Millions of viewers will today watch Cumbrian antiques expert Paul Laidlaw snap up a camera for £60 - and see it sell for £20,000.

The whopping £19,940 profit goes to Children In Need.

Paul, of Carlisle-based Laidlaw Auctioneers and Valuers, is a regular on BBC1's Antiques Road Trip . The new series began on Monday.

All week viewers have watched Paul and fellow expert Kate Bliss travelling the country buying antiques and selling them at auction.

Today's installment sees Paul buy a camera at a house clearance centre in Margate, Kent, for £60. The camera is then sold at auction in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, for £20,000.

This represents a 33,233 per cent profit and smashes the Antiques Road Trip record, in the programme's 15th series.

The camera is an Adolphe Bertsch Chambre Automatique sub-miniature, made in 1861, in its original case with accessories. This was one of the first automatic cameras.

Paul told The Cumberland News : "It was a dead obscure-looking piece of kit. It looks like something you'd see in a laboratory. It was in a cabinet surrounded by lots of random stuff. You could see why people have walked past it.

"I recognised it as a high-quality 19th-century instrument. At the time I suggested it was an extremely early sub-miniature camera. What I didn’t realise is that it’s considered the first sub-miniature camera.

"Post filming I did a little research and realised I’d bought something spectacularly rare. I couldn’t find records of any examples having been sold. I didn’t know whether it would sell for £2,000 or £100,000, though I considered either to be possible.

"At auction there were five phone bidders. It started at £1,000 and went up in £1,000 bids. It just kept on going. I was a nervous wreck. It stopped at £20,000."

The buyer was a collector in Switzerland. Viewers will see Paul fighting back tears when the hammer falls. "I got a wee bit emotional. What melted me was the money going to Children In Need, as all profits do on Antiques Road Trip .

"The BBC went back to interview the guy who sold me the camera. It had a £75 price tag and I got him down to £60. He was lovely. He was pleased that the profit had gone to Children In Need."

Already the most successful expert on Antiques Road Trip , Paul is understandably delighted by his latest triumph. "You dream of glory. Everybody in the antiques game - we're all treasure hunters. Everybody wants to find that diamond in a box of bric-a-brac."

Paul's record-breaking find can be seen on BBC1 today at 4.30pm, then on BBC iPlayer.