Emily Wilson: Making content with my 81 year old Dad, his vintage car collection, P100, Dodge Ram, and Mum’s brand new BMW 7 series S8E9.

Never ever judge anybody because somebody can always do something that you can't. Always. You know, on the back of the seat, you had those beads. Have you ever seen those? My dad would always be in a pickup truck. I think they liked it because it was big. So we get a ham and cheese cob, sit in the lorry, come back, and I loved it.

Welcome to my dad's car. Enjoy.

Welcome to my dad's car, a podcast discussing our personal relationship with automotive mistelf. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It can be your mums, your grands, your parents, guardians, or even a neighbour's. If it made an impression, let's talk about it. Hello.

Hello. Alright? Yeah, that's bad.

Discovery.

I am in Discovery. You know what? I thought I'm gonna sit in something interesting, and I got in the Honda Civic shuttle from 1985 and thought, this isn't that comfy, you know. I'm gonna just sit in the disco.

Okay. Yeah, thank you very much for stepping up and joining us. Yeah, John's mum's not been too well, so he's been sort of back and forth from uh London down to Bognor's Theatre.

Yeah, that doesn't sound ideal, doesn't it?

Hi Emily.

Hello, how are you?

Yeah, I'm good, thank you.

Can you hear me okay?

Yeah. Sounds good.

Good. Firstly, thank you very much for having me. And uh I'm really excited. So yeah, in your hands now.

Cool. Okay, so we're joined today by Paul Harding from Super Duper Garage. Hello. Paul has been a previous guest. I can't remember what episode it was, but quite a while away now. Yeah, yeah. You listen quite religiously to all of them, which is very kind of you. Yep. You are our deputy interrogator or something, weren't you, for my hundredth episode.

That was the one. That was the one, yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, sadly, uh John's got a bit of a family emergency, so Paul has kindly stepped up. And we're joined by Emily Wilson. I found you on Instagram, I think, interviewing your father, who is of the older generation. He's in his 80s, is that right?

Correct. So my dad was born in 1944, so he'll be 82 in December.

And he's got a car collection, which is pretty interesting, a lot of vintage stuff. Yeah. Um, he's obviously not from a digital age. No. So you're kind of trying to get his stories across to I suppose a younger generation and just a wider audience.

Exactly that.

Which is in a way similar to what we do, really, my dad's car. And I set this up as a bit of a homage to my dad. I lost my dad eight years, nine years ago. Okay. So yeah, just people sitting at home or kind of yeah, being at home. And I think it's quite nice to shout out your parents quite often, especially if you're a parent, you get quite proud of what your children do. But when you get to kind of the age when you're doing that, you then forget to sort of look back and go, Oh, my parents do really cool stuff.

Oh, yeah, I can totally see that.

And obviously, as a parent, it's quite nice when your kids are proud of what you're doing. 100%. So this is kind of a chance for the kids to be proud.

So um there's also a side that if you have in your own kids, because one of the reasons that I want to start doing some videos is so that my daughters can watch what I do, which you would have the same, that they can watch what you do and then watch what their granddad did.

A hundred percent. So I've got a little boy, and he's a year and a half old, and I haven't made him into cars or anything like that. He's just naturally saying cars about a thousand times a day. Every time he sees one, he starts screaming. He wants to sit in every single car. He tried to get into a neighbor's car the other day. Oh no. So it's obviously going through the bloodline, which I'm incredibly pleased about. But again, I haven't pushed that. That's just something he's already really into. And I think from day one, you know, having said my dad's got three daughters, we're all very, very different. That we're all brilliant in our own in our own ways. Um, but my dad would sometimes say I'm like the son that he never had, because I share the interest with him and have since I was tiny. And I think you've either got it or you haven't. And it's that sort of deep-rooted interest. But I think where, like you just said, it's so interesting, is that it comes from my dad's dad. Okay. Then it came from my dad's dad to my dad, it's come through to me, and now it's going through to my son, and it's something that we'll always share as an interest together. So I love all things motoring, and I think it's a wonderful thing to do because not only are you driving a car or loving a car, but you also learn the mechanics of a car, how to work on one. So you're using different parts of your brain. Yeah, and yeah, I don't know how anybody could not be a petrol head, to be honest.

