My dad has become, in his words, “more or less hopeless at everything”. My mum is inclined to go along with this assessment. Actually, she would qualify it by saying he would be perfectly capable of all sorts of things if he could only be arsed, but let’s not go there. At one task, though, he remains world-class. However much he is driving us all nuts in so many other ways, there is something around which we can unite in sheer, unadulterated admiration: there is no one on this earth better at loading a dishwasher.

We watch, we doubt, we survey the array of dishes and pans and whisper to each other: “He’ll never get that lot in.” But soon we will be gasping in astonishment and rising to our feet in acclamation of another brilliant loading performance, clapping our hands above our heads like football supporters.

I suspect this brilliance, honed over many years, grew out of the frugalness of his generation. I have caught him wiping away salt tears at the occasional sight of my dishwasher running with anything short of a full load. To earn its wash, his machine must be packed to the rafters before the start button can be pressed. If a dirty coffee cup, plate or pan must moulder there for days waiting for the full load to be reached, so be it. When he closes the door for the final time, the ratio of crockery to empty space can be as high as 100:1. The whirly thing will be clearing saucepans by a fraction of a millimetre. If, seconds before he was about to run it, I tried to squeeze in so much as a teaspoon, I would surely struggle. He would nod sagely, shut the door, press the button, and walk away with the nonchalance of a grandmaster who has just played checkmate.

I don’t understand how a man who takes several hours to compose a text message and then can’t send it, refuses to use a satnav and claims he cannot get the lawnmower working can dominate at what amounts to an incredibly tricky game of three-dimensional Tetris. I wish dishwasher-loading was a competitive sport; the family trophy cabinet would be almost as full as one of his loads.

• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist