JO DAVISON: Roadshow fun for antique generation
Like gardening, and the wearing of slippers, control tights and night cream, you come to appreciate the Antiques Roadshow later in life, After all those years of scoffing at your mother, you suddenly realise the importance of such things and now my Sunday wouldn't be Sunday without the Antiques Roadshow.
The minute the per-per, per-per, per-pers start, I'm plonking myself down on the sofa, full of anticipation.
Surely this was fly-on-the-wall before it was invented by Channel 4, and classier, more fly on the lincrusta.
You get people's potted histories with every china vase, ancestral memories with each murky oil painting folk have either loved or hated for decades. This week the gang were up in Leeds; there was a chap who proudly showed off the miniature "chaise lounge" made by his great-grandfather, who died of gangerine (his pronunciation made it rhyme with Listerine).
It was a little beauty and he seemed genuine when he announced there was no way he would be flogging it, which pleased me. I can never understand why anyone would want to part with a family heirloom just so they can fly to Lanzarote for a fortnight. Or have their eyebrows botoxed to look like Fiona Bruce's.
Next up came the lucky sods... the folk who've done what the rest of us have dreamed of doing since childhood - found some treasure. You're not going to unearth a pirate's chest overspilling with gold in the back garden. But you just might find a priceless diamond brooch In the back of old dead auntie's earring box. Or some rare piece of Limoges while rummaging at a car boot.
Most notably, there was a chap who'd had the good fortune to find a gold ring dating back to the 1500s while metal detecting in a field outside Doncaster.
As the A.R. expert waxed lyrical about the ring, you could see the finder's wife trying her best to look nonchalant.
"Well in good condition it could have been worth around 25,000," he said.
"But it's been hit by a plough a few times, so it's probably worth 4-5,000," he concluded. Wife's face looked like it had just been slapped with a wet haddock, then settled into something approaching a 'Lanzarote's lovely this time of year' expression of resignation.
As I always do, I start to wonder if I have anything that might be of real value. I wouldn't want to sell it, but it would be nice to know I've actually got something.
Might the coffee table I bagged on Ebay for 50 and had to trek all the way to what looked like a drug-dealer's house in South Wales actually be a rare Indian daybed from the days of the Raj?
Might the miniature Silver Cross pram I've had since I was five now be a rare and coveted piece I can hand down to a future grand-daughter? (No pressure, Boy, no pressure).
And might I be able to get an expert to glue together the broken lid on the Suzie Cooper coffee pot my mother is always wondering how she came to lose?
An old girl can dream, can't she?
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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