Yeah, beats me. Um, okay, we start all of these with kind of the same question. So, what's your earliest car memory?

Okay, so I've got a few different ones from different people, if that's all right.

Oh, yeah, go for it.

One of my earliest memories with my nana, she's my mum's mum. Unfortunately, she died when I was about 10, but I have great clear memories of her, and she had sort of a 1990 Ford Fiesta 1.2 grey. But what I always found fascinating about her car was she had those, you know, on the back of the seat, she had those beads. Have you ever seen those?

Yeah, we spoke about this a lot, haven't we?

Yeah, have we?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

She had that, and I used to look at her and think, what on earth why are you doing sitting on that uncomfortable thing? But she loved it, and she also had a cover on her steering wheel, which was like this furry thing to keep like her hands warm, but it looked god-awful. But she loved that car, and we'd go into Leicester together, go to the bakery, drive back. So she used to drive me around a lot because I'd be with her, say, every Friday.

Okay.

So a lot of memories in that car. But I think on the other hand, very varied. Um, my first memory of my mum driving me would be she had two or three BMW 7 series cars in the 90s, which were very smart cars, but I hated them. I absolutely hated them because I used to be sick as a dog because they were so low down. And as a kid, I'd have a little bumper seat, and you'd see the window would be up here, and I would just be sick every single time I got into that car. And also, it was terrible in the winter. And one school run, she was driving me, and the roads were completely frossed over, and those beamers had terrible breaks, and the car sort of got away from her, and we just sort of veered off. So I remember every time it was icy, we'd probably go in dad's um P100 pickup truck. He had a couple of those, so we'd take those out. He also had um Toyota High Lux pickup trucks. So dad had the pickups, mum had the BMW, and so it was quite a contrast. But my dad would always, yeah, always be in a pickup truck.

Oh, that's yeah, some really interesting stuff there.

That's a big difference. That's a huge difference between a pickup truck and a seven series, especially back then as well.

Yeah. Yeah, massively. I think it was because of my dad's job. My mum and dad did architectural heritage, which was their business, so really big antiques, large pieces, sort of columns from Victoria Station, fireplaces from massive country estates, and they'd have a posh boy in London who could talk the talk and sell them to Ringo Star, Prince Charles, King Charles now, has some other stuff. My dad would be the one finding it all on the back of his pickup truck in Liverpool, Glasgow, Manchester, you name it. And that was their business. So yeah, that's why the different vehicles, I suppose. That's an interesting business as well, is yeah, fascinating business, which is why on my channel you'll see in the background of his workshop a lot of Victorian enamel signage, uh, Victorian chemist shop fittings. I mean, all the good stuff he says he's had to sell to make a living, but now he's older and retired, he's kept some pieces, but the ones of real value he had to sell to make money.

Has he done the typical man thing of has he got lots stashed away? Racks and shelves and all sorts?

It's actually all on show in his workshop.

Okay.

So you can't see any actual wall of the workshop, it's just covered with enamel signage, and then the chemistry shop fittings are in there, and he's got the shell fuel pumps, they're beautiful, they're incredible. He's got two or three of those. But yet again, he had to sell them to places on German Street. You know, you've got those amazing barbers and tailors, they would want all the you know fittings for the shop, so that's where dad would sort of sell them to.

Yeah, they do.

Yeah, hence the two cars. Very, very stark contrast. But my dad, as well, is it he drives what he likes, he doesn't drive anything for what people think of him. He he's one of the few people I've ever met in my life. I think Ozzy Osborne was the other one, and I adore Ozzie Osborne for the reason of they don't care what people think. You know, the nice people, my dad's kind to everybody, but if you don't like him, he isn't gonna give it a second thought. He is totally himself, and I think that's why he's eccentric and why he drives the cars he drives because he doesn't care what people think of him.

