Leave tough tasks to us, says the pro

IN HIS 30 years in the plumbing business, Hilton Stoch has seen little evidence of Jews doing their own DIY.

And on the rare occasions when they have, it has been with little success. His advice? “Leave it to the professionals.”

He said: “I had a surgeon last week whose toilet was making a noise, so he took the valve off without turning off the water.

“There is a saying in plumbing: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”

The 47-year-old, who runs Hilton Plumbing in Finchley, came to the UK from South Africa in 1994. Being Jewish, he said, “definitely helps business”.

“It just takes one mum to recommend you on Facebook and you get 20 jobs,” Mr Stoch explained.

“People are happy to have someone from the community in their house — they know I’m not going to run off with their wedding rings.”

He rejected the results of the World Jewish Relief survey that indicated that more Jews do DIY than is believed; in his view, Jews largely avoid DIY.

“What Jewish man do you know who is going to bend down over a toilet seat with rusty hinges or with 17-year-old wee and rust,” he said. “Leave it to the professionals.

“I’m not going to try to do dental work on you because I am not a dentist. So why should a dentist try plumbing?”

But, for all their failings, Mr Stoch said, there was one demographic proving to be a dab hand at DIY — women over the age of 80 .

“They are on their own, so they watch and pay attention to what we are doing,” he said.

“They tend to do little jobs, but they are not strong enough to tighten the hinges on a toilet seat.”

Howard Cohen, a 72-year-old who retired from his job as deputy manager of an international furniture group 12 years ago to become a general handyman, now does between five and 10 jobs a day.

He found the survey results unsurprising.

“Jewish people tend to be quite handy when they want to be,” he said. “I don’t see why they shouldn’t try to do their own DIY when they can.”

Mr Cohen said he had turned his own passion for DIY into a “gentle retirement” career, having always enjoyed being handy around the house.

“A lot of people are willing to have a go, and that is jolly good,” he said.

“I don’t often have to put right things that have been done wrong, although it does happen occasionally.”