Episode 15 Priceless Antiques Roadshow


Episode 15

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Our journey through the annals of Roadshow history are about to end.

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Just time for one last edition as we dig out some golden nuggets from the vaults.

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Just as well - we've left some of our most memorable moments for last.

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If you ask our experts which are their most special finds

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in 30 years on the Roadshow,

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for many it's been when they've touched objects

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associated with great moments in history.

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In this episode, Paul Atterbury and Simon Bull recall some extraordinary encounters.

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'Sometimes an item comes in that really sends shivers down your spine.'

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You get this feeling that here is history, real history.

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A fantastic feeling, that is.

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One of our experts is transported back to his first job working as a porter in an auction house...

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Good morning, Knowles, we're expecting a lot of people today, a very big sale...

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-Right.

-So I want you to be on your very best, attentive behaviour.

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And what is the magic of the Roadshow?

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One is incredibly lucky, because The Antiques Roadshow acts as a magnet.

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And things that you really wouldn't believe existed

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just come out of the woodwork to the programme, it's amazing.

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For some, the love affair starts young.

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Collecting can be an infectious disease caught in your youth.

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High time, we thought, to remember some of our youngest visitors to one of Britain's oldest shows.

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Our experts have hosted a total of 14 children's specials over the years, and it never gets any easier.

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The old phrase "never work with children and animals"

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was what sort of went through my mind.

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'I have to say that my experiences of working with children are absolutely delightful.'

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-I like that one.

-You like it, too?

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You'd better do up your shoe down there, yes.

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Working with children, you know there is going to be that moment

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when you are going to be completely upstaged,

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and you just have to lay back and enjoy it.

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The history of Meccano goes back actually quite a lot further than 19...

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-1901.

-That's right.

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And also, they don't take you seriously.

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If you're wrong, they will tell you.

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It's a risk. Children are a definite risk.

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I've got a slight problem here today, I'm having great difficulty deciding who's who. So who are you?

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-Dan.

-Dan.

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Doing a children's roadshow can be -

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you can really get your comeuppance there.

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I remember two wonderful boys, who brought in an early pocket watch.

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And in order to demonstrate how it worked, I actually needed to take the movement out.

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I'm gonna take this one a little bit to pieces.

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Do you know how to do this safely?

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Yes, I hope so. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?!"

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The Children's Roadshow really happened through something Hugh Scully and I did.

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We just the two of us appeared on a children's programme, and there was such an enormous

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response from the kids that it made everybody sit up and take notice,

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and the decision was then to make a special children's programme.

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THEME TUNE PLAYS

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Dozens of youngsters have brought their treasures along to

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Children's Roadshows since they started in 1992.

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And the memories have left a deep and lasting impression on some of our experts.

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I can almost hear the children now, as I remember the Bristol Roadshow.

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There were several children who clearly were already on the road to obsession in their collection.

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Some of them were absolutely charming.

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One of the most impressive young people who came to the show was the girl, she was six years old,

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and she brought in a collection of fossils.

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-You've got a little animals' graveyard here.

-Yes.

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Can you just quickly take me through what they are?

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Er, a dinosaur bone,

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an ammonite, a crinoid,

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petrified wood, some coral, a trilobite,

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-shark teeth and echinoids.

-Gosh, you could start a whole new planet with all of these.

-Yes.

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She could pin to each bone and tooth the correct polysyllabic word -

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not bad for a six-year-old. And for anybody listening, polysyllabic means long word.

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Do you have any favourites here?

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Erm, this one's one of my favourites, because I dug this one up by myself.

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-And when did they live?

-Erm, round the Cretaceous period.

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And then at the end, I said, "Is there any fossil you

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"would like Father Christmas to bring you?"

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No, Santa doesn't get fossils.

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But if he did, I saw this skull,

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a bit of a skull of a baby mammoth, and it was a real lot of money so we couldn't have it.

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It's not every six-year-old who wants a baby mammoth for Christmas.

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And at Gateshead in 2008, Christmas came early for Bill Harriman.

