The Repair Shop star reveals what happened when Helen Mirren stepped into the show for a heartwarming reason

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Dame Helen Mirren is a huge fan of The Repair Shop.

“It’s heart-warming and brings such positivity in what sometimes is a very negative world,” she says before arriving at the barn with a cello that had belonged to her late friend, the theatre impresario Martin Landau.

It was broken by Nazi guards when he fled to Britain, aged 14, on the Kindertransport. Even though its neck had been snapped in two, Landau looked after the cello before gifting it to Denville Hall, a care home Dame Helen supports, for those who worked in the entertainment industries.

Luthier Becky Houghton explains how she got the instrument singing again.

How was the cello when you received it?

My heart sank. It’s a beautiful piece of wood, made in the early 1800s, but it had no neck and everything was coming apart. It was paint- and plaster-splattered, dry and brittle.

I opened up the front and there were cracks everywhere, and everything needed glueing. The button connecting the neck to the back had snapped off. It was a scary repair.

Did you feel emotional repairing it?

Wood is such a tactile material, it seems to soak up things. I could feel that it needed some TLC to bring it back again. It’s the hardest repair I’ve done. I ate, slept, lived, breathed the cello, staying up until 2am. There was no way I wasn’t going to fix it.

What was Dame Helen’s reaction when she came to collect it?

She was amazed at how beautiful the barn looks and she greeted this cello like it was an old friend. It was so emotional. It was lovely to surprise her by having cellist Raphael Wallfisch come to the barn to play it.

How did it feel to hear it played?

I was nervous, but it just sang. You don’t know if you’ve done the job right until the instrument is played — and I can’t play cello. If I hadn’t repaired every crack properly, it would have buzzed. I looked at it not only with a sense of relief, but absolute achievement — and joy.

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The Repair Shop at Christmas will air on BBC One and iPlayer on Boxing Day at 7:30pm.

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