NICK’S NEW MOVIE

➤ In The Founder, Offerman plays Dick Mcdonald, one of the two brothers who founded the Mcdonald’s hamburger chain before, as the movie tells it, the company was stolen by businessman Ray Kroc. Offerman’s character is a surprising combination of two apparently conflicting mindsets: an engineer who wants to maximise hamburger-making efficiency, but who also cares about the quality of the food. It’s good – a quiet rebuke to foodies who think technology can only vandalise the things we care about – although it might make you rethink your next trip to the drive-through.

➤ In 2001, before Offerman could pay the bills by being an actor, he opened his eponymous woodshop in an industrial stretch of East Los Angeles. He built furniture commissions, trestle tables out of tree slabs and canoes. When his career took off a few years later, he brought on a manager to keep the shop running, along with half a dozen other craftspeople. You can buy whisky coasters, slab coffee tables, a hand-turned baseball bat, a “Build Your Own D-mn Stool Kit”, and even something they call a pixel plinth at offermanwoodshop.com. grid goes down – which, you know, it’s made by humans so it well might [deranged-sounding giggle] come screeching to a halt – it’s those thinkers who can’t help but still know how everything works, even though we’re no longer required to. I try to maintain a preparedness for just that occasion. It’s why I maintain my education in tool use, why I learnt how to build boats. I haven’t fully memorised this set of plans for a water wheel to power a shop full of tools but I’ve got a pretty good grasp on it. Are you seriously going to make a water wheel? If the sh-- goes down, yeah. But you’d need water. You’re in LA. [Giggle] I’d have to head north.