Last week research found that only 5% of the countless recipes shown on television each week are ever copied at home by viewers. This is not surprising. You could give me the same ingredients that Gordon Ramsay uses and put me in the same kitchen with the same equipment, and even though we have exactly the same number of hands, fingers and noses I can absolutely guarantee that I’d end up with a plate full of over-salted, inedible mush.

Cooking is like painting. I have a brush and some eyes but everything I try to transpose onto canvas ends up looking like a dog. And it’s the same story with DIY. My toolbox is littered with every conceivable gadget, but if I put something up it’s not straight for a moment, and then it’s on the floor all broken.

Ambition is no substitute for talent. A point I have been proving all week with my new photographic printer.

Being a man, I did not wish to consult those who know about such things. I simply got in the car and drove to PC World, where I bought the most expensive. It’s an Epson Photo RX620 and it doesn’t work.

I selected a picture on the computer, hit print and it came out sideways on an upright piece of paper. So I turned the paper round and tried again. And then again. And then again. This was annoying since a piece of top quality A4 premium glossy photo paper costs more, pound for pound, than gold.

Eventually, though, out came a lovely picture of the family taken by a passer-by on our visit to the Geysir in Iceland last year. Except that’s not right. It looks like a lovely picture on the camera. It looks like a lovely picture on the computer screen. But what came out of my new printer was not lovely at all. It looks like we’ve all been boiled.

Now I know you can adjust this sort of thing using your mouse and a bit of software. So I bought something called the Corel Paint Shop Pro X version 10. It cost just shy of £60, and it doesn’t work either.

All attempts to correct the redness of our faces resulted in more and more vivid hues until eventually my wife came and read the instruction manual.

It turns out the procedure is simple. You tell the printer what sort of paper you’re using and how big it is. Then you give the information to the computer. Then you say whether you want “landscape” or “portrait”, then you choose the quality level you’re after, then you fix the red eyes, remove the blemishes, have a look at the preview and then, after just 55 minutes or so, out pops the finished product. Which is still crap.

Really and truly, I’m not a bad photographer. I understand about stop and depth of field. I know about composition and fill-in flash. Some of the pictures I’ve got back from Boots over the years have not been bad at all. But the stuff that’s poured from my printer this past week looks like it was taken by someone who was being deliberately stupid, or who was Stevie Wonder.

And there you have it. I have the tools. I have the basic ability. But I lack that certain something, which means I cannot produce the sort of top quality digital pictures that you get from a professional.

And this brings me nicely to the door of the Volvo C70 T5 SE Lux. Possibly the most disappointing car in the history of the universe.

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