Unfortunately, Alan finally declared that the tap fitting was so bizarre that he couldn’t find a way into it, so we were foiled there.

The smoke alarms keep falling down because they are stuck up only with Blu-Tack. I suggested we take advantage of Alan’s power drill, an item I do not own, to fix them properly. Alan took out an electronic sensor and scanned the area of ceiling where I wanted to drill. Beeping and flashing indicated the presence of a live electricity cable behind the plaster. That was one fewer job. I liked this gadget.

Alan suggested that we put up a shelf. He had brought two with him. My father has put up dozens of bookshelves over the years, but I don’t have any memory of being there while he did them. So I suggested that Alan take me through the process stage by stage.

We used an automatic laser level to ensure that the brackets went into the wall at the right place for the shelf to be straight.

I got a slight ticking-off for trying to screw the brackets together my way instead of Alan’s safe way against the edge of the chimney breast. “Do it like I showed you,” he said, “otherwise, if you miss, you’re going to screw straight into your hand — and I don’t want blood in the pictures.”

The photographer and the Stanley PR, both women, giggled and rolled their eyes incredulously at my ineptitude. “Whoa, whoa!” cried Alan, as I squeezed the drill trigger too hard and bodged one of the holes. He managed to sort it out so that we got the wall plugs in.

My three-year-old son followed everything we did with great interest.

According to Stanley’s research, almost 50 per cent of men believe that their children would think them cool if they were handy with a hammer. But “fewer than a quarter have even built a toy for their kids”.

I love that “even”; as if it is the most natural thing in the world for the ability to knock up a toy train or tractor to be in a man’s armoury of dad skills.

My boy watched in awe as the DIY expert went about his work. His urgent requests, after Alan had left, that I should phone him and tell him to come back, suggested that I would go up hugely in my son’s estimation if I could manage to hit a nail even half as well as Alan.

Funnily enough, Alan confessed that he hadn’t passed on much DIY knowhow to his own children, now grown up, because “I suppose I thought I would do it myself and do it right. I’m the worst delegator in the world.”

A bit of hammering and it was done. Easy. Sort of. “There’s another one to put up,” said Alan, as he packed his kit.

“I’ll be straight on to it when you’ve gone,” I said.

“I’m sure you will,” he said.

Nice man. Such a shame he lives in Sheffield. He’d be a really useful guy to have living locally.

I wonder what his hourly rate is?

A straight answer

Have we straight men abandoned DIY for hair gel? That was Matthew Parris’s accusation last week and he was right — up to a point. At 30 I could barely change a bulb. I don’t recall my father passing on any such skills. But when I bought my first house with my girlfriend, I enjoyed learning to strip boards and fix cupboards.

Our next move was with one small boy in tow and another on the way. With children filling every spare hour, my DIY skills languished — I found it more rewarding to pay a professional. So far, so familiar for millions of men.

What has changed is that manual skills are now not “cool”. Many men, particularly those in their twenties, accept the main tenets of metrosexuality (though underneath lies the same macho driving force — getting women into bed.) So any ability to put up a shelf is not to be boasted about.

But DIY is not dying for lack of role models; it’s just that time-poor, cash-rich men don’t want to spend all their precious leisure time up a ladder and no longer feel the need to compare the size of their screwdriver over a pint.

Michael Harvey

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