May I have a word about… rummaging around on the Antiques Roadshow | Jonathan Bouquet

We know the show turns up gems from the house and garden - but don't forget the linguistic ones too

If there is a television equivalent of comfort food, then surely it has to be the BBC's Antiques Roadshow. Presenter Fiona Bruce is a perpetual ray of sunshine, the experts are to a man and woman warm hearted and the people clutching their possessions always radiate hope that they are offering up a potential treasure for evaluation.

But last Sunday's edition offered up a gem of an altogether different kind when a woman appeared with some porcelain that she said she had discovered when she had been having a furtle in her attic. Even though I had never heard it before, it was such an evocative word that I knew exactly what she meant - she'd been having a good old rummage in the hope of turning up an overlooked masterpiece. A quick online search for furtle's meaning proved that my surmise was correct.