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As Channel 4 aired footage of bikini-clad women and bronzed men gathered around a glitzy Naples swimming pool soaking up the beating-hot sun, along strode Alex Bass.
Bewildered glances flashed the 24-year-old’s way, for he appeared to have been plucked from 1930s London and dropped onto the set of the First Dates Hotel. With a copy of Max Hastings’ Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy nestled under his arm, he was dressed in a beige blazer, blue shirt, burgundy cravat and a feather-pinned fedora hat.
“You must be hot,” a vest-wearing bachelor remarked.
“Sort of.”
“Why don’t you take your blazer off?”
“I refuse.”
The 45 minutes that followed were filled with the romantic hopefuls baring their souls and the usual telegraphed jokes. But Alex was an exception. Instead, he labelled himself quintessentially British, admitted he rarely sees “pretty young women” at his workplace, an antiques store near Faversham, and was compared to a 75-year-old.
I’d arranged to meet him in Canterbury’s Dane John Gardens, a short walk from his Old Dover Road home, which he calls Downtown Shabby. I find him perched on the edge of a pigeon-soiled bench with his head buried in Posh Boys: How English Public Schools Ruin Britain.
The antiques dealer, who spends most of his evenings working in The White Horse Inn in Chilham, was appearing on the Channel 4 programme to find love. Having struggled to find a partner for several years, a couple of regulars at the village tavern decided to enter him for a place on the show on a particularly bleak Valentine’s Day evening.
“Weird stuff happens to me. I just stumble through life; it’s like being in the maze in Takeshi’s Castle,” he says cheerfully.
“They sent a 15-second video of me holding plates, with some middle-aged woman asking, ‘What do you look for in a woman?’ And I went, ‘I dunno, just to be a woman, I suppose. Can I take my plates out now?’ I’d never seen the show before in my life.”
Alex, now 26, is in similar clothes to those he wore in Italy – but, on this occasion, he has a featherless hat. He started wearing jackets on a daily basis at the age of 11, as, being “between husky and fat”, he decided they were more flattering than other forms of attire. This earned the former Abbey School pupil the nickname Dickinson’s Real Deal.
“I always dress pretty poncily,” he smiles, his skin growing a brighter shade of pink under the afternoon sun.
“I refuse to change. The cravats were after someone gave me a box of them in the antiques shop. All my clothes come from storage units. Nothing fits; it’s all a mess.
“When I do buy clothes, I can’t be trusted. There’s a lovely vintage place in Canterbury and the last time I was there, I bought an electric-blue suit – that’s what I wear when I go on nights out in Canterbury.
“No one’s normal, but I’m less normal than most. I was on holiday once and bumped into Michael Portillo. I realised then that I got a lot of my looks from him.”
During his time at school, Alex was a subscriber to five classic-car magazines and was intrigued by objects of virtu.
"Weird stuff happens to me. I just stumble through life; it’s like being in the maze in Takeshi’s Castle..."
A 1951 television he bought at the age of nine sits in the beatnik-themed room of his house, which acts as a menagerie to the flags, record players and wartime memorabilia he has agglomerated.
Despite this, he paid little attention to life after sixth form until he had a frank discussion with his father two weeks before he left school.
Without warning, his dad, who had plied his trade in the city of London, told the then 17-year-old: “I didn’t get any nepotism when I was growing up, so you won’t. What are you going to do with your life?”
As he was talking, Storage Wars susurrated in the background.
“So, I said I’d do that,” Alex recalls. “I’ve been doing it ever since and I haven’t quite gone bust.”
Using inheritance money from his grandmother, he purchased the contents of two abandoned self-storage units (sight unseen) and, with the help of his parents, he loaded the goods into a Renault Sprinter.
He stored the items in a rented barn, before selling them on eBay or to local antiques dealers, and continued to do this for the next 12 months until he joined a group of traders in renting Wildwinds Antiques in Teynham. It’s at the shop where he now sells his most valuable items.
“A lot of years, the business’ outgoings have been the same as the incomings,” he stresses.
“I buy storage units. That’s my main thing; it’s really fun. You sell all the good stuff and then you’re left with urine-stained mattresses and sofas.
“When I was 17, people would pay me a 10th of an item’s value, because they’d been in the business longer than I’d been alive. I was fine with that up until I realised they were laughing behind my back.
“The best stuff I found includes a photograph of Robert Louis Stephenson, who wrote Treasure Island. I think that went for about £1,200 at auction. I think I still also hold the record for the most expensive Military Cross ever sold at auction – that may have been £2,300.”
In between his jobs, the eccentric fills his time reading, playing first-person shooter video games on his Xbox and managing his bulging portfolio of Bulgarian properties.
“When I found out you could buy a house in Bulgaria – the greatest country on earth – for two grand, I did it that day, because that’s what you do. I’m up to seven now – but some of them have fallen down.”
By the end of the episode of First Dates Hotel, Alex appeared to have found a potential suitor in Canterbury opera singer Hannah. Following their meal together, the pair revealed that they would like to see each other again.
However, more than a year on from his stint on the programme, he says he is now single.
“Everything I do in my life is about getting anecdotes. I’ve done loads of stupid things. The way everyone should live their life is if a stupid idea comes into your head, do it immediately,” he opines.
“You should do anything, any opportunity that comes, there’s no point doing anything else.”
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