TV antiques expert David Harper is swapping the auction house for the stage as he takes his one-man theatre show on tour.
Teesdale-based Mr Harper, who has been a regular on BBC programmes such as Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip for more than a decade, has lined up 24 dates which will take him from Settle to Somerset in the coming months.
His tour kicks off with a show at Bishop Auckland Town hall on Saturday, August 17.
Dubbed Unexpected Tales, Mr Harper will treat audiences to all the behind the scenes gossip from some of the BBC’s most popular daytime and early evening shows, telling of his encounters with the famous faces he has appeared alongside for celebrity specials.
He said: “You cannot believe what goes on in the world of art, antiques and in the making of television shows. You will not be expecting what you will hear.”
He added that the unscripted nature of his theatre show would make each one a unique experience.
“It is a very interactive show and I don’t know where each one is going to go,” he said.
“I have some ideas of what I want to talk about, but I throw it open to the audience. It’s real seat of your pants stuff.”
Unexpected Tales is Mr Harper’s first major theatre tour and follows the success of his first foray into stage work.
“I was getting asked to do talks for business groups and other presentations and through this I got used to speaking in public – and found I really liked it.
“I bit the bullet and did a few live theatre shows. I absolutely loved doing them to the extent that I adore walking onto stage.”
He said that in those first few shows, the stories of what goes on behind the scenes proved extremely popular with audiences and that had spurred him on to develop Unexpected Tales.
“People were interested in how things were put together, how things could go wrong and the celebrities I had met. People also like to hear stories of the disasters.
“It’s almost like trade secrets of making a TV programme,” he said.
