Johnny Vegas refused to sell beloved teddy bear despite eye-watering offer

An inveterate collector, the comic Johnny Vegas has over the years picked up some quite extraordinary - some might even say bizarre - items. His home is stuffed to the gills with his own personal "EU antiques mountain". It's a veritable comedian's curiosity shop.

A gigantic kitchen knife which is as tall as Johnny, anyone? "I don't think it was ever used in the kitchen," the comic smiles, "although Gordon Ramsay does have massive hands!"

How about a teapot adorned with Lionel Richie's face and the caption: "Hello, is it tea you're looking for?" Or how does this grab you: a string of vintage cutout metal racehorses that used to be ridden around the dance floor by wives on a cruise ship? The comedian describes it as "like the Grand National meets Wife Swap".

Johnny, who jokes that "there is a fine line between collecting and hoarding", has accumulated so much stuff that he has no room left in his house in St Helens. So he now has to rent not one, but two lock-ups to store the rest of his items.

The comedian says his recent diagnosis of ADHD provides an explanation for his avid collecting habit. The apparently random assembly of stuff is, he insists, "a jigsaw puzzle of my life. Most people wouldn't know how to put it together, but it makes complete sense in my head".

Now help is finally at hand. The 54-year-old has decided to impose order on the chaos and turn his hobby into a business. He is opening a pop-up shop to sell some of the numerous items from his personal collection and because he is constantly on the lookout for new stuff for the store, he also tours local dealers searching for unusual bargains.

Based at Dagfields, a craft centre in Cheshire which houses 25 shops, Johnny's antiques emporium is called "Vintage Vegas".

"I can call myself vintage because I'm over 50 and my body hair has gone grey," he observes wryly.

His baptism of fire as a buyer and seller of quirky items is charted in a new eight-part series, Johnny Vegas' Little Shop of Antiques, starting today. Chatting to me from his front room and wearing a very fetching flat cap, Johnny acknowledges that he has been nervous about parting with his beloved items. In the show as he begins to sell things off, he declares: "Tonight will be a night of regret. I'll be curled up in a corner rocking backwards and forwards, going, 'Why did I let the big knife go?'"

The performer, who made his name with such memorable comedy shows as Shooting Stars, Ideal, Benidorm and Still Open All Hours, also confesses to worrying about being taken seriously in the grown-up world of antiquing and that people will label him "a poor misguided fool with too much stuff".

And then there's the classy items on sale in the nearby shops at Dagfields, something which admittedly intimidates him. "I think I've moved into the wrong neighbourhood," he sighs. "I feel like a pools' winner who's moved to the Cotswolds."

For all that, Johnny soon begins to relish his new trade. "I didn't know if I'd be able to let things go when it came to the crunch," says the comedian who, his legions of fans will be very glad to hear, is just as funny off screen as on it. "But I discovered the joy of moving things on. It actually became one of the most pleasurable parts of the job - sharing the stories and seeing somebody take a
treasured item home with them."

Johnny believes his years of collecting have stood him in good stead for his new venture. "It's a lovely thing to find out that you actually do have a good eye for what will sell and that you haven't just been wasting your time just buying tat all these years," he laughs.

Experience teaches Johnny to go with his gut instinct and buy items he falls for that may at first glance seem excessively expensive.

For instance, it is love at first sight when he sets eyes on a plaster cast of John Gielgud's face in a seller's warehouse. "I'm getting the shivers," he exclaims, the glee evident in his voice. "Sometimes you have to shut off the accountancy and listen to the passion."

He also cannot contain his excitement when he realises he has become a successful antiques dealer. "A 'what if?' has become 'Well, you've done it. I'm a dealer. Get me!'"

The other pleasure of antiquing lies in discovering that, however odd your enthusiasm for collecting a particular item may at first appear, you will soon find fellow devotees.

You do not have to feel, "Oh, collecting antiques is not for the likes of me," Johnny comments. "There is a collector for everything. The thing with collecting is that you're not alone. You will locate your tribe, and there's no need to be intimidated.

"Your collection can start with anything. We met this fabulous guy who owns 8,000 pairs of trainers. He only ever buys them in his size, even though he never wears them."

