Hugh's a gadget guru

3:14pm Thursday 10th January 2008

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A friend and I were recently crossing Skipton High Street when we spotted a "Sale" notice in a shop window with "massive reductions" on various electronic gadgets.

One of these was a simple rectangular box stood on its side with an attached ticket exclaiming that it was a bargain, although - if I remember correctly - it was still £100 or so.

To me, it could have been the mysterious obelisk in classic sci-fi film 2001 - a Space Odyssey, but my companion, a well-known local architect, is a man with a practical knowledge of technology, so I asked him: "What is that thing?" And he replied: "I have absolutely no idea."

And that, ladies and gentlemen of a certain age, is why this is the busiest time of the year for Hugh Woolmore, gadget guru extraordinaire, who travels the length and breadth of the Yorkshire Dales sorting out the chaos that a modern Christmas leaves in its wake.

It's gadgets that cause most of the trouble, those shiny bits of electronic genius sold in their millions just before Christmas to fill our lives with wonder - or so the TV ads claim.

The reality is that, for many of us presented with a DVD recorder or a plasma screen TV by grateful and generous children, these machines could well have come from outer space too.

Now Hugh Woolmore, 46, who started servicing television sets when they were still in black and white, has looked after the gadgets in the Sheard household for 20 years.

He installed our first ever video recorder (or VCR as they are now dismissively called) and taught me how to programme it - a triumph for a man with 10 thumbs and the mechanical aptitude of an amoeba.

Well, most shops have stopped selling VCRs now. They are old hat, yesterday's technology.

Which is why, just before Christmas, I was confronted by a BD-X8258 and a 19LD2550B-B staring balefully at me from the Welsh dresser in the kitchen as I stamped the floor in rage and my wife sobbed quietly over the sink.

One of these - I'm not quite sure which number is which - is an LCD television (that stands for Liquid Crystal Display), which means it has a thin screen and can therefore perch on the dresser.

The other is a combined DVD/HDD player and recorder which (look away readers of a delicate disposition) can play DVD video, audio CD, CD-R, CD-RW and VCD.

Got that? I most certainly hadn't. For two days, we couldn't even turn on the telly and my wife, who watches while she does the ironing, was making discreet inquiries with friends who might know a good divorce lawyer.

I had bought my tormentor on the web - another first - which meant it came with virtually no back-up and an instruction manual written in Martian. There was no alternative: call Hugh.

He arrived like the Caped Crusader and, within half an hour, my machines were purring like pussy cats.

But we humans needed psychological solace too and we felt a little better when he explained: "Don't get too upset - this happens to hundreds of people as they get a little older.

"Youngsters can figure it out from the age of six, but they're used to computers and mobile phones.

"That's why, although I'm busy before Christmas, it's even more frantic in the New Year when I get called out all over the Dales to show people how to work gadgets that grown-up children have bought as a big thank you."

Hugh had an unusual childhood. He was born in Hammersmith, London, and adopted by teacher parents who moved to jobs in Cheltenham and Winchester before his father was made headmaster of Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton.

Hugh was 11 then, living in the head's quarters at the school, and he was known as "Posh" because of his southern accent.

Although he went to school at both Aireville and Ermysted's, he never fancied the academic life - "I was always fascinated by electronics, spending hours taking apart transistor radios or record players and putting them back together."

So, in 1978, he took an apprenticeship with Slater's, the High Street store in Skipton, when colour television was something for the very rich and video recorder makers were fighting a battle between no fewer than four different systems.

He married Jayne, an executive secretary at the Skipton Building Society, and they have two children.

When Slater's changed hands, he set up on his own because, as he says, "Another wave of technology was coming in and there will be even more work when they finally close down the analogue TV transmissions in this area and only digital TVs will work."

Oh dear. That's due in 2011 and what will they invent by then? And, by the way, the object displayed in the shop window mentioned earlier was a computer games console ... whatever that is!