Like a cheery Sisyphus, Fred dismantles an industrial chimney one brick at a time

In 1979, a death-defying English handyman named Fred Dibnah (1938-2004) became something of a national folk hero after the BAFTA-winning documentary Fred Dibnah: Steeplejack first aired on the BBC. This excerpt from the film follows Dibnah as he takes on a job he had deliberately attempted to overbid to avoid – dismantling a massive industrial chimney brick by brick, with only a single spotter on the ground for assistance. In the piece, Dibnah comes across as a joyful 20th-century Sisyphus, laughing through the work even as it’s demanding, repetitive and dangerous. With the camerawork capturing the extraordinary size disparity between the man and the task at hand, the clip is often as thrilling as it is charming, making for an awe-inspiring appreciation of the kind of manual labour that often goes uncelebrated.