Make the best snowman

Task stats

Points

15

Disquals

0

• Rob requests marshmallows for his snowman. He squeezes them together, but they don’t stick together as well as he was anticipating. Abandoning his plan to build a snowman standing on the table, he creates a more two-dimensional representation instead. He adds sticks for arms, pebbles for eyes, a woolly hat and mittens, and a carrot nose. Greg awards him 2 points.
• Al plans on making a snowman out of actual ice. He makes a snowman-shaped mould out of cardboard and cling film, and wedges it into the drawer of the freezer. He then fills it with water, and adds some ice cubes from a bag of ice which was already in the freezer. There are 40 minutes left on the clock, and he returns to check on it after 35 minutes. When the time has passed, he attempts to remove the snowman from the drawer, but it is nowhere near fully frozen, so he leaves it inside. He adds a carrot nose and eyes, and twig arms. Greg comments that Al’s snowman looks like he is suffering, and would definitely make his nieces cry. He awards Al 3 points.
• Sara asks for 4 litres of vanilla ice cream, two different colours of wool, and some raisins. She very efficiently plaits the wool together to make a scarf for her snowman from scratch. She then scoops the ice cream out onto a tray to create the snowman himself, which she names ‘Scoopy’. She nibbles a carrot to the right size for his nose, adds raisins for his eyes and buttons, and then adds her custom-made scarf. In the studio, she says she thinks of Scoopy every day. Alex asks if she’d like to see him again, and then shows a time-lapse video depicting Scoopy melting on his tray. Sara is visibly shocked, and Greg comments that Scoopy was still happier than Al’s snowman. Sara earns 4 points. [Note: At the very start of the episode, during the banter section, Alex had produced some raisins from his pocket and offered them to Greg. After showing the video of Scoopy melting, Alex once again offers Greg some of the raisins from his pocket.]
• Dave is the only one of the contestants who chooses to make his snowman outside. He asks for a large bucket and 200 packets of powdered mash potato. With the help of Alex, who keeps fetching him more boiling water from the house, he mixes up the mashed potato in a large bin, and then empties it out into a pile on the lawn. He moulds the mashed potato around a large jar to create the body, and around a globe to create the head. He then adds his own hat and scarf to finish the character. In the studio, Greg says it is the most characteristic of a snowman, based on its size, the fact it is outside, and that it has a scarf and a carrot nose. Dave therefore earns 5 points, even though his snowman was not made with something cold.
• Paul spends some of his time checking the weather app on his phone, to see if it’s going to snow anytime soon. He eventually decides that it isn’t, and asks for a white teddy bear, and a “snow-flavoured” Slush Puppy. He is provided with one blue and one red Slush Puppy, a white rabbit cuddly toy, and a bag of ice. He empties the ice onto a tray, places the rabbit on top, and proceeds to balance ice cubes on its head, saying “Snowman bear innit?”. He then places a small wooden poseable artist’s mannequin next to it, with Greg’s face stuck to it, and puts an ice cube on top of that, too. Finally, he drips and then pours some of the blue Slush Puppy over the rabbit, claiming that “His expression and tears reflect what I’m going through on the inside.”, before noting “The bastard’s crying innit?”. In the studio, Greg asks Paul if everything’s alright, and Sara suggests that maybe they all shouldn’t be laughing at him. Paul responds only “Snow Bear innit?”, leading the others to point that that it was a rabbit, not a bear. Greg agrees that Paul’s creation was “powerful”, credits Paul for using something cold, and notes that, artistically speaking, it was “right up there”. However, he ultimately awards Paul just 1 point.