Antiques Roadshow: Grandad’s punk clothes ‘too rude’ to show

Punk rockers the Sex Pistols and Antiques Roadshow, the BBC’s somewhat cosy Sunday teatime show, were never likely to be in tune with each other.

Robert Needs, who partied with the Pistols in their 1970s heyday, found that out the hard way when he tried to show his vintage punk fashion collection on the programme in Cardiff.

Now 68 and a granddad, he took along clothing he bought at the London boutique Sex.

But many items were deemed unsuitable.

“Incredibly un-PC,” is how Antiques Roadshow expert Lisa Lloyd described them on Sunday’s episode.

“They told me they couldn’t show most of them on camera,” said Robert, from Newport, who is also known as Noddy.

“Way too naughty for Roadshow viewers I suppose,” he said.

Sex was run by future fashion icon Dame Vivienne Westwood and her partner, the Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren.

It was where the band met and took their name from, and it was renowned for its outrageous designs.

“I shouldn’t really be that shocked though because a lot of Westwood’s designs were deliberately very provocative, with plenty of nudity or imagery which could be considered offensive – like Nazi swastikas, for example,” said Robert.

“But that was the whole point of it back then, they were intended to be controversial.”

Robert fondly recalled his teenage years and catching the train to London to visit Sex.

He added: “There was already a ready-made punk scene going on in south Wales at the time, except we called ourselves ‘soul boys’ – the term ‘punk’ was more something the media came up with later on.

“And it was during a visit to Sex that we met the lads from the Pistols.

“They were amazed to hear they had a lot of Welsh fans back home because they’d drawn mostly hostile reactions whilst playing in other parts of the UK.”

As a result, when Johnny Rotten and his bandmates made one of their few appearances in Wales – at Newport’s Stowaway Club in 1976 – they invited Robert backstage to hang out with them.

“They were unlike anything I’d seen or heard before, and the rubber-style pink T-shirt I wore at that Pistols concert was among the ones I took along to the Roadshow,” he said.

“It’s still in good nick too, although it would never fit me now.

“Actually, looking at how small all the shirts are, it’s a wonder I was ever able to squeeze into any of them.”

He said many of those Westwood originals have become increasingly hard to find in the intervening years, making them highly desirable for fashion and music fanatics worldwide.

“I was told the shirts, of which I’ve got about 20, could fetch around £1,000 each at auction – that’s mad, isn’t it?,” he said.

“That said, I don’t really want to sell them – I’d much rather they went on display in a gallery somewhere, as long as they were all safe and properly insured.

“It’d be lovely to think of them getting a second lease of life and others getting the same enjoyment out of looking at them as I had wearing them.”