How Olivia Colman broke my mum's telly | Steve Canavan

We did consider not helping and leaving her to fend for herself, but on reflection decided that might be cruel, and furthermore, might backfire if she left us out of the will.

Anyway, what normally happens is we put the shopping on the doorstep, knock on the window and have a brief mouthed conversation through the glass before she scuttles off to play her fourth session of online bridge of the morning.

She’s got a better social life in isolation than in normal times.

My mum phoned the other day to tell me she couldn’t get the TV in her bedroom to work.

We hatched a plan – and if this breaks any laws, fair cop, the police know where I live if they want to arrest me – that involved her standing in the garden, while I went inside her bungalow to sort the telly.

The next morning we did just that. Now, I’m no electrician but even I would back myself to sort out a TV.

So while my mother relaxed in the garden on a sun-lounger, eating a family-sized bag of Mini Cheddars, I went into the back bedroom and started fiddling with the telly.

I spent 45 minutes trying every lead in every possible hole. I pressed the ON button. Nothing.

I went outside and said, ‘Mum, it just won’t switch on, I can’t figure out what’s wrong’.

She followed me into the house – keeping a safe distance – and stood looking at the TV, then said, ‘oh, you’ve got it in the wrong plug socket’.

‘What do you mean?’ I replied suspiciously, sensing I wasn’t going to like the answer. ‘That plug socket’s not working,’ she said, as if it was blindingly obvious.

‘But the TV was plugged into that socket when I arrived,’ I said, trying, and failing, to keep the frustration out of my voice.

To which she replied, without a word of a lie, ‘oh, I just put it in that socket because it looks tidy when I’m not using it.’ Then, pointing to the other side of the room, added, ‘it goes in that socket over there when I actually want it on’.

Trying hard to remember this was the woman who’d made a lot of sacrifices raising me so I needed to be patient and kind, I said as calmly as I could muster, ‘ah I see’.

I then put the plug into the other socket as directed, pressed the ON button, and hey presto, the TV worked.

‘Right, I must be off now mum,’ I said, but she interrupted me and asked if, before I went, I could just have a look at the main TV in the lounge because ‘it’s very dark when I’m watching The Crown’.

Sighing and trying to remain friendly and affable, I said I would. The colour on the TV was absolutely fine. All the settings were correct and it looked perfect.

‘It’s fine mum,’ I shouted through the window, as she was now back in the garden finishing off the Mini Cheddars.

‘I know it’s fine when you’ve got it on normal TV,’ she replied, spitting Cheddars everywhere, ‘but when I’m watching The Crown it’s very dark’.

‘Mum,’ I said, exasperation in voice now abundantly clear, ‘I’m not sure there’s much I can do about that. There isn’t a button on your remote control that says ‘improve lightness when watching The Crown’.

‘Ok, ok,’ she replied, ‘no need to get shirty. If you can’t fix it I’ll just have to put up with it. Now would you mind leaving – it’s bridge time.’

An hour and 10 minutes after I’d arrived to try and fix a TV plugged into a socket that wasn’t working I got in my car and, once the door was closed, I let out a stifled yell and lightly beat the steering wheel.

Mothers, who’d have ‘em.