First, a caveat: I spent the years 11 thru 14 doing this near-religious little Friday night routine, where I would phone up a local pizza shop (shouts to Torino’s) and quietly order a half tuna sweetcorn, half mortadella pizza – literally the most insane pizza order in all of the world, nothing about that makes sense, a horror – and then I would nestle down on the floor in front of the TV and quietly eat the entire thing while watching the latest episode of Robot Wars.
In the moments I wasn’t eating pizza and watching Robot Wars I was thinking about Robot Wars. I was drawing little robot chassis in various notebooks. I was reading manuals on how to build robots. I was trying to convince my dad to take me to the dump so we could source old lawnmower motors. He never did. He did not want a son who screwed two lawnmower motors to a badly dremeled piece of wood and called it a robot. Nobody did. Nobody wants that. I mean I looked like this, for fuck’s sake:
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So now I am through the other side of this I am now definitely in a position to rank others for their nerdiness – something about being without sin and casting stones? I don’t know exactly how it goes – starting with last night’s Robot Wars redux.
Quick review of the episode: yeah, it was really good; Carbine is a beast. Long review: I kind of want to go to the dump and ask them in a high, wavering, unbroken voice whether they have any lawnmower motors again. Dude in a boiler suit and a dirty face just laughing at me. Two-handedly throwing an old deck chair into a skip and just laughing and laughing and laughing. “Fuck off, kid,” he’s saying. “Fuck off and grow a bollock, you daft little twat.”
Anyway!
LEAST NERDY:
DARCIE, TEAM RAZER
Absolute anomaly. Absolutely no clue how this happened.
GILLIAN, TEAM RAZER
“I support the boys really by reminding them to eat and drink,” Team Razer’s mum says, before getting out a shoebox full of homemade sausage rolls swaddled in tin foil. She is wearing dangly earrings while this is happening. This is the most mum thing I’ve ever seen. This is Peak Mum. Mums necessarily cannot be nerds and as such she is essentially ruled out of this list.
BOTH THE DUDES FROM BONK, TEAM BONK
Team Bonk are absolutely not here to fuck about, lads. They are not here to talk about transistors with you nerds. They do not want to even win. They just want to fucking hammer an axe into some other nerds’ precious robots, then get to the pub for ten pints. In a way, these two are the exact antithesis of nerdery: they entered Robot Wars just to make the other nerds upset by damaging their robots. Cheers to you, Team Bonk. You are Not Nerds.
ANGELA SCANLON, HOST
Angela Scanlon is an Irish TV presenter tasked with turning the sacred Philippa Forrester role into something more 2k16, which she did by storming around backstage in a jumpsuit looking like the brig captain on a star ship on smart-casual Friday. Do they have smart-casual Friday on star ships? I feel like only Angela Scanlon knows for sure.
SIMON, TEAM RAZER
Simon is just one of those weird silent dudes you get a lot on three-man teams on Robot Wars, who really likes screwing things into other things and soldering, but hates talking to people and hates being on camera and, really, ideally, would prefer to be fighting his fighting robot is a silent warehouse with nobody watching, but has to go through the whole charade of going on Robot Wars and wearing coordinated red T-shirts, and as such it is impossible to truly gauge his nerdiness because he could be one of those “I know Pi to five thousand places! THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE—” nerds, or he could just like tinkering with engines and quietly sipping tea in between. You’ll never really know because he won’t tell you.
THE OTHER ONES, BEHEMOTH
These are just two mute engineers and I cannot get a read on how much they do or do not like Game of Thrones: the books. I feel like I could feasibly go to the pub with them both and enjoy maybe six, seven rounds before either one of them said anything unprompted. They are Not Nerds.
IAN, TEAM RAZER
Ian seems like a normal man, but then he has also built and fought robots for over a decade and has won Robot Wars twice, so you just know he’s got a load of books about attack helicopters in his house and can name every model of Kawasaki. Normal on the outside, unreadable nerd depths in the middle. The swan of robot nerds.
MATTHEW, KILL-E-CRANK-E
When I told my editor I was writing this, she was like, “Yes, fine, but don’t go in two-footed on the kids, because they are only children, aren’t they,” so. I mean, it’s going to be impossible to really know if this kid is a nerd or not until he’s done with puberty, so going to have to reserve our judgments here on this one.
