The Thor director’s dad was a master craftsman, who found his son’s woodwork efforts hilarious.
Branagh explains, “My father built everything we ever lived in. In another life, I would have gone into business with my dad and would have been proud to; he was a master. I’m a liability when it comes to DIY (do-it-yourself handiwork).
“I rather proudly made a bench, a garden bench that sits in my garden to this day. It’s un-sitable on because it’s unsafe. My father could have made it in a morning; it took me three months. He showed me how to saw, everything.
“But he wouldn’t help me because he wanted me to find out how to make a garden bench myself. I was very proud of this. I had a design. It was terrible. And it didn’t ever involve the idea of understanding how you would support such a thing.
“So now it sits at a rakish angle in our garden and is simply an object of mockery when friends and family visit. It’s one of the things my wife chooses to illuminate our family life by indicating my utter uselessness as a practical man of the house.
“So every time I look at that bench, I see my dad laughing, and I never try and straighten the bench.”
