I have nothing but respect for tradesmen. Handymen who can build bricks, cut wood, plumb pipes and wire electrics, fix cars or butcher meat, paint walls or tile a floor.

Every time I’ve tried to paint, I get more on me than I do on a wall. Paint brushes and rollers always seem to leak paint down the handles, and I get splashes all over the floor — even if there are drip sheets in place.

When it comes to plumbing, I can’t figure out how to tread pipes, and there’s always a drip no matter how hard I’ve tried, soldered or tightened.

I don’t have the patience when it comes to working with wood. And even though I measure twice and cut once, the cut is always wrong, the pieces don’t fit together, and one side is invariably longer that another.

When I wire plugs, I always seem to snip a bit too short, can’t fit wires into a socket, and am terrified that when the power is switched back on, sparks will fly and I’ll cause a deathly fire.

I’ve tried to tile, but cutting around awkward spaces and shapes is really hard and I just can’t seem to get it. I’ve tried using templates and projecting shapes onto blank tiles, but I haven’t got the knack of it.

I had to wallpaper a bedroom once and I totally misjudged the number of rolls needed. Do you realise how difficult it is to try and apply paste to a full length of wallpaper, then get it on the wall — and straight. And if there’s a pattern with things like birds of flowers, forget it. The birds grow blooms and the flowers grow wings when I line them up. Then you have to trim off the excess at the top, where the wall meets the ceiling. All my good work is ruined even further because the knife is never sharp enough and takes chunks out of the paper. Then I realised I was two rolls short — actually I think I wasted so much trying to paste and hang that I ran short. The store ran out of the wallpaper and I had to wait three months to get a new batch. And the last thing I wanted to do after three months was get back in and finish the mess. That took another three months — six months in total for what the handyman’s guide assured this gullible and ham-fisted fixer would be a few hours’ work.

I’ve tried to patch walls once using a cement-type thing that I left to harden, then tried to sandpaper it smooth. The thing was so hard, it wouldn’t sand. Then I used a machine-powered sander and took too much off, so I had to reapply the cement-type thing again.

I used to have an old car that I enjoyed messing around with, taking things apart, oiling and greasing them, then putting them back together. I’d always have a piece left over, then would have to do it all over again. And I always ended up stripping nuts and bolts — and my knuckles — when wrenches slipped.

A lot of people tell me that I look like my Dad the older I get. That makes me very proud. Dad wasn’t a painter, plumber, mechanic or an electrician, but he always seemed to know how to do things. He built an extension to our kitchen, dug the foundations, mixed cement, laid the blocks and made the roof. A friend of his plastered the walls, but Dad wired and plumbed it, and built the cupboards. And Dad was a postman. I don’t know where he learnt all those skills. I fully admit I couldn’t do it.

When the time comes for robots take over all our jobs, I want to see how some collection of motherboards and wires will hang wallpaper and keep the birds and flowers apart. That’s beyond my artificial intelligence.