I can still remember the very first piece I bought when I started collecting: a wrought-iron zigzag candlestick that I picked up at Battersea car boot for three quid. Fourteen years on, I now have a sprawling collection of 70 (and counting) candlesticks and candelabras. There is nothing on this Earth that I find more thrilling than rooting around an antiques market searching for my next piece of treasure.

I might convince myself it’s the last thing I will ever buy, but let me tell you, collecting is highly addictive. Luckily, there are worse vices than amassing candlesticks (or ornamental cats, another obsession of mine), and I’m yet to meet a fellow collector that has managed to kick the habit, or ever wanted to for that matter. While I may have been the annoying guy at Kempton Park Racecourse’s antiques market – the one that raced around with a head torch at dawn and darted in and out of the backs of dealers’ vans before they’d had a chance to unload their wares – being a somewhat excitable collector was the very thing that kickstarted my interiors career.

It was by mistake that I became a design dealer. One day, I could hardly open my front door for the boxes spilling over with market finds: I realised that I’d have to start selling off some of my beloved collections. Fashion designer doesn’t see herself as a collector, but after delving through her fabulous collection of 20th- and 21st-century chairs, I’d beg to differ.

“I’ve always been interested.