What a special treat! A packed Sheringham Little Theatre enjoyed an audience with Mark Stuckey — a familiar face from BBC 1’s popular The Repair Shop. While Stuckey may be best known as the electronics expert on the show, his talents are many and varied — an astronomer, a professional magician, a movie buff and a Dr Who aficionado. He even has a Dalek and a small observatory at home.
Over the course of the afternoon, Stuckey delighted us with tales of behind the scenes moments and hidden secrets of The Repair Shop. The fundraising treat was hosted by Richard Batson, former editor of North Norfolk News and Trustee of Sheringham Little Theatre – a charity-run, community arts venue. The theatre relies on donations, volunteer efforts and special events, such as Mark Stuckey’s talk, to sustain its operations and encourage amateur and youth productions.
Batson told East Anglia Bylines, “Interviewing Mark is always a pleasure as he has so many stories to tell from his Repair Shop fame to his less-well-known other careers and hobbies. The only problem was trying to cram them into a two-hour show.”
Certainly, two hours was not enough, and at the end, the audience wanted to hear more from the very accomplished Stuckey.
Behind the scenes
Fans of The Repair Shop will know that the expert craftsmen and women work in a barn. What they may not know is how “freezing” the Chichester barn can be. Stuckey confessed that while he may be smiling and wearing a shirt, giving the impression of warmth, the production and camera crew may be sporting layers of warm clothing. Fellow star, Steve Fletcher, often wears a plug-in heated motorbike suit. There have even been occasions when Stuckey has had to defrost items with a hairdryer.
Comparing the task of repair to solving an Agatha Christie murder mystery, Stuckey says a great deal of patience is required. Not only is there the painstaking detective work of identifying which electrical component is faulty, but also the production of the programme requires immense patience.
At times, he desperately wants to progress a key part of the repair, yet, if the camera crew are not ready to film at that moment, it could be hours before he may resume his work. With a wicked smile, he tells the audience that it’s very tempting to say, “Hard luck, I’ve done it,” even if it incurs the wrath of the director.
It’s more than just a repair
The programme is very successful – there can be as many as 5,000 repair enquiries a week. But it is the story that goes with the broken item and what it means to the owner, which determines if it makes the show.
The experts have no early sight of the item to be repaired until the owner arrives. And sometimes, they vastly underestimate repair time. Describing his task of repairing a 1950’s juke box, Stuckey initially quoted seven days to fix the “beautiful machine”. Days turned into weeks as time and time again, each ‘repair’ proved unsuccessful. Eventually, he took the jukebox to his own workshop in Cromer. The recurring fault proved to be two of the over 300 wires wrongly connected. When revealed, the newly working jukebox proved a huge hit. The story of the repair, with its emotional backstory, went viral. Stuckey proudly declared it holds the programme’s record for taking the longest repair time.
Perhaps the most fascinating repair Stuckey described, is that of Polly, the porcelain dog in a kennel. Stuckey’s joy at recounting the story is evident, not least because 70-year-old Polly was a magical trick and “not a bloody radio”. The clever toy required the dog to exit the kennel when its name, Polly, was called at the kennel opening. With a magician’s background Stuckey realised the secret was the way a cellophane diaphragm, near the contacts that propelled the dog forward, moved in response to exhaled breath when saying the dog’s name, and especially the “Poh”.
The pleasure seeing the delight of the daughter working the magic trick is what Stuckey loves about participating on the show. He describes their work as more than repairing. Having witnessed the owner’s emotion and joy upon receipt of a repaired object, he believes their work is often a fundamental part of the owner’s “healing process”.
Becoming a repairer
Stuckey claims that the inspiration that steered his life was William Hartnell’s Dr Who, and, more importantly, the Time Lord’s wide knowledge of physics, psychology, astronomy etc. “Everything stems from my love for learning and wanting to understand how things work,” he explained.
At 15, Stuckey left school, and after an abortive start at a Bedfordshire mechanical engineering workshop, he was offered a job in a local radio and television shop. Remarkably, this eventually led to working on atomic weapons systems, cluster bombs and other top secret MOD projects.
Surprisingly, Stuckey has also had a broad career in television and film, so was quite at ease entertaining the audience with tales of time spent with Eric Clapton, Tommy Cooper, film producer Peter Rogers, as well as other members of the Repair Shop team. His love of film extends to assisting with the restoration of The Broadway Cinema in Prestwick, Scotland, working with Projected Picture Trust, which restores projection equipment, and with Film is Fabulous! which locates lost film reels. He was also involved in producing Red Dwarf.
Stuckey remains concerned about opportunities available today for the younger generation to follow in his footsteps. Gone are the uncomplicated cars of his youth, where he practised his electro-mechanical skills. Hopefully, The Repair Shop will inspire future generations to become craftsmen.
At the end of the event, Debbie Thompson, Theatre Director, announced An Afternoon with Mark Stuckey raised over £3,000 for Sheringham Little Theatre.
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