You don't get people like that much anymore.

You don't, no, you know, it's you can get the really flashy people who are only in cars because it's a Lamborghini or it's this, and they only buy that car because it's worth this much money and they want to show off to their mates, but they don't actually understand the car or they don't love the car.

No, they're not car people, no, they've got no interest. They tell you a paint code and that's it.

Exactly. Exactly. And um, I think that's the problem, not for the people who are selling the cars, right? Because great, they're selling cars, but for the people who really understand cars, it's all about the love of it. It's not about how much it's worth or how much it could be worth, it's purely what you like.

I get that. Real true car enthusiast. I know so many people that have got some serious cars locked in a garage, and their daily car will be a £1,500 per set. That's just that's totally true. It's totally true. Just because it's comfy, they like it, it's reliable. Yeah, I get moaned at all the time. I've got some nice stuff, and I end up driving discos that cost me three or four grand and they blow up and everyone laughs at me. Yeah, so I could totally sympathize with it, but the disco's really useful.

No, the disco's a quality car, they're really good when they work. But I love the defenders, I love the 90s and the 110 defenders, I think they're incredible.

Yeah, living with an old defender is hard work. I'm not that committed to them. Yeah, but the middle of a disco three, disco four is a sweet spot of a car. You can put your family in it.

It's your happy place.

Yeah, you can put loads of stuff in it, it will tow well. They're just a good all-round car. Yes, they do blow up. I've blown up three of them so far. But other than that, they're really good.

Yeah.

Um, okay, let's ask you about the beamers, I suppose. Was it your dad's choice that your mum drove a seven series? Because that's not the typical mum's car, is it?

I think they liked it because it was big. Okay. So, two children, they didn't want a four by four, you know, it's like one of the old big saloons, wasn't it? It had all the mod cons on it. They'd done quite well in business at that point. They've come from nothing. Both of my parents came from absolutely nothing. And I think it was my mum's way of going, do you know what? I've worked really hard. I'm gonna buy this car, and she absolutely loved it. Okay, but again, not in the winter.

Did you buy new?

Yeah.

Okay, your business is very successful then.

If you're buying that new, then yeah, they did very, very well. But you know, my beginnings are um I lived above their shop in Leicester City Centre on High Cross Street, not a particularly nice area of Leicester. They had the antique shop downstairs, and we lived in the flat above. My mum would tell me she'd have three pounds in the pocket to get the groceries for the week. She worked full-time, my dad worked full-time and they had me.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, my dad hasn't done anything without my mom working at the same rate as him. So I think she loved the car, she wanted it. They bought the car and she had two of them because she liked it so much. But yeah, since then she hasn't actually had any cars that um extravagant, shall I say?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that was probably her one.

So obviously, on your channel, you go through kind of your dad's collection, and it's sort of I think ranges from what 1920s, 1930s type stuff, isn't it? Generally, so you get sort of old, what we'd call old, old.

Yeah, so it starts pre-war sort of 1925 Rolls-Royce, okay, about three Austin Sevens, then it goes 30s Alvis, then it goes 50s Bentley R type, then it goes Austin Healy 3000, then 70 would be the Jag E-type, 1970.

And some of those are kind of almost delivery mileage, aren't they? They're silly mileage.

Oh, they're all incredibly low mileage. And what really annoys me is that when I put them on, people are like, You don't drive these cars, what a waste, what a waste, you know, blah blah blah. And I just thought to myself, if only you knew, one, the mileage that my dad bought it for was even lower. Secondly, he's restored them all. And thirdly, without him restoring them, they probably wouldn't be here.

Yeah, yeah.

So they all get driven.

And you can't drive everything.

You can't drive everything, but we do take them all out. We just rotate them.

Yeah.

So summer is our time of really driving the classics because weather and all that kind of thing. You know, we don't have windscreen wipers on some of them, so you're not going to drive it out in the winter.

