There is a wonderful series on TV called The Repair Shop. It’s one of those programmes that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The idea is simple enough: you bring in some object that’s important to you and needs fixing and a team of cheerful experts set about restoring it.
What makes this so special are the people and the stories attached to those objects: a jukebox full of memories, a vast homemade clock crafted in wood by somebody’s dad, a Hebrew prayer book saved from a concentration camp with the signatures of survivors on the cover.
Some seem beyond repair: a badly smashed transistor radio, taken on a bonkers trip to row the Atlantic, its case shattered, its signal long gone.
Its significance? The pair of intrepid rowers needed a time signal from the BBC World Service, so they could plot their position…
