Narrator Bill Paterson reminisces on four of the barn’s most unusual fixes, including a hovering vacuum cleaner, a Victorian lightning machine and a giant stuffed animal!
Favourite Fizes Season 1 - Episode 4
Over the years, the team are often thrown a curve ball in the shape of weird and wonderful items they have never encountered before. One thing they’ve learned is that family heirlooms really do come in all shapes and sizes! But no matter how strange they may seem, they are always accompanied by an extraordinary tale.
First into the barn is Kauser Mukhtar from Bradford, who brought an unlikely heirloom for the attention of Dom Chinea and electronic whizz Mark Stuckey. It’s a 1960s vacuum cleaner, which was a favourite play toy when she was younger. The cleaner has no wheels and would hover over the carpet. Kauser and her siblings have fond memories of riding on top of it for a spin across the room! But decades of wear and tear, and sitting in her dad’s garage, have left the machine rusted and the electrics no longer working.
It will take a team effort from Dom and Mark to get the unlikely toy back in tip-top shape for Kauser, so she can pass it on to her daughter. Dom must tackle the rusted metal casing and make it airtight before a new paint job can be attempted, while Mark is tasked with reviving the ailing motor. But will they manage to achieve lift-off when Kauser returns to the barn?
The team love to celebrate the weird and wonderful, and take particular joy in unique inventions and eccentric personal projects. The next item ticks all those boxes and poses a scientific challenge for mechanical expert Steve Fletcher. It belongs to Nick Wimshurst, who hopes lightning can strike twice with his most unusual family heirloom – a lightning machine made by his great-great-grandfather in the 1880s. An electric static influence machine, which looks like something from a science fiction movie, would effectively create a lightning bolt to help the burgeoning field of radiography in the Victorian era. James has never seen it working, and he hopes Steve can spark it back to life to honour his ancestor.
It’s a headscratcher for Steve, who is not even sure how it works! He must carefully take apart and restore the 12 glass disks, which he thinks spin brushes that make contact with lead strips on the disks, building up a charge to generate static electricity – that’s his theory anyway. But he has to be really, really careful. The glass is 150 years old, and if he drops any disk, it could be game over.
Vanessa Buck from Bognor Regis has an unusual passenger in need of some TLC from Julie Tatchell and Amanda Middleditch. Named Leo the Lion, the giant stuffed animal needs both the Teddy Bear Ladies to carry him inside.
Vanessa’s mum had originally wanted to buy her a small stuffed tortoise to climb over when she was eight months old. But after visiting a department store, she instead fell in love with the giant toy and was barely able to fit him in the car to take home! As Vanessa grew up, Leo the Lion was always there for big hugs. But years of affection and boisterous playing left her stuffed friend missing his mane, as well as his original, proud shape. It is one of the biggest fixes Julie and Amanda have ever attempted in the barn. They need to replace Leo’s stuffing, all three big bin bags full, and his wire frame, which has buckled after years of children climbing on him.
It’s sometimes the humblest of objects that hold the dearest memories. That is certainly the case for visitors Bev Smith and her daughter Georgie, who have an unlikely heirloom that requires a lift from metalwork maestro Dom Chinea - a 1950s car jack! It belonged to Bev’s granddad, also called Jack, who ran a caravan site with his wife. Bev grew up on the caravan site and remembers her grandfather using the jack to lift the caravans. But when he wasn’t lifting the mobile homes with it, he would turn it into Bev’s own personal fairground ride, pumping the handle and giving her a ride up and down. Now rusted and seized shut, Bev hopes Dom can get it working again so she can have another ride!
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