40-year obsession ends with bizarre house clearance

Michael Bennett-Levy reaches in and removes the box lid. Inside is, indeed, assorted spare bones – there's a femur which, he gladly demonstrates, fits perfectly into the hip joint, there's the skeleton of a hand and various lengths of aged brown bone.

"From a medical department," he shrugs, as if it's exactly what you'd expect to find in any cupboard at home. "Not very interesting really."

No, not when there are all kinds of other oddities crammed inside the various outbuildings, cellars and workrooms in his 15th century fortified tower home, Monkton House near Musselburgh.

Such as the Mig fighter pilot's pressurised suit, various Samurai helmets, a shark's jaw suspended in a jar of formaldehyde, which he has to regularly top up with extra liquid, and possibly the oldest fruit machine imaginable. Then, there is the biggest collection of exceedingly rare pre-war televisions in the land, 24 of them, most in fine working condition, and even wired to receive digital signals.

Sifting through it all reveals one oddity after another... and what he uncovers sometimes even surprises the man who acquired it all.

There have been a lot of surprises in the past few weeks. For after a brush with death and a life changing decision to quit Scotland for France, early technology restorer and dealer Bennett-Levy, 62, is now combing through every box in every cupboard in every one of his several storage rooms – and even his pigshed. That means individually cataloguing tens of thousands of items to package up and send off to auction.

Quite what the nice people at Bonhams in London will make of various boxes containing dozens of 100-year-old-plus Edison wax cylinder records – a must-have for your phonograph, of which he has several should you require one – an early example of a Geiger counter and numerous grandfather clocks is anyone's guess. Maybe they'll prefer the scores of microscopes, a 1947 electric hot water bottle that looks like a health and safety inspector's worst nightmare or that 1944 Cruise missile.

What's certain is that the collection's sale will span two days at the end of September, with 600 lots, some containing as many as 200 individual items.

It's a mindboggling house clearance on a scale that almost defies belief. And although it's the demise of a 40-year near obsession with buying the kind of items our great-grandparents happily chucked on the tip, Bennett-Levy laughs off suggestions that he might be just a tiny bit sad to see it go.

"Good riddance to it all!," he belly laughs. "Glad to see the back of it. I'm going to go to France and start all over again. They have old things in France too...."

Bennett-Levy turns out to be as curious as some of the bizarre items that clog every spare space in the East Lothian property he bought around 30 years ago in a state of near ruin – complete with mummified cat to ward off witches – now restored, and like most of its weird and wonderful contents, up for sale, for a cool 1.4m.

For a start, he arrives at the entrance to his chaotic workshop in the cellars and gleefully announces he's recently been 'filleted'.

He twists his head to one side to reveal an impressive scar that follows the line of his jaw and curves towards his cheek. It's the result of a fairly recent operation to remove a potentially fatal secondary melanoma – one that doctors had feared may have ended his collecting days for good.

"But I got a 'get out of jail' card," he laughs. "The whole experience energised me, besides, there are worse things in life than cancer. The doctor said I was done for, I had cancer. After thinking about it for a few days I was fine. I'm not frightened of death."

He's certainly a big deal for the medical staff who were treating him. They told him he must have had an exceptional immune reaction which eliminated the primary cancer. The secondary cancer was successfully dealt with – and although Bennett-Levy knows better than anyone that he's now at a high risk of a recurrence, it's not likely to faze him.

Besides, there's that massive collection of antique bits and bobs, collectibles and oddities to be getting on with...

It transpires one pantech stuffed with hundreds of items has already headed south and at least one other will be employed to transport the rest of Bennett-Levy's bizarre collection in the next week or so. It's a do-it-yourself flitting, he explains, after he realised employing a removal company would cost more than 10,000.

What it might fetch when it goes under the hammer, he says he can't begin to imagine. "I've no idea either what I've spent on all this stuff," he shrugs. "I burn my accounts at the end of the year because I don't want to be reminded. You see, I've had plenty of mistakes – they are the ones in the pig shed!"

The pre-war television sets alone – bulky lumps of furniture sometimes incorporating gramophone, radio sets and the tiniest of TV screens – are almost certainly going to attract international interest.

He dodges past a huge Pye ATV television camera dating from 1955 which he recalls he bought for around 2300, and fires up a relatively petite 1938 set designed by John Logie Baird. The screen slowly brightens to reveal, of all things, Angela Rippon on BBC1's Cash in the Attic, in which people raid their homes for items to sell at auction.

There's more to Bennett-Levy, however, than simply buying and selling – as his three packed workshops suggest, he also embarks on painstaking restoration.

"These are extraordinary, complex pieces of machinery," he enthuses. "There's 2500 volts in the back of that – don't stick your hand in or you'll die.

"You know these things are less common than Stradivarius violins. There's around 600 Stradivarius and about 500 pre-war televisions. And more than 20 of them are here."

Pick of them has to be a top of the range Logie Baird 1937 monster made the year after television transmissions began, which opens from the top to reveal a 15in screen facing skywards to reflect off a mirror set into the lid. It comes with a gramophone, wireless and a drinks cabinet stocked with glasses and even a 1927 bottle of champagne.

He paid around 1000 for it. What it will make when it goes under the hammer, who knows. Who will buy it – well, points out Bennett-Levy, his previous customers have included museums.

All that's clear is that Bennett-Levy is 100 per cent sure it won't be joining him and wife Zoe as they embark on a new life restoring a medieval French mansion that will be their next home.

"I don't want any of it back," he insists. All I want is for the next generation to see things like this because I recognised their value.

"These things aren't junk, they are part of modern history."

A LIFE ON SCREEN

MICHAEL BENNETT-LEVY began collecting early technology after taking over a record stall at an antiques market in St Stephen Street in the early 1970s.

He had arrived in Edinburgh from London to study science and then economics, but the technology of early television was already in his blood.

His grandfather was Dr Leonard Levy, whose research into phosphors helped Britain lead the world in television, radar and x-ray technology in the early 20th century.

The outbreak of Second World War, however, led to him being forced to hand over all his patents – potentially worth millions – to America to help pay for the war.

Michael Bennett-Levy's collection will go on sale at Bonhams in London on 30 September.