Check out The Times' cheeky guide to help householders charm their Polish builders. The list of ten top tips on the Polish language includes how to ask for a recommended electrician in the Polish tongue. Useful too, perhaps, for any English builder who lacks the skills of all trades. There's even a handy pronunciation guide. But we'd love to know whether any Times reader has had the opportunity to put the saucy eleventh phrase into practice... Would it really distract a busy builder on the job?

Are you using a dodgy ladder or scaffolding? If so, you better watch out for Bob the Builder. In a shock to many people, he appears to be an actual person who is taking time out of his 'live' show to help promote the HSE's ladder safety campaign.

The Box agrees that ladder safety is an important issue, but getting a children's television character to assist in a safety campaign seems more than a little bit odd and not really sending a serious message to the kind of plonkers you see up 'dodgy' ladders on those accident lawyer ads on the telly.

But, regardless of this fact, you better watch out...because Bob's about!

Related links: HSE article

Undoubtedly you will have heard about the 'dodgy' penalty given to Chelsea against Liverpool last weekend. But did you know that Rob Styles, the ref for the game, apparently laid Roman Abramovich's driveway?

The Sun broke the story at the beginning of the week, later claiming that Liverpool fans were posting on the internet song lyrics such as 'Rob the Builder, can he fix it? Rob the Builder, yes he can.'

Although any inference of match fixing is played down by the Sun, the suggestion is clear for all to see. The only problem with the story is that Styles sits on the board of the company that was sub-contracted to pave the driveway, Oakwood Groundworks. So he didn't really pave the driveway at all.

Those people that BuildersBox genuinely feels sorry for are the actual builders who did have to pave the driveway. No doubt they are getting constant harrassment from annoyed Liverpool fans.

Related links:

Rob Styles story on the Sun website

Power tools and pumpkins anyone?

Well, it's that time of year again, when people get dressed up in silly costumes, and kids come to your door wanting their next hit of e-numbers. But the real question has to be: how do you carve your pumpkin?

The only people likely to invest in zero carbon homes are those that believe that they will get similar creature comforts to a normal house but with more environmentally friendly credentials. In order to achieve this, extra money would have to be spent, not less.

It would seem that a solution has been made to this economic issue; the mud house. In fact it blows away the other zero carbon opposition as it only costs 300 quid. Whether you would want to live in it though is a different matter altogether. BuildersBox's opinion is that it would be better to spend your money planting a whole forest and carbon offset than live like a medieval peasant.

You probably know them well, in fact they probably share an intimate part of your life and memories, but they're not real. The character of a builder has consistently been popular throughout the history of drama on television. It is undoubtedly because the builder can be used to portray an everyman figure for a variety of purposes, not all of them good; sometimes the character is bigoted, angry and violent, sometimes the fall guy, sometimes a pathetic loser.

BuildersBox had a long hard think about what are not only the most well known fictional builders, but also the most controversial. The underlying question has to be: do these characters reflect badly on builders in real life?