Philip "Art" Peters

Art Peters runs the Danebury Metal Detecting Club with the swagger of a man who thinks he's found treasure before he's even switched his machine on. Loud, competitive and faintly ridiculous, he treats detecting as a sport to be won rather than a hobby to be enjoyed, and he clearly relishes being in charge.

Simon Farnaby plays him as pure comic ballast against the show's gentleness — all bluster, bad decisions and unearned confidence, forever the wrong kind of serious about the wrong things. He's funniest for how sincerely he believes his own hype, a small-time rival treated with far more grandeur than the stakes deserve.