Blackadder legend and Time Team stalwart Sir Tony Robinson is kicking himself that his latest show was not his own cunning plan.
“It’s the perfect idea, I wish I’d thought of it myself,” says the 76-year-old, who says we all have a “museum of life” in our own homes.
He says: “I’ve spent 20 years encouraging people to dig up their back gardens looking for history, but you don’t even need to do that, just rummage in a drawer.”
Following decades of documentary-making, his new series Tony Robinson’s Museum Of Us encourages people to share the hidden history behind our front doors.
He visits residents from different streets across the UK as they hunt their homes for treasures and help to create their street’s very own pop-up community museum in just seven days.
“It’s the history of ordinary people. Everyone’s got a Museum of Us,” he says. “We’ve all got a few things tucked away, like the old lead from your favourite dog or a tea cup that your gran gave you.
“We don’t really know what to do with them or why we’ve still got them but we certainly wouldn’t give them to the Antiques Roadshow.
“They are our little piece of the museum of our life. The curiosity we have about the great grandparents who died in the first world war or something odd about the shape of your house.
“It’s incorporated into all of us and I think the great thing about the show is that it brings those little interests and passions to life.
“People might not be aware that they like history but history is there within all of us. It has always been embedded in me. History was never a subject, but the stories that my mum and dad told me and I loved to hear. It was as much a part of me as breathing and walking down the road.”
Tony has his own precious artefacts in his West London home that he shares with wife Louise. He admits his late mother would be cross to know he has his feet up on one of her favourite chairs.
Tony says: “I’m sitting in my office and I have a table with four chairs around it which my mum and dad bought in 1938 when they got married. I’ve had it polished up with new jazzy seats. My mum would say ‘Get your feet off that chair!’
“When a loved one dies you can’t bear to chuck anything away. As the years go by, your hold on all of those things lessens and you’re able to give some away to charity shops. The amount of things gets smaller but becomes more valuable in your own heart.
“I’ve got five silver spoons in a little velvet box. There should be six but I think mum lost one and they are now almost brown with tarnish. I wouldn’t give them away for the world, although to other people they would mean nothing.”
In the first episode of the series, Tony visits streets in Bristol, Norwich, Birmingham and Aberystwyth, where all the museums were fantastically well-received.
“Not one person told me to bugger off!” says Tony, who has a great passion for talking to ordinary people about their history. “It occurred to me that people in other streets will now want to make their own museums, regardless of a TV programme.
“We discovered connections to a chocolate factory in Bristol. All those chocolate bar wrappers, Fry’s and Turkish Delight, that was the stuff of my childhood.
“In Norwich we discovered an enormous red shoe that looked a bit like those Start-Rite sandals you had at school as a kid. It was the most extraordinary object, shiny red and about three foot long and had obviously been in the window of a shop.
“It epitomised the fact that that part of Norwich for a hundred years was central to the shoe making industry.
“In Birmingham someone had a battered old suitcase which was called a grip. When people came over to Britain from Jamaica this was the only bag they were allowed, these rather battered, square cases.
“In Aberystwyth, the street had connections to the National Eisteddfod music and poetry festival, established in the 1860s. The street just oozed and breathed music. There was a uniqueness about each street we visited.
“Ripping the paper windows away and opening the museums were moments of intense satisfaction for me - a real Father Christmas moment.
“Lots of people were waiting. They had a vested interest because it was their street and they had lent their things. I have enormous belief in this programme, it’s unusual and yet familiar, it is everyone’s experience.”
Having worked non-stop his whole life - and with no plans to slow down - Tony has an engineering documentary lined up.
He also continues to campaign for Alzheimer’s research and support for forgotten carers after he lost both his parents to the disease.
He says: “There’s a big anxiety at the moment as Boris Johnson offered something like £90 million to kickstart more investigation into the medical side of Alzheimer’s and to help train up carers. But there’s a debate going on in the House of Commons about cuts and that public money could be under threat.
“I’m very anxious about it as it looked like we had started to make a little bit of headway. If that initial money goes then it will set back the cause of combating dementia by about ten years.”
Determined to keep himself as healthy as possible, Tony has recently given up alcohol, hoping to remain teetotal (or near enough!) and walks 10,000 steps a day with his new FitBit that Louise bought him, having lost a stone and a half over lockdown.
He says: “Not drinking is always sensible but we live in an environment of celebration so it’s hard. It gives your head a rest, your heart a rest, you sleep better, it certainly gives your liver and kidneys a rest so it’s a very good thing to do.
“I’d like to either be teetotal or maybe just have the occasional drink in celebration.”
*Tony Robinson’s Museum of Us continues on Monday, More4, 9pm or catch up on All4.
