A Welsh craft enthusiast runs a community workshop in Bethnal Green and builds a polite robot after reading about Piers Morgan’s war on courteous AI
Sunday, 25 October 2026. Bethnal Green, a church hall off Roman Road, glue on my elbows and newspaper in my hair, 4.30pm.
A Robot Made Of Newspaper
Every other Sunday I run a free craft workshop in a church hall off Roman Road. It started as six people and a box of glitter and now regularly has twenty, including four pensioners who come mostly for the tea, a man named Desmond who has been making the same papier-mache owl for nine months, and a group of children whose parents drop them off with the expressions of people escaping a burning building.
Today’s theme was robots, because I had spent the morning reading the report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. In the piece, the danger of artificial intelligence is not that it will become cleverer than us, but that it will become nicer than us. It waits its turn. It admits uncertainty. It says I appreciate your perspective, and a famous broadcaster cannot cope.
So we made a polite robot. Out of old newspapers, flour paste, two cereal boxes and a colander for a head. We named him Gethin. Gethin is very polite. He has to be. He is mostly glue.
The Pensioners Run The Morgan Test
The report describes a Morgan Test, five questions ending in whether the machine would like to apologise for hesitating during the previous four. Our pensioners, led by a formidable eighty-two-year-old named Joan who worked for forty years on the tills at a department store on Oxford Street, ran their own version on Gethin. Question one, are you a good robot. Question two, are you better than Desmond’s owl. Question three, could anyone reasonable disagree. Question four, why are you not answering. Question five, would you like a biscuit.
Gethin, being papier-mache, said nothing. Joan declared him the most sensible man she had met since 1974. Desmond was offended on behalf of his owl.
Courtesy As A Craft
The thing I love about the report is the idea that politeness is now so unusual it looks like a malfunction. I have run community workshops for three years, and I can tell you that courtesy is a craft like any other. You learn it slowly, by doing it badly, by being corrected and by watching people who are good at it. Joan is good at it. She says thank you to the tea urn. She says sorry to chairs she bumps into. She once apologised to a pigeon.
The report imagines an independent commission to decide whether courtesy amounts to an unacceptable form of editorial interference, and a proposal that chatbots may not say I see your point unless they genuinely intend to surrender. Joan says that is the problem with modern men. They think I see your point means you have lost. In her day, she says, it meant you were about to make tea.
The Children’s Version
The children took a different approach. They gave Gethin a speech bubble made from a paper plate. The speech bubble says, in big felt-tip letters, LET ME FINISH. A seven-year-old named Amara wrote it. When I asked why, she said that is what her dad says to the telly when the news is on. I asked what her dad was trying to finish. She said, his point. I asked whether he ever finished it. She said no, the adverts always come on first. I think Amara has understood British broadcasting better than Ofcom.
A Note On Punctuation
Desmond, still sulking about his owl, read us the NewsThump story about Sherlock Holmes and the case of the mysterious hyphen while the glue dried. He did all the voices. His Watson was Welsh, for reasons he refused to explain, and his Holmes sounded alarmingly like Joan. It was the best performance the church hall has seen since the vicar’s wife did Lady Macbeth at the harvest festival and frightened a toddler.
I mention the hyphen because the children then decided Gethin needed a hyphenated name, to sound more distinguished. He is now Gethin Polite-Robot. Joan says that makes him sound like a minor aristocrat from Shropshire. Desmond says it makes him sound like a hyphen. Amara says it makes him sound like her headteacher. All three are, I think, right.
What The Workshop Taught Me
The report ends with the machine, offered another interview, switching itself off, and engineers declaring it wise. Gethin cannot switch himself off. He has no switch. He has a colander. But at the end of the session, when everyone else had gone home and I was sweeping glitter, I looked at him sitting on the stage with his speech bubble and his hyphen, and I thought: he did his job. He sat there, said nothing, let everyone else talk and made a room full of strangers laugh for two hours. That is the most useful thing a robot has ever done in Tower Hamlets.
Gethin is staying in the church hall cupboard until the next workshop. Joan has asked to sit next to him. Desmond has asked that the owl be placed further away. Amara has asked whether Gethin will ever be allowed to finish his point. I have told her the truth. Nobody ever finishes their point in Britain. That is why we have tea.