The Repair Shop stalwart Dominic Chinea has to interrupt a conversation on Wednesday’s episode of the emotional BBC series as he issued a warning to a guest.
Graeme Gordon had travelled to the iconic barn from Scotland, hoping the unique restoration experts could fix a beloved item that had been destroyed.
“This is my dad’s old camping stove,” he told Chinea and Brenton West, adding: “It’s been in the family since 1957 when my dad bought it, but knowing dad, it was probably second hand – he bought it when he finished his national service.
“He had a little bit of money. He and mum met when they were teenagers. She was Sadie and my dad was James, commonly known as Jimmy.
“Him and mum loved cycling all over the west coast of Scotland. They went camping everywhere, and he bought this so he could make up soup, dinner, tea, whatever on camping inventions.
“And then when my brother David and I were born in the 60s, the cycling kind of took a back seat, and we ended up just doing a lot of walking holidays.
The portable stove arrived at The Repair Shop barn in pieces
BBC
“And this came with us everywhere. He was very much an outdoors person. I remember once my dad took us up Ben Lomond in a snow blizzard, and there was a kind of little wall, and he dug out the snow drift, and we headed in behind, out the wind, and within minutes, he had the tin of soup.
“It was always cream of chicken soup.”
The experts asked Gordon whether his dad’s adventurous spirit had been passed onto him, to which he replied: “Yes.
“As dad got older, his health started to deteriorate a little bit, but my brother and I got into hill walking and started doing a lot of what’s called Munro-bagging.
“The Monroe’s are all the hills in Scotland, over 3,000 feet. There’s 282 of them. So I finished them last year.
“The stove has been going with us for a long, long time. There was a bit of a hiatus when I had children, and then when my dad died a few years ago, I thought, you know, ‘I really need to get it back out again.'”
Dominic Chinea was prepared to warn the guest not to allow his friend to use the item
BBC
Getting around to how the strove had ended up in pieces, Gordon explained: “So my friends and I went to a bothy, and my friend asked if he could have a shot at lighting it.
“And paraffin started kind of spotting out, and the flames were at three or four feet high, and eventually it just exploded.”
Thankfully for Gordon, the experts were willing to fix up the cherished item despite being initially unable to make out where the pieces were supposed to go.
Later in the episode, Gordon returned to the barn to collect the item, and was astonished at the final product, becoming emotional as he thanked the duo.
As the three tested the stove, they managed to get it working, with Chinea joking: “I’m kind of picturing now that we’re next to a tent in the snow, in a blizzard… anticipating.
“I’ve got my tin opener, opening the soup” West replied.
Brenton West managed to fix the cherished portable stove
BBC
“See, it is boiling now,” the grateful guest pointed out, labelling the fix “amazing”.
“So now you know that it’s working, what’s the plan?” Chinea probed.
“I’ve arranged a trip in a couple of weeks’ time with my friends. I think it definitely has to come with me-“
“Hang on a second,” Chinea interjected before adding in a shocked tone: “Is this the same friend that exploded it the first time?”
Before he had the chance to urge him against letting him use it though, Gordon assured the craftsman: “He will be nowhere near it,” concluding: “It’s mine.”
