We’ll meet people who collect everything from Mr Men to Mr Blobby, a South Tyneside lady who has a passion for pandas and a Sheffield super fan who needs a warehouse for all his memorabilia.
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00:00In a world filled with ordinary objects, there are those who see the extraordinary.
00:14They are the collectors, guardians of history, preservers of memories and curators of the
00:19rare and unusual.
00:21This is their journey, a celebration of the art of collecting and the people who turn
00:25everyday objects into treasures.
00:30Coming up, we'll meet people who collect everything from Mr Men to Mr Blobby, and a
00:35South Tyneside lady who has a passion for pandas.
00:40But first to Sheffield, where a football superfan has amassed so much memorabilia, he needs
00:45a warehouse.
00:49It started as a young child, to be fair, age four years old.
00:51My dad took me to my first game.
00:54I went along to that and he bought me a programme and from there I got a shirt, a football kit
00:59and it kind of took off from there.
01:01My friends were into Sheffield Wednesday and I started collecting little bits and bobs
01:05from there.
01:06At around about ten, eleven years old, I then became a season ticket holder and I went kind
01:10of home and away, all the way through the glory years, the big run years, and I collected
01:15from there shirts, shorts, tracksuits, everything really, it just kind of snowballed.
01:20Why Sheffield Wednesday?
01:23Football team, you know, it's followed through within the family, mum and dad are fans, it's
01:28followed all through the generations and obviously it's close by so it's just something that's
01:33passed through the family really.
01:35And it's such a big collection you had to move it because it took over your house.
01:39So as a child, yeah, it kind of took over my bedroom, then it took over my mum and dad's
01:43loft and then it kind of snowballed and got bigger and bigger and bigger.
01:46It eventually had to come out of there and come into some sort of storage unit, yeah,
01:50so this is where I am today.
01:52This is one of my favourite items in my collection, this is an original 1986 match-worn Sheffield
01:59Wednesday away shirt.
02:01As you can see, not many of these are around, it's got the original Finluck sponsor on there
02:05as well and this specific one was actually worn at the time by Sheffield Wednesday legend
02:12of ours, Gary Megson, whose dad was also quite big with the club through the years, so that's
02:17a specific wonderful piece that I like.
02:20Two Sheffield Wednesday shirts from the similar sort of era and season.
02:24These are around the late 90s, so you're looking at 97, 98, 99 era.
02:29You can see that one of them has the white Puma logo and one of them has the red Puma
02:33logo, this was due to different branding and different periods of time when they were released
02:39and these two are actually worn by the legends of the time, Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio.
02:44How do you go about finding items, you know, have you got a special research process?
02:48Yeah, it's been made a lot easier recently with the obviously internet and things like
02:52that and you can start looking through the programmes and things, but when you pick up
02:55an item like a shirt or something that you presume is potentially worn or issued by a
03:00player, it's all down to the detail and searching through the programmes, searching through
03:05the archives, looking at all the pictures, trying to marry up and match up what item
03:10is from which player sort of thing and which game and it's always in the detail and it
03:14takes a lot of time to get that actual information that you need and sometimes it's worth it,
03:20sometimes it's not, sometimes you get a good one, sometimes you don't.
03:22Are you going to keep collecting?
03:24I'm going to keep collecting, yeah, as long as I go, yeah, my children are into it now
03:27as well, so they're out picking things up and looking in charity shops and car book
03:31sales and things like that, yeah, but I'll continue.
03:44To Blackpool next, and if ever there was a TV character who was chaos personified, it's
03:56this one.
03:57The one on the left.
04:11I love nostalgia and pop culture and that is my main influences when I'm drawing.
04:16I just love the feeling you get when you find a childhood toy that you used to play with,
04:22that you used to cherish when you were a kid.
04:24Another five years on, ten years on, you just think, oh god, I remember that toy that I
04:29used to play with all the time.
04:32I am, yeah, believe it or not, I am young enough to remember Mr Bobby, so he was an
04:38icon of my childhood.
04:40So I grew up just watching TV.
04:42I was just absolutely, it was basically a third parent to me.
04:47So when Mr Bobby reached the screens, like, I think it was Friday nights or Saturday nights
04:52with Noel's house party, I was just obsessed with this like big pink yellow blob.
05:01In a way, like, he did things that I wanted to do and he pushed boundaries and, yeah,
05:08I just really wanted to aspire to be him but, you know, I couldn't because of social things,
05:15you know, you can't just push your way into someone's house and bounce around.
05:22I think in a way he was just misunderstood, like, I don't think he was naughty on purpose,
05:27I think he was just like naturally himself and because I grew up and I had undiagnosed
05:35ADHD and I feel like maybe that's part of why I love him so much because he was just
05:41like an unmasked monster with perhaps ADHD and I was masking a lot of the time.
05:52One of my favourite items is probably the knitted Mr Blobby that my grandma knitted
05:58me.
