to sense, oh, something bigger is happening here. So when the Nissan Leaf was launched, when the Renault Zoe was launched, you go, this is. And I went to the Renault factory in, outside Paris and went, they're taking this seriously. You know, this is a genuine shift in technology, but way before. So I remember seeing a BYD car at Geneva motor show in 2009 and going, they're not very good at. They're not very good at cars. Byd. There's me going, that's me. My insightful little company. No, this company is never going to. That's not going to make it. No one's going to buy those. And it was wrong.
- [46:19]
Podcast Host
Yeah, A little bit wrong. And imagine, you know, if you could give that.
- [46:22]
Robert Llewellyn
They sold 8 million cars last year.
- [46:25]
Podcast Host
I'm just gonna do a little time check. Oh, gosh. I. Okay. I'm gonna do one more question, maybe two, and then we'll come to audience questions. So what many people might not know. Actually, this is unfair. Lots of people will know because you have sold many books, but you are also an author.
- [46:45]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [46:45]
Podcast Host
I think you've written 16 books.
- [46:47]
Robert Llewellyn
I can't remember, but it's a lot. Yes, it's somewhere around that.
- [46:50]
Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah. And they range from autobiographical fact. I was going to say faction. I don't mean that. Nonfiction and sci fi. And I think having spent again, many, many car journeys with you, it almost feels like these stories just need to come out and you need to. They sort of annoy you until you've whipped them into shape and wrangled them into that, into a book. And I know that writing has always been something that's been a consistent thread throughout your whole life, but without sounding too like, walk us through your process. But is that how it feels that these stories just.
- [47:22]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [47:23]
Podcast Host
Need to come out?
- [47:23]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah. It's just weird. It's a weird and annoying. And it annoys me because I think I could do so much. I could do some gardening. I'll go for a nice walk. But there's bloody things won't let me go and I can't help. So that I'm in that one I'll talk about in a minute. But was walking for hours and hours during lockdown and I went, oh, I've had a fucking idea. And honestly, it was like that, oh, I'll forget it, I'll forget it. And then the next day, fuck. I haven't forgotten it because I know I have ideas that I totally forget. And then I get frustrated that I've forgotten them. Like I don't know what they are. But that one just stayed and stayed until I did something about it. So it is a weird experience. I mean, I've always, always written. So all through all Geodesic Doane's shoemaking, writing for comedy things, I was writing and it was rubbish and it was nonsense, but it was hours and hours of writing. And then my mum gave me her Corona typewriter, which is why I break electronic keyboards now by the dozen, because I typed like you had to hammer them, otherwise it wouldn't go ka ching, you know, the little bar wouldn't go onto the paper. So ting, ting, ting, ting, ting, ting. So I typed like a Stone Age lunatic.
- [48:27]
Podcast Host
I can confirm this because I got your old laptop and maybe like 30% of the keys just fell off it. Was really annoying. So there were like quite a lot of fundamental letters that when I got to them would have to be like, yeah, yeah, Tate confirmed it's difficult.
- [48:42]
Robert Llewellyn
Yeah.
- [48:43]
Podcast Host
But your latest book, Ghost Camera, and every time I say, I want to say Ghost Train, it might be a
- [48:49]
Robert Llewellyn
problem with the title, but yes, there's
- [48:51]
Podcast Host
a song called Ghost Train which I often have in my head. But Ghost Camera, it's. It's a phenomenal book and I really, really encourage everyone to, to get it. Both myself and my husband, we read it on holiday. Oh, here's one. We prepared it just, it was just
- [49:04]
Robert Llewellyn
here I had an Adoleton.
- [49:06]
Podcast Host
It's so strange, but what's really phenomenal about it, and I don't want to give too much of the premise away because you have to read it yourselves, but I so loved reading it because it took us through a lab that's based in Oxfordshire and it so brought to life all of the innovations that we see on the Everything Electric show, The types of teams that we see, the types of scientists and the engineers who are quietly badgering away, fueled by digestive biscuits and pretty low quality coffee. And you kind of track that and build this picture so perfectly and seeing that slow treading towards progress. And then there's this parallel stream which sort of tracks what happens when an innovation gets sort of catches wind and it can become very divisive, both either sort of socially or politically or probably both. And the scientists who are behind it are kind of baffled that that happened. And you kind of comment on this in this, like, slightly bemused way, and the overall sort of feeling I get at the end of it is, despite the sort of chaos happening in these like, crazy politicization of technologies, you somehow remain weirdly optimistic. And even though we know you for your rants that we see on almost breaking news, I wonder, when you look at the rate of change of technology, how you're able to stay so optimistic.
- [50:25]
Robert Llewellyn
Yes, I don't know. Well, I mean, I, I mean, certainly the recent conversation I had with Jan Rosnow in Oxford, who's a professor, any sort of energy and climate special, extraordinary man who does remain optimistic, but his knowledge of the problems that we face is much deeper and more, you know, profound than mine. But he still remains optimistic because what else can you do? It's one of the things it went okay. Yeah, that's fairly good point. But I mean, in, you know, I do think that in my life, having 70 years under your belt is an advantage because you go, I never go, oh, Back in my day, you know, it was wonderful. It was terrible. It was a lot of terrible things that, you know, just, even on the most basic level, even as a kid, I just thought like being horrible to people was just nasty, you know. And I'd hear my dad doing racist rants or homophobic comments. I go, that's why, you know, that always struck me as wrong. Not, I didn't learn to not be racist. It just felt like, why would you judge someone on those criteria and be nasty about them and what's wrong with you? You know, And I think that has stayed through my whole life. But that was rampant when I was a kid.
