Show just gets better and better...
Paul Martin has been hosting the show for 15 years. Left: Natasha and Anita. version also to her name – is Natasha. The show is recorded so far ahead that the Ayrshire episode won’t be aired for up to 18 months and Natasha hasn’t yet been seen on screen.
“I’ve had about four different hairstyles, got married and changed my name since then,” laughs the antiques expert.
“I love it, though. Of all the antiques’ shows, I think this is the most true to life. It shows the bread and butter of what we do.”
Unearthing the hidden gem that fetches so much it changes lives may be the Holy Grail, but for Natasha and the viewers it’s often as much about the stories behind the object.
“One of my favourites so far was a woodcut by a German artist,” she recalls. “He gave it to his lover who cherished it until she died and passed it on to her carer who knew how much it had meant to her. To me it was the love story that really mattered.”
And there are no shortage of those stories.
Rosabel Breingan, from Ayr, has a very fitting object for valuation. It’s a painting she got of Culzean at the local art circle many years ago and had hung on her wall ever since.
Like it as she does, if there was a good price available she would indeed Flog It.
Fo r L i n d a Wa rd , 70, of Stranraer, there was a family connection going back almost a century. She has sepia photographs and theatre posters relating to her grandmother and mum, whose artistic talents had led them into showbiz.
“There’s a letter to my mum offering a contract to sing, dance, act, play the ukulele and drive a car. Driving for a woman was quite a big thing in 1928.”
Family memories abound, too, for 79- year- old Tony Voak, from Ayr. Cardboard
Rosabel Breingan.
A rare Aboriginal broad shield that had been hidden away in a viewer’s wardrobe before being brought along to a valuation day sold at auction for £30,000.
A silver Tibetan teapot, thought to be worth just a few pounds, turned out to be part a previously unknown rare collection that went on to sell for £140,000.
On a previous visit to Scotland, a prized Chinese libation cup turned up at Balbirnie House and later reached £44,000 in the bidding before the auctioneer’s hammer came down.
There are seven off-screen experts to check out finds. This 16th series will have 66 programmes from 12 valuation days. Each filming day produces four shows and material for a compilation programme.
It requires a 50-strong crew, including six cameramen and a drone pilot.
The busiest-ever day, in Nottinghamshire, saw 1400 people show up. boxes bulged with train sets, Hornby Dublo models, plus stations that brought childhood days flooding back.
“One of them is the last present I got from my dad,” he says quietly. “I was 12 and he died soon after. It’s very poignant but my boys don’t want them.”
As the day wears on, the queues subside but everyone who comes before 4pm gets seen, however long it takes. And, at the end of it all, series producer Louise Hibbins can look back on another successful day that will have millions of devotees tuning in.
“I think the difference is that people love wa tch ing Antiques Roadshow to look at things they’ve never owned,” says Louise.
“But Flog It shows the things they do own, or might just.”