Flog It

11th February 2007

I took the piece of Troika pottery out of the Tesco shopping bag I’d brought it in and passed it over to my favourite Flog It presenter Adam Partridge.
“Ah. Another example of our old friend Troika,” he said.
“Right.”
“Don’t tell me.

You bought it for a few pounds in the seventies while you were on holiday in Cornwall?”
“Right again,” I smiled.
“And now you’ve brought it along to Flog It to cash in on it.”
“Right a third time.”
I wondered what the little vase that I’d paid just four pounds for all those years ago was now worth as Adam expertly gave it the once over. He now looked from the Troika vase to me and said: “It’s worth fuck all.”
No he didn’t. That was me running the worse case scenario through my mind as I sat waiting in the Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, this afternoon. Flog It had come to town and I, along with several other people, had bought along our valuable antiques to be valued, and possibly featured on the show at a later date.
In the early seventies The Trouble and I had a holiday in Cornwall and while we were there we bought three items of Troika, a type of pottery quite inexpensive then, but which has increased greatly in value over the past few years and is now highly sought after. Unfortunately The Trouble broke two of the items in the period between our buying them and us making a fortune with them – she says it was me who broke them, one on a night that I was drunk and one on a night when I wasn’t but acting as though I was, but then she would, wouldn’t she – so we were left with just the one piece, a nice-looking vase about twelve inches high.
In the event I wasn’t lucky enough to get Adam Partridge or another of my favourites, James Lewis – although both were in attendance – I got someone I’d never seen on the programme before, Robert something or other.
“So what have you brought along this afternoon,” said Robert, pleasantly.
I held up the Tesco shopping bag. “This Tesco bag,” I said.
“A Tesco bag?” he said, somewhat bemused.
“Now I suppose you’ll want to know how I came by it, how much I paid for it and how long I’ve had it. Well as far as I can remember I got it at Tesco, I paid exactly nothing for it, would you believe, and I’ve had it for about twelve months. I’ve been using it as a freezer bag to keep out lamb’s liver in.”
“A freezer bag?”
“Yes. It’s in perfect condition though, apart from a bit of staining, no doubt caused by the liver, so I’ve brought it along and I want to flog it.”
Robert looked at me as though I was quite mad. I looked back at him as though I was deadly serious. Then I cracked up. A moment later he joined my laughter.
He said the Troika vase should bring about a hundred and fifty pounds when it’s auctioned off at Matlock in a couple of weeks time. I threw in the Tescos bag  for nothing.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now in print. They are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

You can write to me at –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

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Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

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