Bargain Hunt contestant 'lost for words' as they make BBC history for all the wrong reasons and auction goes 'badly, badly wrong'
The iconic BBC show sees two teams - the blues and the reds - compete to find three antique items, with expert advice, and flog them for the highest possible profit.
A resurfaced episode from 2022, hosted by Eric Knowles, sees experts Charles Hanson and Caroline Hawley head to the village of Eccleston, Lancashire.
The instalment stands out from all others in the show's 25-year history - for all the wrong reasons.
For the first time ever, the red team - made up of Geraldine and Washington - did not find a third item to go under the hammer, taking just two to auction.
From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new Showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop.
For the first time ever, the red team - made up of Geraldine and Washington (pictured) - did not find a third item to go under the hammer, taking just two to auction
The pair were themselves 'lost for words', explaining how they found themselves in that position, with a rare Doulton jug and two vintage tennis racquets
'Because there are so many things here - but it's just finding that item that meets the criteria', they said.
The voiceover further clarified that the team simply 'ran out of time' to select their third antique.
The criteria in question was that one of their items had to be worth at least £75.
The pair did not manage to achieve this, only securing a rare Doulton jug and two vintage tennis racquets - both worth under the threshold.
Host Eric told them: 'I've got to say, you have made Bargain Hunt history by virtue of you only managing to buy two items.'
The team's expert helper Charles Hanson was just as flabbergasted by the unusual turn of events.
Outside the antiques shop, he addressed the reds: 'I like to play to the wire but it went badly, badly wrong.
Outside the antiques shop, he addressed the reds: 'I like to play to the wire but it went badly, badly wrong'
'We failed on the challenge. We failed with our big spend. I'm sorry, team. It really happened.'
Sticking to the rules of the show, host Eric said: 'The ruling is that because you didn't do the £75 spend, you start with minus £75.'
But the reds were soon thrown a lifeline, offered the chance to make a bonus buy and purchase an art deco clock for £200 - a style 'always in demand', Eric assured them.
The team ended up selling the clock for a massive £380 at auction, leaving them with a profit of £130 - and leaving them not so impacted by their error after all.
Viewers at the time were scandalised by the outcome on X: 'They shouldn't have been allowed a bonus if they hadn't bought three items!'
Another said: 'Shouldn't have been allowed to compete with only a £75 forfeit.
'Others can just do that now, but like the red team, still win! Should have been disqualified in my opinion!'
But someone else took the misdemeanour less seriously: 'Brilliant! This has got be the best episode ever! What larks!'
The rules of Bargain Hunt were similarly put to the test on a celebrity episode featuring Bez and Rowetta Idah of Happy Mondays and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Candida Doyle.
The now iconic instalment from 2018 famously had to be reshot when a major rule infringement was discovered after filming had finished.
It transpired Bez's girlfriend bid on and won his team's auction items, securing an £8 profit for them - as well as the overall victory.
When the infraction came to light, Pulp's team - despite making a £95 loss - was awarded the win, with the end of the episode refilmed to reflect that.
The unusual moment saw the host of the episode read out the relevant Bargain Hunt rule, 'Tis completely forbidden for friends or family members to bid on a team's item', before exclaiming: 'I'm speechless!'
Bez, who gave the £8 back, said: 'It was a genuine error. My girlfriend thought she was helping out.'
Bargain Hunt's executive producer Paul Tucker said at the time: 'We have rules and regulations on Bargain Hunt and we have to make sure they abide by them.
'It was picked up by a runner and we verified there were clearly misdemeanours going on.
'It was a genuine rule that was broken and we had to reshoot the end.
'They are rock and rollers and they live on the edge as they did in the eighties.
'It's not a surprise but in the end, it was quite amusing.'
The resurfacing of these rule-breaking moments comes after Charles Hanson made an emotional return to the show after being cleared of abusing his wife.
The antiques expert, 46, came back to the long-running show last month, marking his first TV appearance since 2023.
Hanson, who has also starred in Antiques Roadshow, Flog It! and Antiques Road Trip, had been off air while facing serious allegations of assault and coercive control against his wife Rebecca. He had denied all the charges.
In February, a jury at Derby Crown Court found him not guilty on all counts.
It came after a three-week trial which laid bare the collapse of his marriage to the 42-year-old radiographer. The couple are now divorcing.
During the trial, Hanson was accused of a decade of abuse, including putting his pregnant wife in a headlock, pushing and scratching her, and controlling her behaviour.
He told jurors she was a 'fantasist' and claimed he had been a 'slave' to her demands.
