TV presenter Henry Cole on his ‘shed spread’ which includes motorcycles, tractors, petrol pumps and a half-built helicopter

TV presenter and motorcycle enthusiast Henry Cole has built up a cult following rummaging around in people’s sheds over the years.

Now, he admits to having amassed up to 20 of his own sheds over the years filled with everything from motorbikes and petrol pumps to a half-built helicopter and even tractors.

Cole, 61, who is Eton educated and was there at the same time as former prime minister Boris Johnson, admits he is a motorcyclist “first and foremost” – or, as he quips, “should we call it a biker?” – but having fronted TV series Shed And Buried alongside mechanic Fuzz Townshend, engineering genius Allen Millyard and ace restorer Guy “Skid” Willison, work has spilled over into his own life resulting in a collection of sheds.

His great-great uncle was former UK prime minister William Ewart Gladstone, but he attributes his early love of sheds to his “eccentric” great uncle Dick “Red­beard” Gladstone, who he used to go and stay with.

“I was about eight and I’d go and play in the garden, because kids were seen and not heard in those days,” he told PA Real Life.

“And then he came out and he said, ‘Henry, do you like motorbikes? Why don’t you come in my shed and I’ll show you some?’

“So we went into the shed, and I’ll never forget it.

“There were, I don’t know, 20 British motorcycles, probably of all different descriptions.

“I don’t remember exactly what they were, but what happened to me walking into that shed was a feeling of serenity.

“Even at the age of eight, there was sort of this feeling of escapism and making a camp and having my own world that even my parents couldn’t dictate because I was in my own little shed.”

Admittedly, a handful of the sheds he owns today are for work purposes, as his TV production company HCA Entertainment makes programmes like the Channel 4 daytime series Find It, Fix It, Flog It, ITV’s The Motorbike Show, Junk and Disorderly on Blaze, and of course, Shed And Buried, which streams on discovery+, with a new series launching later this year on Quest.

Popular TV show Shed and Buried, now in its seventh series, has seen Cole, who lives on a farm in the Cotswolds in Oxfordshire, uncover around 237 bits of treasure.

These include vintage cars, boats, tractors, and a tank as the team rummage through sheds all over the country.

“Many people come to your front door, postman, plumbers, your partner’s friend or whatever, and they all come into the kitchen for a cup of tea or whatever,” he says.

“It is, not unannounced, but it’s not really that private. But actually, with sheds, you’ve got to be invited in.

“Consequently I found, even from a very early age, that sheds say everything about you, so they leave the soul bare.

“And if you’re inviting someone into your shed, your own personal world, whether you’ve got bikes in there, cars in there, you paint, you do up furniture, whatever it may be, it’s a major part of you and your spiritual fulfilment that lives in a shed.”

He has numerous sheds that are used for filming, but his “shed spread” includes six that he says he “hoards stuff in”, including one with US cars, he has a “penchant for American cars, old muscle cars”, like a 1972 Corvette, a 1946 rat rod pickup, and more.

Another shed is filled with tractors, which he says are “another love” of his, and he has four or five tractors.

He also has a shed full of 1970s and 80s super bikes, and another one full of British bikes, explaining he has pre-war British bikes and post-war bikes made by Norton and Triumph.

Rounding off his bike sheds is one filled with drag bikes, and then he has a shed with two helicopters in it, one which is being restored as part of Shed and Buried.

“Seven days a week, 24 hours a day, I live for it,” he enthuses.

“I’ve probably been in over 1000 sheds of other people’s.

“Firstly, can I just say it that is a privilege because of what we’re talking about, about being let in (to someone’s shed),” he says.

“Some people won’t let a camera crew, quite rightly, into their sheds. But others, obviously, would like us to see their collection.”

“I’ve had some funny things over the years… Down in Brighton, I was in a shed, right? And the guy goes, ‘Oh, Henry, you seem a nice guy. You want to come and have a look in my other shed. Don’t bring the cameras’.

“And I thought, ‘What the heck’s he got in there?’ I said, ‘Yeah, okay, man, I’d love to’. He goes, ‘Well, come on then’. And he opens the door. I walk in, there are 200 Daleks.”

Daleks are the hostile alien machine-organisms the Time Lord has battled over the years in Doctor Who.

Cole says the Dalek collection included life size ones, ones from the set, tiny remote control ones and more.

“He was a Doctor Who fanatic and obsessed by Daleks. So, you know, that really sums it up. You think you’ve seen everything in sheds? You haven’t. You walk into a shed and a guy’s got 15 helicopters or a guy’s got 300 bikes.”

Over the years he has seen sheds of all shapes and sizes, clean and organised, as well as chaotic sheds.

“(There are) sheds where you could basically lick the floor, where they’re absolutely immaculate. These are the sheds we don’t like. I say we don’t like, we love them, but as a show, we don’t like going into those because they’re kind of boring to look at,” he muses.

“Or you get sheds where people have really, they don’t know what’s actually in the back of their sheds.”

He thinks we’re a nation of ‘shedders’ but it’s a tag to be proud of.

“I think we share that with Australians, New Zealand, Americans, Canadians… Germans, the French, they love a shed,” he says.

“So I think it’s not just us as a nation who love sheds.

“I think it’s a multinational disease.

“It doesn’t matter where you live, who you are, you’ve got a shed and what goes on in that shed is part of you.”