Sunday 16 November 2008

The Antiques Roadshow dumbdown

I used to love this progamme, mainly for the unexpected discoveries, the human stories, the esoteric analysis of valuable or worthless objects, the mind-blowing pricing (and of course the attractive women who sometimes hover in the background, making eye contact with the camera).

This week's episode has been widely trailed in the press as 'the first ever £1M discovery'. Naturally, you expect some nice bloke to have found a Ming vase or Lowry sketch in a skip or attic, or a granny to uncover the original manuscript of the declaration of the first world war - at any rate, something to engage the nerves.

Instead, what we got was a small bronze fake of Gormley's gormless chunk of rust, which turns out to be not even a prototype, but an advert! A million quid? I'd bid fifty for the scrap value. The Antiques Roadshow has finally blown its credibility with this one.

1 comment:

  1. Well, I was shocked...but now I'm going to the local scrapyard so I can flog the same stuff on eBay.

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