After his acquittal, the TV star sobbed in the dock before punching the air in relief and embracing his parents, Phillip and Gillian, who sat in court throughout proceedings.
Speaking outside court in February, Hanson said: 'I'm delighted after a year and half that the truth has finally come out and can finally live my life and feel this burden has finally been lifted.
'It has been a tormentous time and all I want now is to readjust to what has been such an ordeal.
'These last 18 months have been extremely upsetting. I have missed my children and quite simply I can now get back to my life and I relish that. It has been very impactful.
'I am very lucky my parents have stood by me from start to finish – without my family it would have been a very, very testing time.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
19 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Jurassic Park star Sam Neill reveals his son repeatedly FARTED on Princess Diana at legendary film's premiere
Sam Neill has revealed his son repeatedly farted on Princess Diana at Jurassic Park's premiere in London. The actor, 77, starred in the smash-hit movie franchise, which catapulted him to international fame thanks to his role as Dr Alan Grant. Back in 1993, Princess Diana attended a royal screening of the original movie, which took place in Leicester Square. However, Sam has recalled his mortification when he discovered his son Tim began farting during the film - just meters from the princess. He said: 'The last time I watched it in its totality was sitting beside Princess Di at the Leicester Square at the London opening. 'On the other side of me was my son Tim - he was 11 and completely swept away by it, but about the time the T-Rex turns up, Tim started to fart. 'And the draft was drifting across me to royalty! 'I spent the whole film in a muck sweat, thinking, "Princess Di is being exposed to the horrors of a little boy's fart, but she's going to think it's me. I am going to be subliminally blamed for my son's crimes, and I don't think she'll talk to me afterwards." 'But she was well brought up and never mentioned it.' Sam previously told GQ how the princess enjoyed the sci-fi and action movie, and said he kept one eye on the screen and the other on her. To date, a whopping seven films in the Jurassic franchise, with the latest instalment Jurassic World Rebirth released just last month. It stars Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Ed Skrein. Meanwhile, Sam looked well and in good spirits as he stepped out for a red carpet event in February. He attended the 2025 AACTA Awards held at Home of the Arts (HOTA) on the Gold Coast, in Australia. Sam previously opened up about his 'brutal' chemotherapy treatment after being diagnosed with stage-three blood cancer. He found out he had cancer in 2022 during his first trip back to New Zealand after lockdowns made returning home to see his family virtually impossible for two years. His son Tim told Australian Story his dad had been back in New Zealand for barely an hour when a doctor phoned with the awful news he had cancer. 'When he hung the phone up and we sat down, and we had a little bit of a cry together. It was supposed to be a happy day. He didn't get to stay,' Tim said. Sam continued: 'I was in really a fight for my life. And everything was a new world and a rather alarming world. 'I had three or four months of reasonably conventional chemotherapies which are, brutal.'
The Guardian
20 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Digested week: Wimbledon joy and the canny PR of the Dalai Lama
As someone who enjoys the women's tennis at Wimbledon, so to speak, the tournament's opening days are an annual joy and this week has been electric. Emma Raducanu leads the rise in British women powering up the world rankings, which makes the era of women's tennis I grew up in – I have a lot of time for Jo Durie, but those were hard years – seem like the 19th century. Today, after two stunning opening-round matches, Raducanu will meet Aryna Sabalenka, the mighty Belarusian world number one, which means tomorrow I will be on court one (in the park) knocking imaginary clay dust from my shoes and pretending to be in the final. If the tennis is sublime, the crowd so far has been slightly under par – although it's early days. Last year, the title of Wimbledon best dressed went for my money to Greta Gerwig, in a tan suit the provenance of which I still can't track down, as well as Zendaya in Ralph Lauren and Julia Roberts in Gucci. This week in the royal box and around the grounds we've had Cate Blanchett, who is welcome in any setting, Olivia Rodrigo and Russell Crowe, who combed his hair and dug out a tie for Centre Court. (Esquire ran a story about the £65,000 Rolex he was wearing, which if it was intended to set us against him, won't work – I won't hear a word against Rusty.) There were also, as usual, a high turn out of what my teenage tennis partner and I used to refer to nastily as Midweek Ladies, a crowd who, off-court, wear floral, ankle length dresses in pale shades and on court, are always one double fault away from losing their nerve and reverting to an underhand serve. Everyone should watch My Mom Jayne, the documentary about Jayne Mansfield made by her daughter Mariska Hargitay, released this week on HBO Max and a jaw-dropper of revelations and sadness. You may know Hargitay from her