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Series 13: Episode 8

The team repair a dictaphone which contains a recording unheard for 80 years, whilst a barber set and Hungarian fruit bowl are also on the jobs list.\n\nArriving first is Sebastian from Edinburgh, who brought with him an item that once belonged to his godfather in the 1930s. The tabletop dictaphone is a remarkable piece of equipment that allowed Sebastian’s godfather, author William Gerhardie, to dictate his writing to a secretary, who would type the words for print. Gerhardie, born in Russia in 1895, was a contemporary of writers including HG Wells and Graham Greene, and wrote several books inspired by his early life in Russia.\n\nThe dictaphone worked by amplifying the speaker's voice, which in turn was translated through a needle onto wax cylinders. The grooves in these cylinders could then be played back to hear the voice on the recording. Sebastian still has a number of wax cylinders, along with his godfather’s dictaphone. If audio expert Mark Stuckey can get it working, it will be the first time anybody has heard the contents of these recordings for over 80 years.\n\nSoft toy restorers Amanda Middleditch and Julie Tatchell have an appointment with mother and daughter Lesley and Nicola from Belfast. They have brought with them a fluffy feline full of special memories. Jess the stuffed cat belongs to Lesley’s foster son Colin, who the family began offering respite care to in 2012. Twelve-year-old Colin has Pierre Robin sequence, a rare birth defect characterised by an underdeveloped jaw. It results in breathing difficulties, no speech and being unable to chew, meaning Colin is now PEG fed.\n\nJess has accompanied Colin through numerous hospital stays and operations, and is with him when he goes to sleep every night. But all that adoration has taken its toll on Jess, who is losing stuffing and has been patched up many times by Lesley. Colin is keen for Jess to retain the unique finger holes that mirror his own stomas, so Amanda and Julie hatch a plan to make Jess safe and secure without losing any of the important character that means so much to Colin and the whole family. \n\nThe next visitor is Jannette from Northampton, who has a challenge for blade and scissor expert Jonathan Reid. In a bag, Jannette has her father Geoffrey’s cut-throat razor and scissors - his tools as a traditional barber. After being called up for national service, Geoffrey was trained as the army’s barber. After he left the army, he kept on with the job and eventually became the manager of a barber’s shop, where Jannette also learned the trade. Jannette was just 14 when her father taught her how to use a cut-throat razor, the very one that she’s brought to the barn today. When Jannette opened her own salon at the age of 19, her father was immensely proud of the achievement.\n\nJanette wants Jonathan to restore the barber set, now rusted and dulled by decades of disuse, back to the condition she remembers. As one of the last remaining scissor makers in the UK, Jonathan is exactly the right person to get these tools back to their best.\n \nLast into the barn are Christine and Sian from Newport in Wales. The sisters are hoping that ceramics expert Kirsten Ramsay can repair a broken fruit bowl that Christine brought with her late husband Itsvan (known as Steve) on their first visit together to his home country of Hungary in 1985.\n\nThe couple met in a pub in 1975, 20 years after Itsvan had arrived in the UK aged just 16. He had fled his home country in the wake of the Hungarian uprising - a movement against Soviet brutality. After ten years together, Christine convinced Itsvan to return to Hungary for the first time since fleeing as a teenager so that he could visit his mother. During this trip, Christine spotted the ornate bowl, and Itsvan bought it for her. Itsvan sadly passed away in 2000 after being involved in a crash with a drunk driver. It was 15 years later when Christine’s sister Sian accidentally broke the stand of the bowl whilst cleaning, so now the sisters are here in the hope that Kirsten can repair it.

Source: BBC 2