No.

But we do take them out, and especially like the Bentley R type and the Daimler, we take to picnics, we go to Prescott Hill Climb, we'll go every year, take a picnic, sit outside, and have a lovely day out in it. And that's, you know, we enjoy doing that.

Is he owned them all along time? A summer recent purchase, or yeah.

So if I go back a bit to when I was little, the oldest cars my dad had then were actually lorries, they weren't even cars, they were like a 1933 Foden, he had a Leyland, he had an Atkinson.

Okay.

And my first memories in those would be sitting in the middle on the engine, it would be like covered, and this thing would go, I'm not joking, maximum 30, 35 miles an hour.

Yeah.

And we lived in an hour from Leicester, but we'd go all that way to get a cob. So we get a ham and cheese cob, sit in the lorry, come back, and I loved it. I absolutely loved it because I just felt like people were so interested. I think there was only one of eight in the world of that particular lorry at that time, and it was just like, wow, my dad's really cool. He's got something so different. Um, we go on adventures in there. He'd always say, Come on, Emla, we're going to Tipperary today. And I'd be like, Oh, okay. I'd get in the lorry, and Tipperary would be the little chef in Daventry, and that's what I thought Tipperary was till I got to 15 years old.

That's great, I like that.

Because he'd sing in it, it's a long way to Tipperary, and I go, It's a long way to go. And then we get there and I go, Oh, we're at Tipperary, and it was the little chef. Brilliant. But um, that was our adventures.

So am I right in thinking the commercial vehicles are from your grandfather, is that right?

Sort of. So my grandfather and his brothers had a haulage business in Leicestershire called Wilson Brothers, and they got um closed down, I think, just during the war or just after the war, when they nationalised haulage, as it were, because it used to be private, and then they nationalised it. Um, and so that business ended. And my dad, you know, he grew up around those lorries, and they all went, and he managed to find the foden lorry that my granddad had driven.

Oh wow, okay.

My granddad died when my dad was 19, so a terrible age to lose a father, and he managed to find it much, much later in life. I think it was when my dad was in his 50s, he found the lorry that my granddad had driven, bought it and had it repainted in the signwriting that they had it in originally.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so that was quite amazing.

So, what was what was the first kind of collector car you remember your dad having? Because if I guess if you grew up above the shop, this is pre-him kind of doing well for himself. Yeah. So I'm imagining he kind of just had oh yeah, the pickup truck, didn't he? The Pig 100.

Yeah, well, my dad was a secondhand car dealer to begin with, so that's why he knows cars inside and out, and he can work on any car.

Uh yeah.

But then he did the antiques, so not until because he was working so hard he didn't have the time to restore the classic. So he did that probably when he got to about his 60s. And I think well, he bought the Jag E-type quite early on, but he didn't have to restore that. That's completely original. But I think probably one of the first ones would have been the Daimler, yeah, yeah, 1920s Daimler, which is a huge car, absolutely massive car, because in the front you've got where the chauffeur would have been, yeah, you've got the separation, in the back, you've got the little telephone or intercom for the lady to talk to the driver, and on that side you've got perfume bottles, and then on the men's passenger side, you've got a cigarette lighter and um like tobacconist pieces on that side, so it's an amazing car. But that's when he would just be opening up the engine and fixing it. And I think what's so incredible is my dad bought a 1933 Alvis Vanden Plaa body, I think about four years ago. It came in a really bad nick, the engine wasn't even working, the body was completely rotten, and he'd taken out all the parts. And I came to see him in his workshop, and they're all in cardboard boxes, these parts, and they were completely rusty. The wiring on it was like it looks like a rat's nest, it was horrendous. And then you blink, and six months later, he's rebuilt the whole car by himself and it's running.

Wow, impressive.

He's even rebuilt carbettas because he can't find one, so he's made his own carbretta. I mean, he's unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.

Yeah, what a wonder. Amazing.

