Any Third Ager who saw James May’s excellent television programme about Airfix must instantly have been transported back in time.
There’s something about May’s presentation style that seems to bring out the boy in all men of a certain age. Perhaps it’s his boyish enthusiasm for the subject matter. Maybe it’s his impish grin. Whatever it is, there’s certainly no denying this is not simply a television presenter doing a job of work for which he’s been commissioned and of which he has little or no prior knowledge.
This is a man who not only loves his work, but who also knows his subject matter inside out. To watch May at work is to witness a man living the dream, and to watch his programme about Airfix was no exception.
For anyone who might have missed it, last week’s episode focussed on Airfix, and in it he endeavoured to enthuse a group of today’s teenagers about the hobby of model making by having them help make a full-scale model of a Spitfire.
Whether or not he will have succeeded in the long term in inspiring today’s youngsters to take up a hobby that doesn’t involve a flat screen or a keypad only time will tell. Although one young lad at least seemed to take to it like a duck to water.
The same lad also showed considerable management skills. We hope his parents and teachers took note of his potential and do something to foster it before he drowns in the mediocrity of today’s education system and an undoubted talent gets stifled and lost forever.
Back to May’s programme however, and it certainly rekindled out editor’s love of model making. He spent the best part of the next morning studying Airfix model kits. It also prompted us to add Airfix to our Third Age Down Memory Lane section.
To accompany the series, James May’s Toy Stories covers the stories behind some of the classic toys featured as well as the adventures encountered by he and his helpers in building and recreating them.
James May’s Toy Stories is much more than just a TV tie-in. Inspired by James’s exploits, the book covers both the stories behind a number of classic toys and the adventures in summer 2009 as James and his helpers, children and adults of all ages, build and recreate a range of toys in a series of Top Gear style escapades.
In six ambitious projects, he enlists the help of volunteers and schoolchildren to help him build a 1/1 scale model kit of a Supermarine Spitfire Mk I; creates the world’s longest Scalextric track at the historic 
Brooklands motor-racing circuit in Surrey; builds a full-size Lego house; enters a garden made entirely from Plasticine in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show; attempts to run a Hornby train set along a 10-mile stretch of track from Barnstaple to Bideford and uses a giant Meccano bridge to span the 40ft Pier Head canal in Liverpool.
Each chapter includes details of how the projects were constructed, with diagrams, illustrations and informal photography taken during the filming.
The book also features a history of the toys themselves, from their early British roots to their international appeal today. James May explains why each of these toys gave him so much pleasure as a child and how, through the adventures he devised, they can still provide days of endless fun for anyone in their Third Age.
There is also an excellent accompanying DVD, James May’s Toy Stories [DVD] [2009].
Written by Editor.
