'Give me three years and we'll be millionaires, ' Nick challenged his long-suffering family in 1980, when cash was king. 'I've got an idea that's going to take us to the top.'

Tinkering with alchemy in an old stable he shared with a Shire horse, Nick discovered how to create the most convincing antique replicas ever made. He started by selling a few of his netsukes on a market stall at the Birmingham Rag Market and met extraordinary and eccentric people, the risk-taking gamblers with fast tongues. Each had their own money-spinning ideas; you name it, he replicated it for the wheeler-dealers chasing the dream. When Nick and his crew reached the rarefied circles of the London art world he realised he could be dangerously out of his depth.

This is the unlikely and often hilarious story of where nothing but enthusiasm and self-belief can take you.