Yeah, yeah, it's a dying art these days. Finding people that can do that sort of skill is unreal. And I hope he wears overalls and pens at the top, and he's got a cup of tea in his left hand. Yeah, I'd be disappointed if he hasn't.

He is head-to-toe MS, but head to toe with about 5,000 holes in his jumpers. Mum buys him clothes all the time, and he looks like he's been through a hedge backwards. I mean, he's the scruffiest man you'll ever meet in the world. I went out for a pub dinner with him the other night, and I was like, Dad, come on, I'll take you out to the pub, let's go down. And he's like, All right, I'm all right. So I pick him up and I take him, and he's still got on his blue latex glove that he's been working on all day in the engines. And I was like, Dad, can you take that off? It's like we're having dinner, and he was like, I don't care. Why do you care? Why is that a problem? I'm like, but dad, you look like a weirdo. Can you just take it off? But that's just how he is. I mean, he looks very, very scruffy, but I think that's why people as well. There's something in that when we go to car shows and car meets, I'm going on a tangent now, but I remember not long ago my dad bought a about 2007 or eight Bentley Continental. Oh, okay. So he'd wanted one forever. It's his first ever what you would call then supercar. And he went and bought one. But he went to one Bentley dealership, dressed as he always dresses, in his flat cat with oil marks on it, with a cigarette on, in his MS scruffy gear, and nobody came up to him, but they ignored him pretty much, thinking, what's he doing in here? And then he thought, right, I'm not buying from you. And he had a friend who had a dealership in Leicester at Bentley at the time and he went to him. But again, it's that thing of you just never ever assume what somebody's got, or not even what they've got, what they're capable of, what skills somebody has. You just don't know, and you should never ever judge anybody because somebody can always do something that you can't. Always.

That always comes with age as well. If you've worked in sales, you learn as you get older. Years ago as an estate agent, and it taught me so much about people. So all the people that turned up in a supercar that thought they were flash, trying to pretend they're gonna buy their house outright. All of them without fail needed a mortgage, they're only gonna buy something up to about 700,000, probably a new build. Yeah, the guy that turns up in the Volvo with the MS jumper on, yeah, he's the guy that says, I'd like something with a nice garden. What's your budget? I'm as long as it's under four million, I'm all right. And you're like, Oh, okay, and you and you learn that, and you learn the people, a lot of car salespeople, they've never really been in that and they've never really understood that. Some of the people I know that sell really high-end cars, sort of classics and supercars, they know that they know that the youngster that turns up, he might be very successful in what he does, yeah, and will buy the car. You just sense it out from a person, but so many people get it wrong.

So many people get it wrong, and um, that's why I've got an absolutely hilarious story that I want to just add to this, if you don't mind.

Go for it.

So, childhood memory. I went to boarding school when I was 16 because I wanted to go, right? All my friends had gone from junior school, prep school to boarding school, and I went to a local school and I said, I want to go, all my mates are there, I want to live there, I want to have fun, da da da. So I went to boarding school and And as you can imagine, with my dad, he didn't fit the mold, right, of the other parents there. And I loved that because he's my dad. But when we turned up at school, as you can imagine, there's there's mommy, you know, there with the black lab in the back, and all the girls are called Tilly or Millie, you know, and Izzy, and everybody's like this, and like, come on, darling, get out of the car, here's your luggage, see you in six months with it, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. And my dad rocks up outside on a Sunday night. All the cars are there, they're always either Volfo estates or they'd have like Audi Q7s or something like that. They'd either be really wrecked cars, but they're incredibly possible, they don't care what they drive, or they're quite flash. So I rock up with my dad, and I'm thinking, oh my god, oh my god, I'm dying. I'm absolutely dying. What am I gonna do? This is my first day, and people will have preconceptions about me because of the car that I'm in. I'm thinking, I just want to disappear, I want to disappear. Because you could hear it coming five minutes down the road before it arrived. Like, oh, okay, so I'm already nervous. My dad's car, and still today, what my dad's daily driver is is a Dodge Ram.

