This was from the recent BBC 2 parter "James May's Big Trouble in Model Britain", Hope you can see it on BBC America.
Very British, poignant and dryly droll as is his understated style. For example at a model train fair May states: "We've pixelated the faces of the teenagers to give them a chance of finding a girlfriend later".
Born in 1950, my childhood double figure years were dominated by Dinky toys, (the Dinky vs Corgi rivalry was rife in the school playground leading to much fisticuffs) and Airfix.
I had a weekend job at 'Forbuoys', one of a chain of small sweet, newsagents and toy shops. My wages of 2/6d 'half a crown' did not stay in my pocket but went straight on to by one of the card topped bag kits, 2 shillings with a tanner left for sweets.
My father, a disabled war veteran was somewhat alarmed at my preference for Wehrmacht models, mainly aircraft which of course hung from my room ceiling until they fell down, broke and were dispatched out of the window to their doom with a 'banger' within to help with the destruction. So to alter my 'sympathies' as he saw it, took the opportunity on a French holiday in Alsace to take me to KL Natzweller to alter my presumed fascination with the 3rd Reich. I wasn't a nascent Neo-Nazi, it was just that the German kits had more varied and interesting paint schemes than the British 'olive drab and earth'!
Fast forward a number of years and my eldest son expresses an interest in building a kit inspired by a visit to the RAF museum. Lancaster duly bought, but I'm sure the parts were smaller, harder to 'locate & cement' and more fiddly' in my 30-year-later mind anyway.....his mum helped him finish it!