IF YOU'RE one of the nearly 3 million folk who switch on to Antiques Road Trip for your tea-time viewing then this week's shows will look more than familiar.

Because the popular BBC series is on the south coast and in the West Country and, expert David Harper explains, the diversity in tastes, styles and bargains varies in every town they visit.

“In Brighton they love French, Louis-style furniture and Art Deco will always do well,” he says.

“But a few hundred miles along the coast in Devon and 18th century country oak furniture is far more popular.”

The show is run as a competition between the experts, this week it’s David and Anita Manning, who have to spot antique bargains and sell at a profit with a budget of under £200. When they’re not travelling between venues in a classic car with the dazzling countryside as a backdrop, that is.

“I'm from the Yorkshire/ Durham border and Anita’s from even further north in Glasgow,” says David.

“When you’re in your own market you know what sells well to your client but it’s different down here. I do sell down here but I don’t know many of the dealers or auction houses so I think the BBC decided to send us as far away as possible to get us out of our comfort zone and it worked.

“Make ’em suffer and see what happens seems to be the plan.”

Presenters aren’t allowed to give away any of the show’s secrets so instead, David, who has owned an antique business in America, as well as being one of Britain’s youngest sales directors (of a furniture importers), explains more about his passion for antiques.

“It started when I was five, I loved collecting coins and bits of old pipes and the blue and white china you’d find in a farmer’s field,” he says.

“It seems to me that there isn’t a field in England that hasn’t got a bit of blue and white 18th century pottery in it and you wonder how it got there.”

He was fascinated, too, by the little clay pipes he’d find.

“The farmers would smoke them, chuck them away and when you picked them out of the earth you realised you were handling something that was last touched maybe 200 years ago.

“That always fired something in me,” he says.

His interests grew, so much that he has dealt for more than 20 years and in addition to his international work and consultancy, he runs his own shop in the historic market town of Barnard Castle in County Durham.

Like the great British public, his tastes have changed over the years.

“A few years ago I really loved Georgian furniture but now I’m getting keener on Chinese.

“You can take a fancy to something and move on.”

His current favourite items are his pair of bronze Ming Dynasty lion dogs: “They are delicious but I can get as much pleasure from something that’s worth just a tenner,” he says.

He admits that like his customers: “We're all looking for that Ming vase, or at least, the object that will make our fortune.

“It’s great to get the money for an amazing piece but wonderful, too, if you’ve helped rescue a little bit of history or a very important object,” he says.

So is he like a doctor, with people sidling up and instead of asking him about their illness, asking him to value their granny’s heirloom?

“It’s exactly like that. I’ve done two house calls today and in the first house there must have been a thousand items but I just scanned them very quickly.

“Your experience tells you when things are wrong and right but of course the people watch all the programmes like the Antiques Roadshow so they are hoping you are going to pull something out that’s worth a fortune or, better still, is on the mantelpiece right in front of you.”

He watches the Antiques Roadshow and like the rest of us enjoys guessing how much the objects will be valued at. But he wouldn’t want to appear on it.

“It’s great viewing but it’s a bit staid for me. I enjoy the excitement of the Road Trip.”

As the show’s fans will see.

• Antiques Road Trip 5.15pm BBC 2 every night this week