Impressive.

Yeah.

Me and Andy were wrong here.

We were trying to second guess what he might drive, and it was not that. We were really way out.

Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't announced it yet on the channel because I cannot wait to ask people what they think it is, and then I'll reveal what it is. So the first one he bought was in 2005. It was all black, uh Laramie. I think it was five litre, I think. Anyway, he converted it to LPG because, as you can imagine, it was really juicy. It had a chrome grille on it, big chrome alloys wheels, whatever you want to call it. It was the noisiest thing, it was completely blacked out, had three seats in the front, had like this turbo base on it. I had two because I'm only five foot four. So I had to hold on, put my foot up to step into the thing. It's also left-hand drive. He hasn't converted them. So I'm sat where people think I'm driving, and I feel like because it's so wide, I'm gonna hit the person coming the other way. So we get to the school, as I said, all the yummy mummies are there. Izzy Tilly, hello, darling, hello. And then I get out of this car and it is just silence, silence. And everybody looks at me. I'm thinking, oh my god, oh my god, this is horrendous. But then I thought, you know what? I'm a bit different. And then everybody at school was saying, Have you seen the new girl? Did you see what her dad drove? Oh my god, that's hilarious. This big American truck. I mean, oh my god. And in a weird way, I fit it in because I was a bit different, and they thought that was quite interesting.

I can imagine the preconception of who they thought was going to get out the driver's side, like the rock or somewhere like that, a big, massive, muscly dude. The chap in his MS.

Honestly, it was awful. I went to Sainsbury's with a minute, and again, all blacked out. We parked outside, and there were these young lads, juveniles, sat outside, you know, smoking whatever 1415. And the car rolls up, the truck rolls up, and they're like, Oh my god, man, that is a sick car. Wow, look at that car, man. Look at that car. I'm thinking, I don't want to get out. I don't want to get out. Anyway, dad gets out with his flat cap and his slight limp, and they're like, Oh, what are you doing, man? Driving that car, you are too old for that car, man. Oh, granddad's car, like laughing their head off. And then I get out and they're like, Oh, he's got a young girl ting going on. And I'm thinking, I'm his daughter, please stop. Please, this is surrender.

Is he smart enough to realise this? And would he sometimes pick you up in I don't know, an e-type or dig out something fancy? Or is he just didn't care, doing a job, picking you up from school?

No, he would only pick up what he wanted to drive that day.

Okay.

So if he fancy driving in the E-type because the sun was out, he'd drive the E-type. But if it's his daily driver, he's driving that, and that's what you go in and that's it.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because occasionally I'll think, well, I'll pick my daughter up with something nice. She doesn't care less, she's no interest in cars whatsoever. But just occasionally, I think, I'll drive something a bit nicer.

Oh no.

No, you're not bothered. No.

Absolutely not. No.

Was there a moment when you clocked that he was more eccentric than other people's parents?

100%. And I think that's when I'd be invited around for tea at friends' houses. You know, when you start making friends at school and they say, Oh, do you want to come to play with so-and-so around my house? And I'd go around for dinner, and I'd sit round the table, and the parents would be talking to the children. How was your day today, darling? What did you oh, very good, very good. Times table's fabulous. And how are you? Da da da da da da. And everybody's listening to each other. Everybody's very polite. There's no swearing. And I thought, God, these are such boring people. Christ the dough.

Okay.

