Opinion: Let’s hear it for the Detectorists and all the hobbyists!

Shining brightest of all, Detectorists was the surprise hit of the festive telly season.

The Bafta-winning BBC comedy returned for a Christmas special, five years after the last series ended, with Andy and Lance, longterm members of Danebury Metal Detecting Club, wandering across a muddy patch of land, clutching their detectors and chatting about this and that. Coming across a plastic Scooby Doo toy and an old clay cup, they remain hopeful of finding Saxon treasure.

It’s a beautifully observed, quietly profound comedy about a small club that hunts for relics of the past that lay beneath us, and meets up for tea and biscuits at the ‘finds table’ in a scout hut. At heart it’s an affectionate tribute to hobbyists. Andy is a little shy, Lance a little pompous, but rather than ridiculing them as awkward nerds, this show celebrates them as unlikely heroes.

And there is, I think, something heroic about hobbyists. A few years ago I travelled to Belgium and France with a wonderful group of people who research and tour war battlefields and cemeteries. Some were historians and teachers, some were visiting graves of great grandfathers and uncles. “I’ve found him!” they’d cry, laying poppy crosses at graves and memorials, and I found their enthusiasm infectious and moving. I spent five days in a bus with them and fell a little in love with them.

A chap who writes regular features for the T&A spends his spare time carrying out extraordinarily thorough research into local men who served in WW1, putting the pieces together for families who’ve known next to nothing about the man in uniform in a photograph passed down over the years. It is, says our writer, “a labour of love”.

Sadly, hobbies seem old-fashioned these days. Will any of today’s kids grow up to have model railways spread out across their lofts?Will they spend afternoons in sheds restoring old buses or on railway platforms waiting for a treasured locomotive to come steaming by? Or will hobbies be consigned to the virtual world?

It would be a great shame if they did, as hobbies bring people together. Acclaimed documentary A Bunch of Amateurs, about a long-running film-making club in Bradford, is a touching ode to friendship, bickering and shared enthusiasm.

A Bunch of Amateurs is an ode to a shared hobby (Image: Submitted)

“A man needs a hobby,” says my cousin, who belongs to a fishing club and often goes out to sea in a boat. He’s been fishing since he was a boy and it’s a huge part of his life.

Hobbies are good for mental focus and wellbeing too. My late aunt built a fantastic dolls house and made everything in it by hand, right down to tiny pots of jam. After having major life-saving surgery for cancer, her dolls house and her artwork was a great solace.

My mum threw herself into hobbies, from am dram to pottery classes, and even when she was ill and going blind she was still crafting. I had hobbies when I was younger, and belonged to various clubs, but life ended up getting in the way. Now I see a hobby as something for retirement.

Hobbies are simple pleasures and they can be a lifeline. The world would be a poorer place without them. So let’s hear it for the train spotters, the plane spotters, the mudlarkers, the tap dancers and the classic car enthusiasts. And the Andys and the Lances who keep churning the earth.