NICK, KILL-E-CRANK-E
No idea if this kid’s a nerd or not, but I get the sincere vibe he only owns one pair of jeans and says a silent yes when he looks at his Casio watch at precisely 4:20PM.
MEDIUM NERDY
HAYDEN JAMES, THE GENERAL
The General was built in this guy’s cowshed and no guy who owns a cowshed is a nerd. This is just some farmer don who really likes polishing things. “Anything I can polish, boyos?” he’s saying. “Anything I can get a spit on?” And his son is there going, “No dad I told you this isn’t a shiny robot,” and he just nods and goes: “Alright then,” and goes to his polishing drawer and polishes some old gewgaw he’s been meaning to get up to scratch for a while now. A big file, or something. A tin pot.
SHERYL, TEAM CARBINE
Sheryl is Team Carbine’s tactician, which I assume just means she whispers “Fuck Shit Up” a few times during every battle because all Carbine is capable of doing is Fucking Shit Up. She has the easiest job in Robot Wars and as such is Not A Nerd.
ALAN, THE GENERAL
Pretty sure this is just some dude from Elbow that Elbow lost track of. Elbow, right now, in a recording studio conspicuously missing a drummer: “Where’s Alan? Where the fuck is Alan? We told him 2.30PM!” “He’s up in Glasgow fighting his robot.” “He’s fucki— he’s what?”
TOM, THE GENERAL
Tom once modelled gilets in a Littlewoods catalogue but it didn’t really go anywhere from there and, 15 years later, he’s still working a lot of his frustration out by building a really quite ineffective robot to compete against children.
NICK, TERRORHURTS
Nick just wants to be in his North Face jacket and North Face undershirt and North Face T-shirt and his new special £60 water purifying flask from Blacks, and he wants to be out on a big hill having a climb, alone, just him and the wind – that’s how he wants to spend his Sunday. Quiet, the quiet life, pushing as much Kendall Mint Cake into his body as possible, but instead he’s here in a warehouse in Glasgow getting yelled at by John because he didn’t activate an axe fast enough.
DAVID, CARBINE (LOSING EDITION)
When this guy is watching his robot lose at fighting other robots he just takes on the exact demeanour of a dad in a car watching a sunset when parked above a silent, quiet park, tears in his eyes, sitting there for 40, 50 minutes, before thinking, ‘No, no. Come on. Come on, don’t. Think of the kiddies.’ As such he is Not A Nerd.
MOST NERDY
SAM, CARBINE
Getting a sincere vibe that this dude’s ultimate career path is being one of those children’s TV presenters who tries to make science fun for kids. You know the type: waistcoat, wireless mic, comes to your school assembly and tries to tell you that physics “can actually be quite cool, you know!” He’s just got the look.
ROBIN, KILL-E-CRANK-E
First glance, this dude looks like your common-or-garden “residential dad who hasn’t eaten a full meal since he did acid once when he was a student; he just drinks coffee and smokes roll-ups now”. But if you see him competing you see flashes of the real man inside him: someone who watched the original series of Robot Wars through sick jealous lenses, and, when saw they were rebuilding the series from the ground up, used his children as cover for all his robo-fantasies. For 12 years he has wanted to build this, a tube with a saw on the end, and finally, now, it is socially acceptable for him to do so, pretending it’s his son’s dream and not his. I cannot give you a full read on how many times this dude has shouted, “NO, MATTHEW, DON’T TOUCH DADDY’S ROBOT!” in the weeks leading up to this, because that number is above even infinity.
DAVID, CARBINE (WINNING)
David from Carbine when Carbine is winning – I mean, the weapon on the front of Carbine is worth about 60 times what a bullet from a sniper rifle is, and it can run both ways up, so it’s essentially a weapon of war that somehow has filtered through the Robot Wars house rules just to fuck things up. To Fuck Things Up. Imagine a little 12-year-old kid has made his first little robot and given it a goofy name and googly eyes, and he and his dad really bonded over making it, and he painted it all nice and it’s a simple design, really, just a large flipper with wheels tucked behind armour, but it’s good enough; it’s just a bit of fun, just a fun little hobby he has because the boys at school won’t talk to him, and then it goes in an arena with Carbine and just gets fucking shot to shreds – and then David from Carbine (winning) becomes all gloaty and horrible when he’s winning – really likes it when his robot Fucks Shit Up – and essentially this is every kid who did a dab at a Spelling Bee competition this year distilled into one shit-eating nerd grin. I hate winning David with all of my life.
