Tales from the Antiques Roadshow in Auckland

Paul Atterbury sees everything from ornaments to airline sickbags

Paul Atterbury thought he'd heard it all when the chap sitting across the table confessed: "I collect airline sick bags."

As an Antiques Roadshow appraiser of ceramics and glass for 16 of the 29 years of the BBC hit show, and more recently examining miscellaneous items, Atterbury had encountered coat hangers, milk bottle and brick collectors. But the sick bag collection was a new one on him.

"He said, 'It's reached the point where I have to fly in very obscure parts of the world on dangerous airlines just to get the bags.'

"There may be something like oh, 820 airlines in the world and his obsession was fuelled by whether he could get a bag from each one.

"The actual cost of that collection is huge because he's got to fly on the airlines just to get the bags ... but the collection is valueless," Atterbury explains from his Dorset home in the south of England.

"Collecting is obviously utterly inherent within our makeup. We get some curious psychological satisfaction from hunting things down, finding rare ones and assembling them together."

It's these behind-the-scenes tales he and fellow presenter Hilary Kay will be sharing when they bring their show Tales from the Antiques Roadshow - Have you had it long madam? to town next weekend.

Leave the junk shop finds behind though. This is strictly an insider's guide to the show.

"It's part game show, part soap opera in the sense that the story goes on week by week - but essentially it's about two people talking about family and stories and quite private things with everybody listening in."

The appeal for Atterbury is that the objects are triggers for releasing stories.

"I think we get wound up with the money because it's such a key element in the filming, but it's the extraordinary people you meet, that's what I love."

But it's the reactions of people who invariably pretend they've got no idea how much their prize possession is worth then mutter, "that's more than I thought, ooh but I'll never part with it" that many of us watch it for.

Or, more uncharitably, that schadenfraude feeling when they're told it's a fake and they've paid too much. Maybe we're just meaner in the Antipodes.

One of his favourite stories involves a 1930s lady racing driver who drove a heavy car non-stop for 24 hours and then thought she'd like to fly, so bought a plane and taught herself to fly.

"I was looking at the material and photographs and thought, 'God they don't make people like that any more.' "

Then there's the history he's so keen on. When filming Antiques Roadshow in Australia, someone brought in a large piece of wood he claimed was half the keel of the Endeavour. "I was putting my hand on this wood thinking: Did this sail to Australia in the 18th century?"

Because of everything he sees, Atterbury is less interested in personal acquisitions these days.

"I do buy things, I mean we've got a house full of junk. If you were standing in my house with me saying that I'm not really a collector, you'd laugh."

His collecting started when his parents - both collectors - took him to antiques shops and he succumbed, in his late teens, to ceramics because they were plentiful and reasonable .

Now, things that mean a lot to him have a personal connection. His favourite? Possibly the rare 1930s dish with the painting of a ship called the Polly from a local pottery in his home county of Dorset.

Why? His eldest daughter is called Polly and the dish is local.

As a fan of railways (he's written books about them), his big regret is not getting the jump on steam locomotive brass nameplates when they were scrapped in Britain in the 1960s.

Now they're worth thousands of pounds.

Even if he did find one, it would still be subject to his own strict rule: "If you've reached a point where you're not interested in that object any more, let it go so somebody else can have a go at it."

Not sure whether this applies to the sick bag collection, though.

* Tales from the Antiques Roadshow - Have you had it long madam? Concert Chamber, Auckland Town Hall, February 26, 2pm. Book at Ticketek.