Of all the vices that human beings endure - coffee, alcohol, cigarettes - radios and electricity are not common ones. For Gerry Wells, now in his eighties, the collection and tinkering with radio apparatus has been a lifelong passion. Visiting Gerry at his home come workshop come museum, it is hard not to be facinated by this unusual preoccupation that has absorbed him for eighty years.

The Vintage Wireless & Television Museum in West Dulwich, London, Gerry’s birthplace and home, houses an impressive thirteen-hundred radio sets displayed in every room in the house including Gerry’s bedroom.

Gerry has opened his residence to a nation of radio enthusiasts since 1974 and, although he is no longer the chairperson, it remain the headquarters of the British Vintage Wireless Society.