Johnny goes on to give an example of a very surprising celebrity collector. "Paul Heaton [the former lead singer with The Housemartins and The Beautiful South] collects crisp packets. He has box files full of them, but he only saves the packet if he likes the crisps and finishes the entire contents.

"He also collected shoe horns and Do Not Disturb signs from hotels. But then the rest of the band started collecting them, so he stopped."

Johnny says he gets a huge buzz from the customer reaction to the items he sells. He cites a woman who told a moving tale about why she was so eager to buy a vintage enamel cigarette sign from him. "She said it meant a lot to her because her mum used to smoke those cigarettes. It was almost like she was bringing a piece of her mum home with her.

"Sometimes with bereavement you can have that guilt that you haven't thought of somebody for a day or two. And so, an object like that helps trigger the memory every time you walk past it."

He adds: "The fact that this sign brought back such a warm memory for her and that she was so excited and grateful to be taking it home - that gives you a fuzzy glow and makes you think it was worth trawling through all those warehouses to find it.

"For years now, that customer will have a smile on her face every time she walks past the sign. And that's really quite a wonderful thing to be able to do. That's why it gets easier to let things go. That can become addictive in itself. I want that feeling when somebody walks out of the shop so happy."

Johnny has bought one highly cherished antique, however, that he refuses to sell: a mechanical toy called Thirsty Bear. "It's basically a little wind-up bear that has the DTs as it pours itself a drink," he explains.

"Whenever you go into a gift shop and you see an object like a giraffe with a clock in its chest, you just think, 'Why?' Thirsty Bear is the same. I imagine its inventor walking into a toy manufacturer and saying, 'I've got an idea that's going to turn this company's fortunes around. I've been working on this all weekend. It's a bear that's thirsty, and it also has the DTs.'"

Johnny, who has two children himself, continues: "I just don't know how Thirsty Bear got past the first stage of development. It's a toy that's too good for children, isn't it? It never fails to get a laugh when I show it to people." The comic says that he adores the teddy so much, he wants to be buried with him. "The coffin will be going into the ground, and you'll hear this rattling. 'Stop, stop, Johnny is alive.' 'No, it's Thirsty Bear. Something has triggered his clockwork mechanism.' Thirsty Bear is pouring himself a drink going, 'I didn't sign up for this. Is there an off-licence where we're going?' 'I don't know, but it could be very hot and you might become an even thirstier bear.'"

To prove just how much he loves Thirsty Bear, Johnny reveals that he turned down an eye-watering offer of £320 for him.

One thing the comedian has not yet managed to do is create a website to sell his antiques. He confesses that he is a Luddite totally unable to do anything technological without the help of his loyal PA, Beverley Dixon.

"Setting up a website?" he asks, self-mockingly. "On my website, I'd still be asking for people to send postal orders. Instead of having a website, I'd rather walk up and down the street wearing a placard that says 'Golf Sale'. That's as far as I've come technologically.

"I'd find it easier to walk the length and breadth of this country with photos of what I've got to sell online. It's like when you go to one of those English restaurants in Spain and there is a photo of every item of food outside."

Hitting his rhetorical stride, Johnny continues: "I wouldn't know how to do a bank transfer if my life depended on it. If a member of my family got kidnapped, and the hostage-takers said, 'We want a wire transfer,' I'd reply: 'Can I meet you in a car park?' 'We don't do it like that anymore. Times have changed.' 'Look, I want to see my family again.' 'I know. So just wire us the money.' 'I can't wire you the money. Bev is on holiday.'"

What does the performer hope that audiences will take away from Johnny Vegas' Little Shop of Antiques, then? "I hope people might be inspired to go into the garage and dig out stuff that's been there for years," he says.

"I also hope that this gives them the confidence to say for the first time, 'I'm going to go out and search for something for that wall, something that's not in the High Street, and something that I can tell a story about when people come round.'"

He breaks into a smile. "Stories sell stuff. I can only talk about what drew me to a piece and hope that it's infectious and that it speaks to somebody else in the same way it spoke to me.

"Collecting is the joy of having something you never expected to have. There is great delight in being eccentric. Eccentricity is a gift. It's not something to conceal. Don't hide your eccentricity under a bushel. Don't keep your Thirsty Bear boxed up. Release your inner Thirsty Bear!"

Johnny Vegas' Little Shop of Antiques Tuesdays at 9pm on Quest