Why is everybody listening and talking to each other? I thought it was really, really weird. I actually felt quite uncomfortable in those situations. Because at my house, not that one way's right and one way's wrong, but it very much felt like there was a lot of noise, a lot of shouting. Mum and dad would argue a lot, but they'd laugh a huge amount. You know, my dad would sit at the end of the table with his knife and fork, banging it on the table, going, Come on, Raina, where's my tea? And she'd go, Oh John, you know, off kind of thing. And that was the relationship. And then that's just how it was. And Libby and I, my sister, would be immersed in that environment. So yeah, I knew quite early on that my parents weren't the norm. Uh, also having a much older dad than my friends, I always loved that, and I loved it because I think with age comes experience, and everything he was doing and everything he's taught me from such a young age. I've been quite lucky because he's older, he's had you know that experience to share. Um, I used I used to get really upset when people would say, Oh, is your granddad picking you up? I'd go, No, it's my dad. Yeah, but yeah, he's always been one of the kind, and I think I've always known that, but at the end of the day, he is still my dad, right? So my dad is what's normal to me, like your parents are what's normal to you. Other people can say, Oh, they're unusual. I think it's my dad, he's not unusual, it's just dad. But I know the knowledge that he's got is staggering, and I also know he's very unique in the fact that he doesn't really care what people think, he's truly authentic, he's truly himself, he doesn't put on a show, he doesn't try and change who he is for anybody or anyone, and therefore, for a long time I thought I need to start an Instagram channel with my dad about our love of cars together because if he could just share one percent of what he knows about rebuilding an engine or the history of a car, that would be incredible to somebody who is either getting into it or wants to know about it. And I just sort of felt a bit selfish in a way that I had all this knowledge, I had all this, you know, ask questions and get the answer, and people would be digging for hours on the internet. Why just go and ask my dad? And so why not share that with people? And he was very hesitant to begin with because it was like, I don't do social media, I don't do bookface, I don't do YouTube and all of this. And I said, But dad, it's all right because you don't leave the house, so it's not like you're gonna get stopped in the street because you don't leave the house. You know, he didn't even know in COVID that you had to queue up outside to go to the supermarket. I took him to Prague last year. He didn't know that you had to put your passport in a scanner. That was all new to him. It's like he lives under a little, you know, it's like a little mole that comes out from time to time.

Your dad sounds like an 80s sitcom character, just feels like you're describing a sitcom that you used to watch in '94 or something. It's exactly what he seems like. It seems like you get a very little Delboy.

Yeah, 100%. 100%. Yeah. And also a bit faulty towers type. Like when things go wrong, I'm like, how is this happening? So we had Christmas Day two years ago. We were sat in the front room, mum had cooked a lovely meal, had the family round kind of thing, and we had a chimney fire in the front room. And it's because a bird's nest had fallen down the chimney fire, and it's a Georgian house, so the chimneys are quite big and also could cause a huge amount of damage, right? If that chimney starts really raring, the house is gone in seconds. Yeah, yeah. But a man who won't be told, right? So I'm like, Dad, we need to get out, we need to get out the house. Libby's on the phone to the fire people. Six fire engines came out because we said chimney fire. I said, Dad, get out, get out, it's gonna go, it's gonna go, it's gonna go. And he's like, Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing. And he's got his head up the chimney while it's roaring with a stick poking it, mom's screaming at him, Libby's crying in the corner, being like, He's gonna die, he's gonna die. He's also quite deaf, bless him. So when you shout at him, people would think you're being really rude, but it's because he can't hear. So you're like shouting, the fire engine team come in, they actually have to escort him out of the front room because he will not leave. I know. Uh he's like, I know what I'm talking about, I know what I'm talking about. Like, I'm like, Dad, these are experts, these are people that actually deal with it, yeah. But I know, I know. And then they did the reading, you know, and they did the laser thing on the wall and they read the temperature and they said, if you hadn't rang us within 10 minutes, the house would have gone up. Wow. And he's there thinking he can solve it all, you know, with a bit of you know, water and god knows what. But that's why it's always quite comicable, but also incredibly stressful.

Yeah, I was definitely expecting you to say that he got a ladder out and he was on the roof of the hose pipe.

Wouldn't put it past him. Yeah, let's be honest. That probably would have been stage two had we let him. Yeah, 100%.

I like your daddy, it sounds funny.

He's very, very funny. A lot of people say that he reminds them of Fred Dibner. Do you remember Fred Dibner?

Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. I remember him, yeah.

