The man of the week is, without a shadow of a doubt, Ivan John Grima Hammett. He is the gentleman who went to City Gate in Valletta on Tuesday morning with a shovel, cement, water and several buckets of aggregate material and went on to fill up two potholes.

There was no sign of builders’ bums or torn vests. He did the whole thing in style: wearing a suit.

His mission? To stop pedestrians from tripping and hurting themselves.

His resolve was momentarily tested when police turned up, told him he had no permission to carry out work and ordered him to stop. But the crowd was having none of it: they urged him on, they booed the police, and Mr Grima finished the task.

And to make sure that the story had all the right ingredients till the very end, he inscribed the name ‘Jesus’ in the concrete, because, his action, he said, was inspired by God.

Then, the police, these recent days eager to show that they always follow procedure, proceeded to take him in for questioning.

Now fast forward three days and a pothole filler hit the news again, this time, in the UK.

Reg Winsor, from Devon, got so fed up waiting for a huge pothole on his street to be repaired that he took matters into his own hands and fixed the hole himself in 15 minutes.

No police were sent, no questioning was carried out. Instead he got a job offer from the council: a full-time position fixing problem potholes.

Mr Winsor turned the salary down because he wants to do it for free. However, he will take a two-hour ‘course’ on how to fill in potholes to be able to tackle the rutted roads of county Devon – and he has already gathered a team of around 50 volunteers, dubbed ‘Reg’s Army’, who will help him fix holes the minute they are reported.

Now for a bit of background, Mr Winsor did not wake up in the morning, thought ‘potholes’ and put on his superhero cape. Devon County Council, where he lives, has been appealing to residents to fill in potholes themselves in order to save money on road repairs.

With the largest highway network in Britain, Devon spends €1.3 billion every year maintaining its 13,000 km of roads and has an estimated backlog of 11,500 sections of road in need of repair. Hence the appeal for ‘road wardens’.

The plea got more attention, when, this being the UK, a marching brass band cancelled a procession in Hartland due to the state of the road.

Luckily, our marching brass bands are made of tougher stuff and their peripheral eyesight is trained to spot a pothole from miles away, otherwise we’d have no festas to speak of, or village concerts would be held in potholes.

But don’t you, like me, think that Mr Grech’s and Mr Winsor’s stories are completely inspiring?

As I was reading, I had one of those San Carlo Crisps divine music moments, where my aura was suddenly flooded with Godly light.

Finally, I thought. We have the answer to all our ailments. These brave men have shown us that action is louder, and more practical, than words.

Complaining about a pothole with no one every doing anything about it, will make us even more miserable. Fixing the pothole ourselves will not only make us happy, but will make scores of others too.

This is the citizen revolution we need. Mr Grech, please set up your ‘Ivan’s army’ too. And, the rest of us, let’s not be dis-spirited if we don’t know how to hold a shovel. There’s so many other matters we can take in our own hands: let’s start directing traffic. Let’s start handing a pair of wellies to anyone we see wearing white boots. Let’s set up a quinoa-salad stall outside McDonalds. Let the Citizen Wardens take over.

Meanwhile, courtesy of wikihow, here’s how to fill that pothole in your street that’s been bugging you for the last decade:

1. Measure or estimate the amount of filler material you will need to execute your repairs.

2. Go to an ironmonger and select the asphalt filler you want to use for your repair.

3. Clean loose dirt and debris out of the hole with a garden shovel, a trowel or other suitable tool.

4. Let the hole dry in the sun if there is water in it because the tar will not stick to the wet dirt.

5. Fill in holes that are more than three or four inches deep with crushed concrete or crushed limestone.

6. Fill the hole with the asphalt filler to about one half an inch above the adjacent paving.

7. Pack it down with a hand tamp, or a hammer.

8. Cover the patch with a piece of plywood over the fix for a few days.

9. Clean up your tools and any spilled material around your patch.

10. Stand back and admire your handiwork.

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Twitter: @KrisChetcuti