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This is a Waterloo medal, and it really is one of the

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greatest battles in British history, where the menace of Napoleon

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was dealt with once and for all.

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It's one of those medals that every collector dreams of. Tell me how you got it.

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It is actually my great, great, great, great grandfather's.

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It was passed down the family.

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I think it was an exciting object, because

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it was a direct link with the owner's family, and he could say

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that he could hold in his hand an object which his ancestor had held.

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He was called William McNull.

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He was born in 1795, and at the age of 15, he joined the Army, in Leeds.

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And so by the age of 20, that's when he went to the Battle of Waterloo.

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I just think that that's a launch into your family's history.

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And he could also tell you that on 18th June 1815, exactly,

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what his ancestor was doing, and that was banging two sticks on a drum.

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This is really rare, because you don't often find medals that are inscribed

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to drummers.

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Waterloo medals, they cost anything between sort of £1,500-£2,000.

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But I want you to promise me that you'll look after that

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for your family, because it's really important.

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-Right.

-I also think you don't own it,

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you just look after it for the next generation.

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I really wish that I owned that, something with my family name on it,

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that was at that great event in Europe.

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Going back to 1992, an unsuspecting Hilary was about to fight another battle.

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This is an enormous box. It says Meccano on the top, is it full?

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Yes, it's the number six set

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-which was around 76 years ago, in 1916.

-1916?!

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That memorable recording of the young boy with the Meccano set was sort of all my nightmares put together.

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'I had this really young child to interview,

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'who I thought would know nothing, but of course he knew everything!'

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So every fact I came out with, he sort of countered with a backhand slice.

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The history of Meccano goes back actually quite a lot further than 19...

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1901.

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That's right. That's when he started producing Meccano.

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And this tennis match went on, and it was always my ball that ended up in the net. It was completely priceless.

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Watching the clip again, it does seem to have

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a quite quaint sense of comedy to it, it's almost like

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a bit of a pastiche of the Antiques Roadshow, because I seem to come out

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with a lot of facts and dates and so on, which I probably wouldn't

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have known two days before, and almost certainly wouldn't have remembered two days afterwards.

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I don't know if this is something that you wanted to know how much it's worth...

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-£50.

-No, more than that...

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He actually came out with a valuation figure before I could even get mine out.

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I mean, I suppose I should be thankful that he was wrong, otherwise actually what was I doing there?

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I only have the vaguest memory of meeting Hilary Kay.

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Erm, I remember walking past Andy Peters in the gents' toilets.

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He was a big children's television presenter at the time!

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There's nothing like getting a taste for antiques when you're young.

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And that's certainly true for many of our experts,

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who learned their trade by starting right at the bottom of the ladder, as porters in auction houses.

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So we took one of our best-loved specialists, Eric Knowles,

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back to his roots and let him loose on the saleroom floor for a day to see how he got on.

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It's years since Eric has been out from behind his desk at a

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major London auction house, but there's no time for slacking in a Yorkshire saleroom.

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You really do have to start at the bottom of the ladder,

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when you start in the antiques world, certainly for an auction house.

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More often than not, you start off as a porter.

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You're on a learning curve, and I can tell you know, that learning curve was so steep.

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Certainly the first three years, and after that it levels off a little bit. But it never flattens out.

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And that's what makes this business so fascinating.

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Being a potter, it sounds quite lowly, doesn't it?

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But in all fairness, it was the perfect introduction for me.

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It's quite menial, there's a lot of sweeping up,

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there's a lot of humping and lumping tea chests from A to B.

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But it is the way to learn.

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-So what are you looking for in particular today?

-Jukeboxes.

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Jukeboxes?

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A bit thin on the ground in Wensleydale, you know.

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The team have had to inspect, catalogue and display all 800 items in today's sale.

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The great thing about working in an auction house is that you would see in a year

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quite often what a dealer might handle in five years.

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And that was all part and parcel of absorbing this information, almost by osmosis.

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Who better to put Eric through his paces then the man who helped him get his first porter's job

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32 years ago - old friend Rodney Tennant.

