Guy Martin: Building Britain

3 November 2011

Guy Martin

Channel 4 Commissioning Editor for History Julia Harrington has commissioned North One Television to make Guy Martin: Building Britain (working title), due for transmission on Channel 4 in 2012.

In each episode, Guy Martin, lorry mechanic and British motorcycle racer, will help a team of volunteers restore an iconic machine or building from Britain's industrial past, and through each structure he will tell the story of a landmark in making the Britain we recognise today: the railways, the factories, the docks, the mines, the garden and the holiday.

Each episode focuses on the jobs and skills of the Industrial Revolution's unsung heroes, rather than the familiar famous names - so the ordinary men, women and children who executed the engineers' ideas.

In the first episode, Guy will help restore the most important icon of the Industrial Revolution and the machine that turned Britain into the first industrialised nation in the world - a steam locomotive. His lorry mechanic skills come in extremely useful as Guy has to work inside the very guts of the machine, but he also has to learn a new set of trades, from Victorian blacksmithing to experiencing the harsh manual labour of the notorious navvies, the people who actually built the railways. And Guy being Guy, once his 130 tonne loco is taken for its inaugural run, he can't resist using its furnace to cook the traditional 19th century train driver's meal - a bacon and egg sandwich, served on a coal shovel.

The series will also see Guy renovating a Yorkshire saw mill powered by the world's oldest surviving water turbine; overhauling one of the famous Brixham fishing trawlers which were then the fastest in the world; design his own giant fountain and rockery at the Birmingham Botanical Garden; help rebuild a steam pumping engine at a preserved drift mine which is today as protected as Blenheim Palace; and be lowered on a rope towards the crashing waves underneath Llandudno Pier so he can help preserve the most important attraction at this purpose-built Victorian holiday resort.

Commissioning Editor Julia Harrington says, "Guy Martin is a real talent and he's bringing Britain's industrial achievements to life in his own special way - with genuine knowledge of how things work, driving curiosity and real warmth. This is the story of when Britain worked, the age of axel grease, danger and hard labour, and there's no one better to tell it."

Executive producers James Woodroffe and Ewan Keil say, "Guy has a simple motivation here - he wants to help maintain the legacy of Britain's grafters. He doesn't just stand next to some machine and say 'gosh it must have been tough' like we've heard a million times before - he actually gets stuck in and has a go at the job, no matter how hard or filthy. Barely a day's filming passes where he's not covered from head to toe in soot, grime and grease and he's loving every second of it. We've had him genuinely working inside the claustrophobic firebox of a loco, straining to single-handedly move a two tonne train wheel and even eating candles, the emergency food rations of trapped Victorian miners. It's a delight to work with him and as the production continues one thing is becoming increasingly apparent: he's making graft cool again."