Collection is legend-DAIRY

PENSIONER HAS MORE THAN 26,000 MILK BOTTLES IN SELF-MADE MUSEUM

- CHARLIE FENTON Features Writer

A MIDLAND man who owns the UK's largest milk bottle collection has revealed he "hates" milk and hasn't drunk a glass in 65 years.

Steve Wheeler, 76, has collected over 26,000 bottles since the 1980s and travels all across the UK to find them.

Around 23,000 bottles are from the UK, which Steve says is around 20% of the total amount of different types which have ever been manufactured in Britain.

He also has 3,000 bottles from overseas - that includes at least one from every European country.

He believes his prized collection could be worth up to £250,000 but to him it is "priceless" - it also weighs up to 16 tonnes.

The collector, from Malvern, stores the bottles in a self-made 1,440 square foot museum in his back garden - this also includes three 18ft by 16ft storage sheds which hold the 10,000 that aren't on show.

Steve began collecting began 40 years ago, when he came across a milk bottle while walking in the Brecon Beacons, in Wales.

He said: "I was walking in the Brecon Beacons in the mid 80s and I found a bottle on the walk and I took an interest to it.

"When I got home, I found out that the dairy where the milk was produced was closing and it all grew from there."

But surprisingly, Steve has revealed how he hasn't drunk glass of milk since he was a schoolboy.