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-Good morning, Knowles.

-Good morning.

-How are you this morning?

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I'm fine, thank you, I'm just checking the contents.

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We're gonna be very, busy, we're expecting a lot of people, a very big sale, I want you to be on your

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very best, attentive behaviour, which includes, please do your tie up a little bit more.

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-Oh, I'm very sorry.

-There's no point having clean boots and a tie that's askew.

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One weak link in the chain breaks the whole thing.

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-All right, I won't let you down, Mr Tennant.

-Thank you very.

-OK.

-Good.

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I've word that Rodney goes to bed at 9 o'clock the night before.

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-I've heard that one as well?

-Have you?

-Yes, I've had the same rumour!

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-He's probably got an electric blanket as well, I'm gonna ask him eventually.

-Eric!

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Oh, there he is.

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His ears are burning.

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Just concentrate, we're about to start the sale, please.

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-He's looking at me, he wants me to do a bit of work.

-Just concentrate.

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That Rodney Tennant, his eyes and ears are everywhere.

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-Everywhere.

-Yes.

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40, 50, 60, 70.

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At 70...

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-Lot 19, a teapot in the form of a cat...

-Sample showing...

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-Oh, showing there, well done.

-Thank you.

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Hold them up, Mr Knowles, there we are.

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I think the primary reason I wanted to get

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into the world of auctioneering was that I actually went to a house sale.

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In the doorway now. 260, 280...

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I saw the auctioneer, and you know, the porters in their brown coats and everything, it was just pure theatre.

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420, 440...

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Bells started ringing, because I just knew that this was the place I wanted to be. 460.

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You can put them down now, sir, thank you very much.

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It must have been the way you held those up.

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It's not enough really in this business to be just interested.

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The people that I communicate with are passionate.

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-Begins with me at 80...

-A left-handed jug.

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-Very rare, being a left-handed jug, apparently.

-Yeah!

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When it comes to learning about antiques, it's a case of sort of

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look, listen and, in the case of ceramics, feel free to fondle.

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-Lot 103, the seven Royal Doulton... Is that 103, sir?

-103, yes, sir.

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Right, it must be a bull, I've got another part of that, I haven't got it all on my...

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-It's definitely a bull, sir.

-103, well done.

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Well, if you can't tell from where you are, nobody can tell. There we are.

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With any auction, the adrenalin's pumping, and even when you attend it,

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and you're doing the bidding, you can feel it inside. This man is Formula One.

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And I think I might be on the old push bike level.

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Right, we've got to 200, so I will now hand over to my trainee,

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he's had a session at portering, and he's going to be selling the next 10 lots to see how he gets on.

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LAUGHTER

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I'm hoping it's a bit like riding a bike. I don't mind admitting, I'm as nervous as hell!

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It's the first time he's ever sold in Yorkshire. He's a Lancastrian, so please handle him with care.

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-Thank you, Rodney.

-And report to me after the sale.

-OK.

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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

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Yes, for the first time in life my life, I'm wishing I was born in Yorkshire.

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Lot 201, which is the Galle style cat, there it is, please,

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who'd like to start the bidding at £100 for this lot? Looking for 100?

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What you've got to do is to have a successful sale, obviously, it goes without saying,

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and for people to go away wanting to come back.

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It does bring out the thespian in me.

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No bid of £80, start me at 50.

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At 50... We are in Yorkshire and not in Holland are we not, Rodney?

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Yes, OK. Right at 50, any offer of 50? LAUGHTER

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With my former employer I was carpeted on more than one occasion

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and told this is a fine art auction house, this is not theatre.

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I don't mind admitting, ladies and gentlemen, I hate cats. I'm sorry.

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No, no...

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Oh, I know I've lost a few friends but it's all to do with where were you in '62 and in 1962 I was running

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down my front street chasing a cat that had my guinea pig in its mouth.

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So... You'll understand, won't you, the bias, sorry.

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Anyway, any offer of 50 then bid me... Oh...

