ANTIQUES Roadshow expert Judith Miller has spoken of her excitement as the BBC programme prepares to return to Glasgow for the first time in eight years.

The popular show will film at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow on Thursday October 9.

Ms Miller, originally from Galashiels, urged Scots to bring along anything they thought might be rare or valuable and stressed that bulky items, such as clocks or furniture, could be evaluated in advance if owners emailed photographs to the team.

She said: "People need to know that if they've got a big clock, or a big piece of furniture, for goodness sake send photographs of them into the Roadshow.

"All they need to do is take a digital image of whatever it is and sent it to the Roadshow team in Bristol. They'll look at it and if we think it might be interesting we'll arrange for it to be picked up and everything.

"Typically it's furniture, or it could be a painting, and it certainly could be large clocks because they're very difficult to transport. I've lost count of the number of times someone has said to me 'I brought this along but I have this really interesting chest of drawers which I couldn't fit in the car'."

Ms Miller, who specialises in ceramics, studied history and English at Edinburgh University before spending time in Hawaii and New Zealand. She returned to live in London in 1975. She said the Roadshow had always uncovered exciting items in Scotland.

She said: "We always have success on our trips to Scotland. We had it last time when a lady from Peebles arrived with a late 19th century American mechanical bank, called a 'coasting bank'. We were amazed. It's so rare it's not true. Even collectors haven't seen another one, but it had just been sitting in a cupboard in Peebles. John Bradley valued it at £20-30,000. She said what everyone says - 'of course, I'd never sell it' - but she was down Lion and Turnbull (auction house) like a rat up a drainpipe."

The antique eventually went under the hammer in Philadelphia, where the majority of collectors are based, and fetched £266,000. "When you get something that is incredibly rare and collectors who desperately want it, the price can go astronomical," added Ms Miller.