Yeah, that kind of vibe. So, yeah, very, very funny. So happy to share him with everybody, to be honest. It's nice, it's really nice.

I think it's really nice. Um, and I love doing this and telling people stories and sharing those stories and finding out it's history, but it's not kind of kings and queens history, but it's sort of social history that just everyone's got these really interesting stories that actually, if it wasn't for social media, we wouldn't be sharing them. And it's not that we're poking fun at someone because they're a little bit different, we're just celebrating the fact that he's lived such an amazing life, yeah, and he's got all this knowledge, and everyone's had all these different experiences. And yes, when you look back and things, you'd go, Oh, yeah, they were driving this car and the wheel came off, and we all have a chuckle about it, or whatever's taped was stuck on repeat. Yeah, but yeah, it's also nice for kind of others to listen in to go, Oh yeah, my childhood was like that, or so and so was like this. Absolutely, it stops them being forgotten.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I guess, yeah, what's the future for the channel? And I suppose what's the future for colour the cars?

Yeah.

Because looking at it, it reminds me of a museum. It looks like it should should be something that should be opened up as a museum. I don't know how feasible that is.

But well, it's not feasible because it's my dad's workshop. So it's where he lives. The first thing he did when he bought that house was build that workshop, um, and he lives in there. Okay. Hence the phone that goes to the house, you know, ringing mom for a bacon sandwich, which he rarely gets because sometimes he can be incredibly rude and she'll ignore him. But that's because of the antiques, right? The antique heritage, his old business. That's why people think it's a museum because it looks like that in terms of like if you went to Bewley or or what have you.

Is your mum a similar similar age or is there quite an age gap?

No, there's an age gap. So my mum's about 12 or 13 years younger than my dad. So she's mum will be 70 next year.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So cut a long story short, the future of the channel. So all of this has been quite odd, actually, to be completely honest. So, like I've just spoken to you about, I always knew that he was very interesting, and I always knew that I should share this. But the first video I did, you've probably seen it. It's not professional, it's not polished, we don't know what we're doing, we still don't know what we're doing. And we just took a camera out, I put it online the morning after I woke up and it had something like 10,000 views in one night. Wow. I thought, what's we gone on here? It's been like a bot all night. Has my account been hacked? But it was real, and I thought, oh goodness me, I'd better continue with this, right? Yeah, because if people are interested, let's do as much as we can. And so I've done that, and I think I've got nearly 40,000 followers in three weeks on Instagram.

Yeah, that's Matt. When did you start?

Three and a half weeks ago.

Have you got any history of kind of marketing or media or anything like that?

Never, I mean, I love that you've asked me that, Andy, because I am the most unpolished social media person you could ever come across.

Because that's my job, and uh yeah, you're killing it by the looks of things.

I was gonna say, how have you managed that? That's almost unheard of in a current climate to get that amount in three weeks is crazy.

Well, I think it's because of him.

Yeah.

Genuinely. I think what people are saying is this is a breath of fresh air, this isn't polished, this isn't, you know, what's the word?

He's got some likeness to Clarkson in a way, hasn't he? Yeah. Like he tells it as it is, and yeah, he doesn't care.

Yeah, we love Jeremy Clarkson. And so again, just saying it how it is. And I think people are so sick of sort of being thrown things at them at social media of buy this or do this or this is this, and this is so polished, and I'm so and so, and watch me, watch me. It's just two real people, father and daughter, talking about what they love without any expectations, without any expectations of their audience. And we also just like to have a laugh, and we laugh every day, all day. And I think that's why it's just gone crazy, is because people are like, Hold on a minute. This is a guy who's got a massive collection of cars, he's got a daughter who's interested in cars, and he's not what we think people with collections of cars are like, he's not well spoken, he's not flash, so therefore, people are like, Oh, this is a bit unusual. And so, therefore, I think that's why people are interested, is because we're just real, we're just honest, real people.

It's what YouTube was 15 years ago.

Is it right? Okay, yeah.