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£50 is offered there on my right.

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60, 70 if you like, sir. 70, 80 with me. And 90...

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At £100, on the book at £100.

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Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, it may be a day out for you but it's a career for me.

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Thank you so much indeed. Thank you very much, Rodney, it's all yours.

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He'll go far that Eric Knowles.

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Our final compilation of Roadshow moments marks some encounters which

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have left a lasting impression on two of our veteran specialists, Paul Atterbury and Simon Bull.

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They love finding precious pieces which take us directly back to important moments in history.

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I think objects have a huge resonance.

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They're inanimate, they're lumps of metal, whatever.

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But an object which has been somewhere where something

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important has happened, long after the people have gone,

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that object carries that forward into the future.

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What's the key?

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The key to my heart. This is actually very interesting cos, going

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back to where it started really, my fascination with Marie Antoinette.

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This opens a corner cabinet on one of her barges,

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which is nice cos she might well have touched it.

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-This is the magic, I'm holding it, Marie Antoinette may have held it.

-Yeah.

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-It's like a relic really, isn't it?

-It is, you cannot get closer to the event than that.

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-Yeah.

-'Objects are magic.'

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When I hold something, which has had some famous connection, it's sort of vibrating through me.

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You can feel all that history there in that object.

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The key to a great moment in naval history was put before clocks expert, Simon Bull.

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Sometimes an item comes in that really sends shivers down your spine,

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for various reasons. In this case I remember a marine chronometer...

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Do you know the history because usually they're just

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spoils of war but nobody knows where they came from?

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Yes, we know quite a lot about it's late history

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which is that it was the chronometer of a U-boat, a U-110.

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It was caught by three Royal Navy vessels under

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the command of my grandfather and depth charged to the surface.

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My grandfather sent a boarding party on board who retrieved as much

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stuff as they could from the U-boat,

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including an Enigma machine and all the code books that went with that.

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I believe that was the first time that we actually

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had in the Second World War the naval codes and the machine.

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Fortunately, the Germans were unaware that we'd captured this U-boat and its contents,

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so that was kept a very closely guarded secret.

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It meant that we could decode...

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-Decode them.

-That's right.

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So from then on in those codes could be broken and, you think, this

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instrument is a turning point

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in a world war. You get the feeling that here is history. Real history.

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A fantastic feeling, that is.

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Sometimes we're lucky enough to see one small item that has had far reaching consequences for mankind.

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The story of penicillin, a real story that actually changed the 20th century.

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My father went to work, directly from school, at the tender age of 14

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in the inoculation department of St Mary's Hospital where Fleming

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was working as a bacteriological researcher.

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-Fleming was a very untidy man.

-Yes.

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And he used to experiment on what we call petri dishes

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and he went off on holiday one day leaving a large quantity of these lying around unwashed and when he

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came back he happened to look at them and he found that several of them, the bacteria had been cleared.

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-So it was pure chance?

-Pure chance.

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I do have an original mould here.

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Hang on a minute, so this is the culture.

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That is what the mould looks like.

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Somehow it made me understand the story so much better,

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but the thought that only an accident made all that happen.

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The mould that produced penicillin, Alexander Fleming 1951.

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So this must be a very rare thing.

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-One was sold at auction for £20,000.

-I think all we can say is this is a very valuable, very rare item.

-Yes.

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If you were concerned with medical history

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-a piece of the original culture, endorsed by Fleming, it must be the gold bar.

-Definitely.

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There is nothing like it.

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Thinking, "I'm actually holding this piece of history" was very, very important.

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And some items are reminders of the darker chapters in our history.

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-NEWSREEL:

-The Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany...

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once the holy city of Nazism, becomes the setting of an epic event.

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The 20 most important surviving members of the Hitler gang go on trial.

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We all know you as Lord Oaksey,

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but what is your connection with this material?

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My connection is through my father.

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He was one of the two British judges on the International Military Tribunal

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which was set up to try the Nazi war criminals.

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-The Nuremberg trials.

-Exactly.

-Right.