ANTHONY, BEHEMOTH
Look at the dark circles under those eyes. That’s a dude who truly knows the meaning of the words “I was up until 4AM painting my Warhammer.”
JOHN, TERRORHURTS
This guy seemed like a quite normal breezy Santa-esque uncle until he actually got competing, and then he was in the control tower yelling at his mute teammate about who fucked up the fucking CO2 because the axe isn’t working I FUCKING TOLD YOU TO TEST THE AXE, which reveals a fragment of the man beneath: a man who takes roboteering extremely, extremely seriously. I feel like this dude low-key taught himself to speak Elvish once after his fourth run through of Lord of the Rings. Further evidence, as if any more was needed, that the only way to truly get to the heart of a man is to watch him competitively battle robots.
PROF. SETHU VIJAYAKUMAR, JUDGE
Nerd.
DR LUCY ROGERS, JUDGE
Nerd.
NOEL SHARKEY, JUDGE
Nerdlord.
ALEX, TEAM NUTS
Team NUTS were the ones you saw last night in hairy colour-coordinated waistcoats and top hats and incredibly, incredibly ill-fitting charity shop shirts underneath them, and you just cannot imagine how many 20-sided dice these dudes have among them.
RORY, TEAM NUTS
I mean, seriously, can you even contemplate for a second how many joke slogan T-shirts Rory owns?
CHRIS, TEAM NUTS
There is nothing wildly and outwardly nerdy about Chris from Team NUTS, but you have to wonder about why a dude in his by-the-looks-of-it-fifties is palling around with a load of students who snort through their nose when they laugh, and untangle the mess of wool behind this man and know the truth: he isolated all of his actual, adult friends by making too many jokes about maths and insisting they go to real ale pubs that don’t serve a single lager on the hottest day of the year. “It’s just a deeper and more complex taste,” he’s saying, sucking the froth of an 8 percent beer that tastes like an abandoned pond. “You don’t want one of these corporate lagers! They’re all made in Germany! Here: why was the obtuse triangle always upset?”
DAVE, TEAM NUTS
The waistcoats were definitely Dave’s idea. The top hats were definitely Dave’s idea. Going on Robot Wars in the first place was definitely Dave’s idea. After watching him last night lose nobly on Robot Wars, I very much like Dave, but also a large part of me – and I can’t control this facet of me, it’s very primal, very urgent – a very large part of me needs to catch him after maths class and dump him in a bin. I really need to pull his underpants over his head! I can’t help it! I want to take his archive copy of Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and throw it in the canal right by school!
JONATHAN PEARCE, COMMENTATOR
Jonathan Pearce wants to fuck Matilda, I am telling you that for real. Jonathan Pearce is not contractually allowed in the same bit of the building as Matilda. They learned that after series three. “Shhh,” Jonathan Pearce yells, into the clanging dull metal ears of Matilda. “Don’t tell a soul.”
KING OF THE NERDS: DARA O’BRIAIN, HOST
I’m sorry to do this to Dara O’Briain really because I was kind of expecting him to do his usual presenting schtick – sitting behind a desk and saying “AHHHH” to punctuate every punchline of his, AHHHH – but actually he did quite a good job and was relatively mobile for the entirety of the show. Sadly, though, he is not Craig Charles, and he bafflingly wore an immaculate three-piece suit to front the whole thing, so I have to award Dara a number of negative points here. What post-Brexit Britain needs right now is Craig Charles, absolutely off his nut in a fringed leather jacket, shouting “PANIC! ATTACK!” to a crowd of screaming 12-year-olds. Do you think Craig Charles ever really knew what he was doing on Robot Wars? Do you think Craig Charles thought all six years of his Robot Wars reign were just a particularly troubling hallucination particular to him? I do. Craig Charles doesn’t realise anyone else can see Sir Killalot. He thought it was just him. Dara O’Briain does not give the impression that he isn’t 100 percent sure Sir Killalot is real, and that makes him the worst nerd on the show. Sorry, Dara O’Briain. You did a fine enough job and only said “AHHHH” four times, but you are not Craig Charles. It’s a no from me. Into the pit with you.
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