Parenting & Family Quote by Michael Aspel

Aspel’s line is doing that very British trick of sounding like a mild anecdote while sneaking in a cultural diagnosis. He starts with a charming origin story - a child collector at four - because innocence is the strongest possible alibi. The “experts” didn’t become experts by chasing status; they were supposedly preloaded with “genuine interest,” a kind of pure, pre-commercial curiosity. That setup isn’t neutral. It’s a contrast machine, engineered to make the present look compromised.

Then comes the pivot: “today’s kids are much more materialistic.” It’s less a data claim than a generational mood, the familiar media lament that childhood has been colonized by money. Aspel’s rhetorical hedge (“there’s a danger, I suppose”) lets him indict without sounding like a scold; the softness is part of the persuasion. He’s performing reasonableness while inviting the audience to share the suspicion.

“Make dosh” is key. It’s colloquial, almost cheeky, and it recasts a potentially elite activity (collecting, expertise, taste) as something threatened by street-level hustle. Subtext: the hobby becomes a marketplace, and the kid becomes a small entrepreneur. In the background is a late-20th/early-21st-century shift where collectibles, antiques, and even fandom get financialized - eBay culture, flipping, “investment pieces,” the idea that everything can be monetized.

Aspel isn’t just mourning kids; he’s defending a certain notion of cultural value: that the best relationships to objects are slow, nerdy, and non-transactional. The anxiety is that when profit becomes the point, expertise turns into a sales pitch and taste into a strategy.