0:21:090:21:12

So here we've got your father on duty, as you might say, and these

0:21:120:21:15

are the various passes issued that he wore, IMT and he was number one,

0:21:150:21:20

so he was top of the list, wasn't he?

0:21:200:21:23

To suddenly see these images and these documents, and talk to somebody who WAS there,

0:21:230:21:30

you really are drawn into that experience.

0:21:300:21:33

The Nuremberg trials, that was the trial that established the precedent

0:21:330:21:36

that when you say as a defence, "I was only following orders"

0:21:360:21:40

that doesn't hold water. Is that right?

0:21:400:21:42

-That's absolutely right.

-Yes.

0:21:420:21:44

-NEWSREEL:

-Britain's Lord Justice Lawrence addresses the defendant.

0:21:440:21:48

The defendant is to plead guilty or not guilty to the charges against him.

0:21:480:21:52

Nein!

0:21:520:21:55

That will be entered as a plea of "not guilty."

0:21:550:21:58

So you have direct memories of the trial and all that it represented?

0:21:580:22:02

-Oh, rather.

-So you saw all these people?

0:22:020:22:04

-Absolutely, with my headsets on.

-And you saw their responses?

0:22:040:22:08

Very much so.

0:22:080:22:10

Here we have the dock and there's Goering.

0:22:100:22:12

-Gosh, doesn't he look thin.

-Well, that's the amazing thing.

0:22:120:22:16

He had lost four stone in weight and had come off main line heroin and so

0:22:160:22:22

it was an incredible achievement that he became the outstanding figure in the dock.

0:22:220:22:28

He was the one who defended himself and his colleagues.

0:22:280:22:32

-Never said, "sorry" at all.

-Exactly.

0:22:320:22:34

To me this is just an incredible vision into this...

0:22:340:22:39

vital moment in our history.

0:22:390:22:41

It was a very important item to me because I thought

0:22:410:22:44

this is from the eyes and voice of someone who was there.

0:22:440:22:47

He could talk about it in a very direct sense and it was about making history live.

0:22:470:22:52

It's looking at pieces like that which remind me

0:22:560:22:59

just what a privilege it is to work on the Roadshow when such special objects are brought in for scrutiny.

0:22:590:23:05

If you think you've a piece you'd like our experts to look at

0:23:050:23:08

we'd love to see you as the programme continues

0:23:080:23:11

recording for our next series.

0:23:110:23:12

That's just about it from this look back through the archives.

0:23:120:23:16

I hope you agree it's been stacked with priceless moments.

0:23:160:23:19

My thanks to our team of experts for bringing back such great memories and we've one final question.

0:23:190:23:24

After getting on for 500 Roadshows what is it they love about the show?

0:23:240:23:29

And, keeps you all watching.

0:23:290:23:31

Bye-bye.

0:23:310:23:33

I think one of the great things about the Roadshow is that, despite the fact that's it's been

0:23:370:23:42

on the air for over 30 years, broadly speaking it has been

0:23:420:23:45

unchanging in the sense that the format has remained exactly the same.

0:23:450:23:50

But it retains its freshness because every single programme is different,

0:23:500:23:55

I mean the people you meet, the things they bring with them, the places you go to.

0:23:550:24:00

Every week when you turn on the Antiques Roadshow you have no idea,

0:24:000:24:05

as the experts didn't on the recording day, you have no idea what you are going to see.

0:24:050:24:10

THEME TUNE PLAYS

0:24:100:24:13

It kind of was a weekly occurrence that you looked forward to.

0:24:150:24:18

That music heralded the start of an adventure, a sense of discovery.

0:24:180:24:24

It's a very special passport to experiencing very special things.

0:24:240:24:30

To experience it with some of the people on the Roadshow is just beyond description.

0:24:300:24:36

I think most of us would agree the best moment of the Roadshow day is 9.25am.

0:24:400:24:47

There's huge queues, there's people clutching

0:24:470:24:50

ill-defined parcels and packets and you simply don't know what's going to happen.

