00:00In the bustling tapestry of Britain, where centuries-old traditions blend seamlessly with modern life,
00:05there exists individuals who march to the beat of their own drum.
00:10Meet the inventors, the dreamers and the eccentrics, whose daily lives are anything but conventional,
00:15as we showcase the vibrant eccentricity that colours the landscape of British culture.
00:21Unconventional Brits invites you to step into the worlds of local legends,
00:25celebrating the delightful diversity that makes Britain truly extraordinary.
00:30Coming up this week, three brothers on an epic adventure, a cool artist paints her fridge,
00:39and we'll pitch the idea of a baseball batting cage.
00:43When I first moved to our house, I had a baby, but I missed painting.
00:48I really missed it and I needed the time to paint.
00:51Then as he started nursery, I was staring at the fences in my garden like, gosh, that's a boring colour.
01:00I'm going to paint it.
01:01So then I'd message my landlord, can I paint these with flowers?
01:04And he said, yes.
01:06So I went for it, I painted it.
01:08My little boy is five.
01:10So the flowers and the little trolls, they are, little trolls in the garden.
01:16So we'd play games.
01:17Let's find the trolls in the garden.
01:19So I painted them, little characters on here.
01:22But I want to inspire him as well to get that creativity and open his mind and be okay with colour and stuff.
01:30He loves it.
01:31He loves it.
01:31And he's always like, cool, you know.
01:33Wow, that blows my mind.
01:35That's what he says.
01:36And I think that's so good to inspire the younger ones.
01:40I carried on painting.
01:41I painted my fridge.
01:43Also, that was boring.
01:45My food was coming from a grey cold box.
01:47It wasn't right, you know.
01:49It needed to be something fantastic in my mind.
01:54I was tired of the grey and it just dawned on me.
01:59I need to paint that fridge right now.
02:02And so I'd used Christmas wrapping paper to protect all my cabinets and everything.
02:10It was about wintertime.
02:11I'd opened the door and I just went for it.
02:14It took about three hours to paint the fridge.
02:17It was something inside that had to get out.
02:20And now I love that fridge.
02:22So the fridge has got a mouth at the top that's slivering waterfall that's fallen into a natured rainbow.
02:31And then it goes down into a stream.
02:33So the rainbow is like the symbolizing your tummy.
02:36You know, where it falls, the food.
02:40Yeah, it's just like when you eat food, it's like a ceremony, isn't it?
02:43You buy your food, you clean it, you prepare it and then you eat it.
02:48And I felt like the fridge I was, when I'm taking the food out of my fridge, I didn't like my fridge, the color.
02:53So it was like a ceremony, painting my fridge.
02:57I've been painting since I was young.
03:00I've been painting all my life, you know.
03:02Not that I was amazing at first, but I've always been painting.
03:06I really started painting properly when I was about 15, which was when I painted my first bum.
03:13I painted it as a strawberry for a body painting for college.
03:17And then ever since I just carried on through university, after university, got a shop, painted all through my shop and now continue painting.
03:28I painted my car, but I sold that now.
03:31So there's somebody driving around with my painted car.
03:33And I painted mandalas on the side with like flowing, just a flowing movement with birds.
03:42It was a nice, you know, with the car moving, it was just a nice color.
03:46A guy down my street was watching me paint my car and he wants me to paint his car.
03:51So that's on the waiting list.
03:53There's another guy in Cornwall who wants me to paint his bonnet.
03:56So that's on the waiting list.
03:58And there's a couple of people on the street waiting for me to paint my new car.
04:02So I'm just trying to think of the perfect design for that.
04:06The artwork I produce is more like portraits, murals, body art.
04:11And I'm moving into like a little bit of a quirky dream sort of scapes alongside my portraits.
04:21At the moment, I've got a body painted mannequin in the Grundy Art Gallery.
04:24Actually, there's two body painted mannequins in the Come As You Really Are exhibition.
04:30It's two body painted mannequins in the Grundy Art Gallery with a jellicle cat wig that I've made.
04:36It's got lights in the ears.
04:37And that was for a body paint, a jellicle cat body paint.
04:41It was beautiful.
04:43Still to come, three men in a boat.
04:46Trying to raise a million pounds for clean water projects by rowing across the full Pacific.
04:50And that has literally taken us to the middle of nowhere.
04:54I started this, the concept, last summer.
05:07Actually, well, that's a lie.
05:08The concept has been running for many years.
05:10I've just never really, you know, taken a plunge and done it.
05:14But, yeah, I got this up and running officially in March, middle of March, but started the equipment prep and planning last year.
05:23I've loved baseball my whole life since I was a kid watching movies, Field of Dreams, Rookie of the Year, Sandlot Kids, a league of their own.
05:32Just completely obsessed.
05:34So I kind of started unofficially playing when I was young with some friends with a broom handle and a tennis ball because that's all we had.
05:41We didn't have baseball bats, gloves or anything back then.
05:44And then that kind of love just went on through the years, just playing with random kit, playing rounders mostly, which is, you know, the principles are the same, but the game's very different.
05:54And then when I moved to Bristol, I found out about a league in Bristol, and then I joined officially a softball team.
