Olly Mann presents Four Thought for BBC Radio 4, and the podcasts The Modern Mann, The Week Unwrapped and The Retrospectors
IF YOU’VE NEVER seen a tinkering video, picture a middle-aged bloke in a shed, unctuously dismantling an old Walkman, and then, "just for fun", putting it back together. The vibe is essentially an anoraky edition of The Repair Shop, but filmed on a smartphone, that for half its duration is solely a close-up of a hook spring.
I’ve met tinkering-type guys before: handing out flyers at antiques fairs, one of them. I’m neither intrinsically intrigued by how things work, nor worry that the world is moving so quickly I must retreat to my mancave, surrounded only by objects that can be mended with a screwdriver.