role as Detective Olivia Benson in Law & Order: SVU – I didn't even know she was Mansfield's daughter – and she was three years old in 1967 when her 34-year-old mother was killed in a car crash outside New Orleans. The film is heartbreaking, not least because Hargitay, who has no memories of her mother, was in the car with her siblings when it crashed. All three children survived and were raised by their father, but as Hargitay reports, she grew up feeling vaguely ashamed of her mother, a Hollywood sex bomb who spoke in a breathy voice that a generation later fell out of usage. As Hargitary digs into the history of the mother she never knew, she discovers Mansfield was an accomplished pianist and violinist, a brilliant, ambitious woman trapped by the only persona Hollywood allowed her – until now. Finally, someone has greeted the release of a new Brad Pitt movie not with praise-be gratitude for America's ageing sweetheart, but by looking at Pitt's success in shrugging off an allegation of domestic abuse. While in most of the entertainment press, Pitt's new film is treated to the customary chuckling puff piece, New York magazine runs the headline Brad Pitt is Fooling You and proceeds to get into it: the actor's image preservation, the crisis management PR he retains (former client: Johnny Depp) and the details of Angelina Jolie's allegation that he assaulted her and one of their children on a private plane. As the piece concludes, nobody cares. There's been a vibe shift since #MeToo, which let's not forget, Brad Pitt's production company, Plan B, aligned itself with by co-producing the movie adaptation of She Said, about the exposing of Harvey Weinstein – a sterling piece of allyship from America's most sensitive male feminist, or something else entirely. Either way, nothing sticks. In the last five years, the worst coverage Pitt has had is for Bullet Train. There was a story in the Sun mid-week about Pitt's ex, Jennifer Anniston, or rather, about a 43-year-old man from Southampton who believed himself to be in a Facebook relationship with the Hollywood star, who had reached out to him asking for a loan. That might have been your first clue, Paul, that something about this – hard to put your finger on what exactly – didn't smell right. It wasn't the first time the unfortunate victim had been targeted over social media by scam accounts claiming to be Hollywood stars. But when 'Jennifer Anniston' sent him a copy of her driving license, along with the message 'I love you', it was enough to clinch things and convince the hapless Facebook user he was at the start of a beautiful relationship. As requested, he sent the former Friends star the £200 of Apple gift cards she was asking for and never heard from her again. Oh, to have the confidence of the Dalai Lama that we'll all get a second go-around at this. Ahead of his 90th birthday this weekend, the Tibetan spiritual leader discussed arrangements for his successor, by which, per Buddhist beliefs, he means the body into which he will be reincarnated. This is as much a political as a spiritual consideration and in his address, the Dalai Lama pushed back against the Chinese government's insistence on preapproving the reincarnation, remaining firm that when the time comes, he'll be reincarnated in line with Tibetan tradition and with no interference from Beijing. He has also dangled some spoilers, suggesting, tantalisingly, that the new Dalai Lama may not be a baby, as he was, and – in what would represent a reboot more shocking than the new Dr Who and Ghostbusters combined – may not even be male. Which goes to show that even spiritual leaders these days have a canny knack for PR.
The Guardian
22 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Adès, Leith, Marsey: Orchestral Works album review – an impressive collection marks a productive association
Since 2023 Thomas Adès has been artist-in-residence with the Hallé Orchestra. He has featured as composer, conductor and pianist in his appearances with the orchestra, and all his concerts have included new or nearly new works, both his own and by composers he admires. As the residency comes to an end, this collection brings together pieces he has conducted in Manchester; there are four by Adès himself, alongside William Marsey's Man With Limp Wrist and Oliver Leith's Cartoon Sun. Of the four pieces by Adès, only one is substantial. Aquifer, which he wrote last year for Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, is a densely packed 17-minute movement, which contains enough ideas to power a symphony at least twice as long, before being brought to a halt by the most common-or-garden of cadences. Tower – for Frank Gehry is a fanfare, and both Shanty and Dawn, composed during lockdown in 2020, are pieces that work wonders with repeated phrases. Marsey's musical narrative, in eight 'scenes', is a strangely evocative succession of musical ghosts, inspired by paintings by Salman Toor, while Leith's wacky processional, punctuated by enormous climaxes, leaves an exhilarating impression. It's altogether an impressive disc, a fine record of a productive association, though it's a shame there was no room on it for the exceptional performance of his own Tevot that Adès conducted in Bridgewater Hall too. This article includes content hosted on We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. Listen on Apple Music (above) or Spotify