06:03I played for the Jets up there, and it was amazing.
06:06That was it.
06:06Officially, my love for softball began.
06:09Still, there were no baseball teams that I was aware of.
06:12So I carried on playing softball, moved to Cardiff, played for the Blue Jays in Cardiff, came to Portsmouth, and then realized there was this massive league with two divisions.
06:21So I started playing for the Pirates, and then I started hearing more about baseball, and I saw a piece on the news, actually, a few weeks ago about the Knights, the New Forest Knights, I think they're called officially.
06:35And I've recently started training with those, hopefully get some game time with them soon.
06:40We've got the league with two divisions in there, and about eight or nine teams in each division.
06:46And the main thing you need to do is have a strong stance.
06:50You need to load up your back leg, and with baseball, you need to make sure your rear arm is tucked in, because if you start bringing your arms out to swing, you're losing a lot of your power.
07:00So what you want to do is whip, and you want to come onto it straight, and that's where the bring your hips into it.
07:07It will give you the power.
07:08Perfect.
07:08We are the McLean brothers.
07:24We're currently trying to raise a million pounds for clean water projects by rowing across the full Pacific, attempting to row from South America to Australia, which is about halfway around the planet.
07:34And that has literally taken us to the middle of nowhere.
07:38We're a bit north of Point Nemo, which is the most remote place on the planet.
07:42So you're the furthest away from land there than anywhere else on the planet.
07:47We're 2,800 miles or so from Peru.
07:52We've got over 5,000 miles to go.
07:55And we've not seen anyone for about three weeks.
07:58We've not seen another Vexil for three weeks.
07:59And, yeah, we're closer to people in the International Space Station above us than we are another person on dry land.
08:07We're currently on day 43.
08:10So we left on the 12th of April.
08:14How many days left?
08:15Difficult to say.
08:16You know, it depends how fast we are.
08:18We would hope in the region of 80 days remaining.
08:23120 days is our target.
08:25So we're just over a third of the way there.
08:27Me and my two brothers, we rode across the Atlantic five years ago.
08:31And then off the back of that, we set up a charity called the McLean Foundation.
08:36And it's, yeah, WOSP Projects is what we're funding.
08:39There's WOSP Projects in Madagascar.
08:42And that's the kind of the why behind this big road, this big project.
08:48A big part of something like this is kind of fun, comforting the chaos.
08:52We have to get in the water every five days.
08:55We actually saw a shark yesterday as well.
08:58And then we had to get in the water to clean the hull.
09:01And then all three of us were stung by baby Portuguese man-o-boar jellyfish.
09:08So there's just, you never know what you're going to get.
09:10We took off the mammoth challenge of making our own freeze-dried food.
09:15So usually you'll just buy, you know, off the shelf.
09:18It's like spaceman food, super lightweight, which you just add water to it to rehydrate it.
09:24But we made our own meal.
09:26So two-thirds of the meals we have are made by us.
09:30And they've been so good.
09:32Really, really tasty.
09:33One of my brothers, Jamie, he's a keen chef.
09:35And he's absolutely smashed it.
09:38So Rose Emily, she's a 30-foot ocean rowing boat made by the Ocean Rowing Company.
09:47So we've got kind of two little sleeping pods at either end.
09:51And then we've got the deck space.
09:54It's kind of the size of like a big, a very large kitchen table.
09:59And that's got three rowing positions.
10:02It's where we spend, you know, 18 hours a day.
10:05And we've got solar panels, which are charging lifting my own batteries.
10:09And that is how we reduce water.
10:12The key thing, I think, when you start to deal with it psychologically is just not to view the whole picture.
10:18It's not zooming too far out on that chart bluffer.
10:21I think, you know, anyone can relate with a big project.
10:23If you view it in its entirety, it's super overwhelming.
10:27So, yeah, I think that's one thing.
10:29I think a big mantra on board is kind of motivation is an action, not a feeling.
10:35It's like sometimes you just feel, you feel rubbish and you don't want to get out.
10:39You don't want to.
10:39We're only sleeping kind of four and a half hours a day.
10:42And it's pretty rubbish sleep at that.
10:44So some of those night shifts are really, it's the last thing you want to do.
10:49But you become motivated by just doing it.
10:51So we've got a little Tupperware box behind me.
10:54And we've got these, they're amazing little, they're like little capsules,
10:58which you add water to, and it's like a coconut husk thing.
11:02And it allows you to grow.
11:04We've got about 30 baby lettuces, which we're hoping will grow.
11:09They're very small at the moment.
11:11But hopefully in a month, we'll have some, maybe have some greens.
11:14At its core, you know, the charity that we've set up,
11:18it's kind of all about, I suppose, combining passion with purpose.
11:22And so we're doing these rows.
11:26We're very passionate about these.
11:28But ultimately, yeah, it's about the cause that we're going to raise money for.
11:34Yeah, not many people kicking about.
11:37Behind the scenes here at Shots TV,
11:40we're already busy building the foundations of next week's LEGO Special Edition.
11:45My latter years in the Army, I sort of found this passion for LEGO.
11:48Completely transformed my life.
11:49I just thought, oh, I can make the Olympic rings out of LEGO.
