Posts Tagged ‘James May’s Toy Stories’

Say Goodbye To James May's Lego House

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Folks, today is a sad day for fans of interlocking bricks. What seemed like such a beautiful idea, James May’s Lego House (which we blogged about here), has been deemed unsustainable by the purse string-holders, and has been demolished. Apparently it would have cost around £50,000 to dismantle and move the whole thing.

Just think of the man hours involved in constructing such a noble and proud building. As a child, I could often be found trying to build something without the use of instructions, but chickening out as soon as my needs outweighed my talent – this Lego House project was the perfect example of someone finishing off what so many of us would like to have started.

The pictures below make for harrowing viewing, and are not for the faint-hearted:

Shame.

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Disaster.

My best Lego moment: arriving back from holiday to find that my older brother had built an entire Lego space station from scratch that went around the majority of my bedroom.

My worst Lego moment: being about four years old and getting lost in Legoland, Denmark, after following a man who I thought was my Dad (he was wearing the same colour jumper, I clearly thought that was enough to identify him).

Thanks to Geeky Gadgets for getting there first.

James May's Lego House

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Top Gear’s James May is making every child’s dream a reality and actually building a house out of Lego. An actual, full sized, complete with bathroom facilities, honest to goodness house. I spent many an afternoon sat in the middle of my bedroom, surrounded by building blocks, trying to scrape together enough of the same colour to build a space ship (not a futuristic spaceship, one of the NASA ones). But alas, I never had enough white or round edges to do the job properly so I’d just end up making a multi-coloured batmobile instead. Not that Batman would ever have been seen dead in it.

The project was part of James May’s BBC2 series “James May’s Toy Stories” and, staying true to the spirit of the task, he made 600 free tickets available to anyone who fancied popping along to build a section – he even suggested they brought their unwanted Lego.

May said he came up with the idea for the project over a beer with friends. “Your imagination is always bigger than your stockpile when you’re a kid,” he said. “Up until now, the largest thing I’ve ever built with Lego was probably a plane or a battleship, because that was all I could build with the amount I had.”

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