The new series of The Repair Shop sees a pair of tiny cowboy boots walk into the barn.The boots are brought in by Diane Wynell-Sutherland., who reveals they were bought for her son by her brother Roger Pope, a session musician who found them while on his travels round America with stars such as Sir Elton John.
Tragically, Roger died of cancer in 2013 but the boots are a treasured reminder of his love for his nephew.They’re cracked and faded, but Dean Westmoreland takes on the challenge to restore them to their former glory.
Dean’s first problem was the size of the boots. “They were so tiny,” he says. “The initial thing was, ‘How am I going to get my hands inside to actually work on such a tiny pair of boots?’ The sole was gone.The leather was in a bad way, some of the colour had come away.
It was a case of trying to restore it in a sympathetic way that didn’t remove any of that history.” Dean became a cobbler by accident after applying to work in a local shop without realising it was a cobblers.
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