- [51:38]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [51:38]
Robert Llewellyn
On the tv, it was perfectly normal to make really profoundly obscenely racist, homophobic and sexist comments for fun.
- [51:47]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [51:47]
Robert Llewellyn
And people would laugh at it. And it just like looking back now, you just go, that is, it's not being politically correct now or woke or anything. It's not being an, you know, that's, it's as simple as that. Why would you. What was wrong with those men with their ruffle fronted, you know, that's what the Joeys was driven by was that desire to counter that sort of man in bow tie. My wife, I won't say she's fucked. You know, all those things you say. Can we move on a bit?
- [52:12]
Podcast Host
Yeah.
- [52:12]
Robert Llewellyn
No. So that's a through line. I can't remember what the question was
- [52:15]
Podcast Host
now, but yes, like keeping optimistic. And I think what you, you know, it's that profound hope in just being nice. I suppose there's an element. Yeah.
- [52:24]
Robert Llewellyn
I'm not always. I'm not. I don't think I'm that nice. Oh, you should ask Judy about that. I don't know. But. Yeah, but that, but that, yeah, that was such fun to. So the, the just very brief because you. That was a brilliant appraisal. I can't, it doesn't deserve it. The, the thing that got me when I, the way I found my way into that story so I knew what I wanted to talk about was that it's written from the point of view of a laboratory cleaner, a janitor who's my age who's sort of near retirement and he's seen all these weird professors in Oxford and he's cleaned all the most high end scientific research places. So he's very highly skilled, calls himself a janitor, which I've later discovered is actually an American term for a cleaner.
- [53:04]
Podcast Host
But I feel like it makes sense for him because he takes his role
- [53:07]
Robert Llewellyn
very, very seriously and it's.
- [53:08]
Podcast Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:08]
Robert Llewellyn
And he maintains a constant supply of toilet paper. A lot of people don't realize how important that is. Yeah, you don't want it to run out and all these cleaning equipment and. And so he's. He then sees all. He gets sent all these articles about the stuff that he hasn't got a clue what they're making. They're doing all this weird stuff and they're all excited about it and there's nothing happening. And then, you know, and then the story is that the thing that they're trying to make completely doesn't work. It's cost billions of pounds. It's complete failure. But it does something else that's extraordinarily weird. And that's. That's the kind of the basis of it.
- [53:40]
Podcast Host
And it is, it is just such fun. And I hope I'm allowed to say this, but I got probably 90% of the way through the book, there's a character called Mabel who's. Who's your daughter in law. I said, oh, that's lovely. 90% of the way through the book, this character called Imogen.
- [53:57]
Robert Llewellyn
That's right.
- [53:58]
Podcast Host
I was reading it on a plane, but I was on my own. I got to the character and I was looking around, but obviously I was alone and nobody cared. But no, it is a really beautiful book. You must all read it. I think it's a really. I think it's quite rare to read a book that feels optimistic about in the age of AI and it is an optimistic commentary on the sort of weird technological landscape that we live in. My last question, because I promised we'd have audience questions and I know we're running a little bit late, so we will only do one. Sorry, but it seems to me that you've managed to kind of bring a very weird combination of humor to quite important things. And I wonder in this kind of attention economy where we, you know, what we do on YouTube even has had to change in the past few years. We used to do these long, fancy intros and now they need to be straight to the point. Is humor a very necessary component of getting people to compare? Not to compare, to care about important things?
- [55:00]
Robert Llewellyn
I used to think so I'm not absolutely convinced it is, but I think it does. It is. It is the, you know, the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine. I mean, you certainly can deal with. I don't know about. I don't know about science and technology, so social issues, you know, it's better to be funny about. Why it's quite a nice idea. Not to be racist. That's probably a better way of doing it than shouting at someone and going, if you know that. But I do wonder with technology and with science and with engineering whether that is the right. And this is a quandary I've not solved. I mean, and I still worry about it and I think I shouldn't. It can devalue. I worry if I do a cheap gag it will devalue what is actually going on. And it's a really, it's a very fine balance and I think I get it wrong a lot of the time. I think, you know, it's a really hard one to get right. But occasionally, you know, someone will, you know, an engineer that we're talking to or someone will say something and just sparks a stupid joke in my. And so I've learned not to make fun of the people we talk to because some of them, it wouldn't be that hard.
- [56:08]
Podcast Host
No. And maybe we have secret conversations.
- [56:14]
Robert Llewellyn
But actually my favorite line, which I was told by a mathematician at Cambridge University was. And it applies to many different ones and I'm sure you've probably heard it, but he goes, you can tell a well socialized mathematician because he looks at your shoes when he's speaking to you. Meaning rather than. He's like. He's not like that. He's there. He's moved that far from there to there. Anyway, it made me laugh.
- [56:35]
Podcast Host
We'll see if that makes the edit. That's what I'll say. Well, Robert, thank you so much for inviting, indulging this little foray or walk down memory lane. I know that I've really enjoyed it. I hope that everyone here has too. And I guess just thank you for making the fully charged show in the first place and making sure that everything electric is still the continued success that it is.
- [56:59]
Robert Llewellyn
Great pleasure. No, thank you so much for coming along. Thank you, thank you.
- [57:08]
Podcast Host
We will just say for the cameras because there's lots of people listening at home. That is all that we have time for. As ever, if you could do us the honour of liking subscribing, sharing with a friend, leaving a little comment. We so appreciate it. But that's it. As always, if you have been.
- [57:25]
Robert Llewellyn
Thank you for watching. We're so good at that.
- [57:28]
Podcast Host
Yeah, we're so good at that. We practice.
- [57:31]
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