Collectaholics

Episode 8 (2x8)

: 17, 2015

The team meet 86-year-old Barbara who has created an entire miniature town in her London home. Barbara has been collecting doll's houses for 40 years and devotes all her free time to her diminutive dwellings, depicting everything from scenes in the NHS, people holidaying in the south of France, a chip shop, and even a brothel! But Barbara's collection is hidden away, and out of bounds from children, particularly surprising as she's dedicated her life to running a stage school. Can Mark Hill and Jasmine Harman convince her to combine her two passions, and get her schoolchildren involved in her collection? Mark and Jasmine visit 52-year-old set designer Simon, who's filled every nook and cranny of his four-storey home with all things weird and wonderful. Having fallen in love with British folklore as a young boy, his house has everything from waxwork heads, puppets, ventriloquist dummies to the downright macabre. Simon has big dreams of one day opening the country's first museum dedicated to British folklore so Mark wants to inspire him to create an all-encompassing experience. And Jasmine visits 42-year-old Andy who has been slowly building up an enormous collection of a forgotten phenomenon which changed the entertainment industry forever - the arcade. Andy has over 300 vintage arcade machines hidden away in a 3000 square foot unit on an industrial estate. With everything from Space Invaders and Pac-Man to Donkey Kong, he'd love nothing more than to share his collection with other enthusiasts. And he's in for a shock when Mark and Jasmine reveal just how much it's all worth.