06:00So in lockdown I found like a knitting pattern, an official knitting pattern of Mr Blobby
06:05and my grandma, she only had one eye and I sent her this knitting pattern and I was like
06:11this is something to do during lockdown, you know, and she knitted it and it took her about
06:16a good, you know, two weeks and just looking at it, is this it?
06:21Is this what I'm supposed to do?
06:22And when it came out like that I just thought it was absolutely perfect.
06:25It looks so cursed but it's just beautiful, like the teeth and the eyes and everything,
06:31I just thought, you know what, the sausage fingers as well, I just thought it was beautiful
06:36and it's something that, because she sadly passed away two years ago, and it's something
06:40that just reminds me of her, like we just have it in the shop and every time I just
06:44look over there and it's like my grandma's in here.
06:50But to meet Mr Blobby himself would be like, I think I would die of happiness really,
06:59yeah, I would absolutely love to meet him one day.
07:03Hi I'm Michelle, this is my husband Stephen.
07:06Well the collection has continued to grow, much to Stephen's, he says disgust,
07:11but seeing as it's him that's been buying loads of it at Carboots for me,
07:16I don't hold any blame at all for this.
07:18No, it's all my fault, definitely all my fault.
07:21Charity stop, second hand stores, Carboots, anything like that,
07:25I'm there rubbing gin around looking for Mr Nen as well.
07:28Well my mum, when she was pregnant with me, bought a book
07:33and basically put it away and then she just continued to buy the books
07:38and once I started being aware, probably about preschool age,
07:42and I first chewed my first Mr Nen book that was given,
07:45there's a bite mark in one of the books somewhere,
07:49it just grew from there and it was obviously the early 70s, I was born in 72
07:54and through my childhood my parents didn't have a lot of money
07:58but I had Mr Nen stuff for birthdays and for Christmas
08:02but I continued to collect and my partners at the time,
08:07they also continued to collect and the stuff just kept going up in the loft,
08:12up in the loft and for my 40th birthday,
08:16I got the collection out of the loft because I thought we need to see what we've got
08:20and that was the first time that I'd realised I had a real problem.
08:25I needed to go to Mr Nen Anonymous
08:28and had the local news round, they took some crazy pictures of me
08:33and I was highly embarrassed.
08:34As the children grew up, I've dragged them to different places
08:37to meet Mr Nen characters at Butlins,
08:41I've even taken them on a holiday to try and see Mr Bump on a cruise ship.
08:46The whole collection is a collection of love for me
08:51because everybody that's bought me something, I've still got it,
08:55even if they're not part of my life anymore, I still have that gift
08:59because there's no way I'm getting rid of anything that's Mr Nen,
09:02I don't care who gave it to me.
09:04I managed to do a count after the Mr Nen anniversary
09:09and we were over 4,000 pieces.
09:12I keep saying I need to think about doing something with the collection
09:16that isn't keep collecting it because if it's postage stamps,
09:20if I had a stamp collection that would be manageable
09:23but this, I mean the new stuff, I need to stop buying
09:29but that's an addiction.
09:31The vintage stuff is what I really like, the artwork, the colour, the design
09:37but my goal is to get the world record and then I can die happy
09:41but then I want to have my picture taken with my world record
09:44which means it's going to have to all come out again, isn't it?
09:46So who knows how long this could take.
09:49I've been speaking to a South Tyneside resident
09:52whose passion for pandas started at a very young age.
09:54I've liked pandas since I was given a toy when I was very small
09:58and the panda bear was actually bigger than I was at the time
10:03but I used to drag it around everywhere with me.
10:05A while later when I was at school and interested in nature
10:10we went to London Zoo because I used to live down south
10:13and I remember this photo being taken of Chief Bear
10:18of Chi-Chi the panda and so we saw Chi-Chi at the zoo
10:23she was there from 1960.
10:27Chi-Chi and Cha-Cha were a pair of pandas that were given by the Chinese government
10:33as a kind of, they bestowed pairs on other zoos.
10:39This handbag is really special to me
10:41and it was given to me in China by this little girl here
10:46called Candy and that's me in the handbag.
10:49What happened was we got on a cruise to go along the Yangtze River
10:54to see the great big dam there
10:57and this little girl was playing the piano in the bar
11:01and we got up a conversation
11:04which only amounted to a couple of words
11:07because I don't have any Chinese other than Ni Hao
11:10but she was learning English
11:12and they learn English from the age of three
11:15but she already liked pandas and I like pandas
11:18and that was enough to kind of start a sort of pointing and smiling conversation
11:23and now she's old enough to have changed her name
11:28she's changed her name to Charlotte
11:29that's what she wants to call herself
11:31because she's 16 shortly
11:33and we're still in regular contact
11:36and that's given me an even better like love of China
11:41so we've visited the pandas together
11:43and we've been a couple of times to stay with the family now
11:46and the double panda tapestry there is one that they gave us on one of our visits.