People love passion, and even those with supreme indifference for ceramics could not help but fall for the passion of Antiques Roadshow expert Henry Sandon for plates and pottery. The avuncular Sandon was a fixture on the BBC staple for 40 years, and his enthusiasm for his subject matter made him hugely popular with viewers. The curator of a museum at the Royal Worcester factory, Sandon joined the Roadshow cast in 1979. His lifelong interest in ceramics stemmed from finding broken plates in his family garden, and he grew to being an encyclopedic and much-respected source of knowledge — he wrote many books on the subject. His son John, who also joined Antiques Roadshow, described his father as "like a favourite uncle, whose enthusiasm for even the humblest piece of chipped china was infectious". Sandon died on December 25, aged 95. — Agencies