0:24:500:24:55

One is incredibly lucky because the Antiques Roadshow acts as a magnet and things that you really

0:24:570:25:03

wouldn't believe existed just come out of the woodwork to the programme, it's amazing.

0:25:030:25:08

There's a slight feeling of Christmas every day,

0:25:080:25:11

because there are funny little parcels and boxes

0:25:110:25:13

and open them up and sometimes

0:25:130:25:15

the Christmas present isn't quite as magnetic and fascinating as you want it to be,

0:25:150:25:19

but then the next one or the one after that contains the Faberge brooch

0:25:190:25:23

or the Charles II memorial ring or something absolutely pulse making.

0:25:230:25:27

That's when the heart starts fluttering.

0:25:270:25:30

That's when the excitement comes.

0:25:300:25:32

-That's when the adrenalin starts to flow.

-It's a dream come true.

0:25:320:25:35

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does, that's what we look forward to.

0:25:350:25:40

That's what I look forward to.

0:25:400:25:43

The other thing which I really get a kick out of is the characters as well.

0:25:430:25:48

Certain people they...

0:25:480:25:52

are extensions of what they're bringing in and the whole thing then becomes a

0:25:520:25:57

wonderful journey.

0:25:570:25:59

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

0:25:590:26:02

One thing that always amazes me,

0:26:020:26:04

I think it sums up the British character

0:26:040:26:07

is how nice and how pleasant people are when they've queued for five hours.

0:26:070:26:11

I'd be an homicidal lunatic standing there for that time.

0:26:110:26:14

It is the remarkable thing about the Roadshow is that it brings out

0:26:140:26:18

the very best in people in all sorts of ways. It never ceases to amaze me.

0:26:180:26:23

We can go from the top of the country to the bottom of the country.

0:26:230:26:26

We can go to America, Australia, whatever, and we can find the most remarkable things.

0:26:260:26:34

One of the things that has always been key to the programme is,

0:26:340:26:37

in a sense, the "Oh, my gosh" shock effect.

0:26:370:26:40

-What?

-Really?

0:26:400:26:42

Here you are, bought for £2, worth £5,000 and bizarrely, this happens all the time.

0:26:420:26:48

Every show there is one of those sort of discoveries.

0:26:480:26:51

-This piece of furniture would be in excess of £100,000.

-Gosh.

0:26:510:26:56

That's what we want, it's an entertainment programme

0:26:560:26:59

so when you get a really good reaction it makes the programme.

0:26:590:27:02

Fantastic, I had no idea.

0:27:020:27:06

The Roadshow, to me, represents a chunk of my life which was almost entirely pleasure and excitement and

0:27:060:27:11

to have started something so late in my career

0:27:110:27:14

it was an extraordinary bit of luck because I'd met such amazing

0:27:140:27:20

people and seen such astonishing things, travelled to lovely places and they've actually paid me as well.

0:27:200:27:27

It's been a great bonus.

0:27:270:27:29

We had no idea when we did the first series of the Antiques Roadshow

0:27:310:27:36

that it would ever run more than the first eight

0:27:360:27:40

and when the second one came along we were amazed.

0:27:400:27:45

Then a third, and I'm still amazed, frankly.

0:27:450:27:49

The Times said some years ago, I remember, "there are two programmes that could potentially go on forever.

0:27:510:27:57

"One is Desert Island Discs and the other is the Antiques Roadshow."

0:27:570:28:02

Well, if we live as long as Desert Island Disc we'll be doing very well.

0:28:020:28:06

Would I have been surprised the programme was going still 30-odd years later?

0:28:080:28:13

I think all of us would be.

0:28:130:28:15

Not just me, but it was a nice, comfortable, happy, nice little programme

0:28:150:28:20

that no-one envisaged would go on forever, almost like The Archers, I mean, it's quite incredible.

0:28:200:28:25

Here it is, still after all these years, still surviving.

0:28:250:28:29

We're shocked.

0:28:290:28:31

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:28:500:28:53

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0:28:530:28:56

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