Antiques Roadshow expert drank 150-year-old urine thinking it was port

An Antiques Roadshow presenter quaffed 150-year-old urine thinking it was port.

Glass specialist Andy McConnell inspected a sealed bottle from the 19th century on the BBC show, and decided to sample its mystery contents in front of an expectant audience.

Presenter Fiona Bruce had unfortunate news for McConnell, telling him that expert analysis of the antique bottle's "very brown" liquid revealed it to be an unwanted vintage.

The glassware antiquarian sipped the well-aged urine when valuing a bottle in Trelissick, Cornwall, for a 2016 programme, after the item was found buried under the threshold of a local man's house.

McConnell used a syringe to transfer a sample from the bottle to a tumbler, and sipped at the mystery beverage.

"It's very brown," he told the audience at the time. "I think it's port. It's port or red wine, or it's full of rusty old nails and that's rust."

Mmmmm... tasty. Photo / BBC

In a programme broadcast on Sunday, Fiona Bruce delivered bad news to the specialist, after experts at Loughborough University had analysed the contents of the bottle.

The Question Time host announced that the liquid was antique "wee" mixed in the mid 19th century to ward off evil

She said: "You thought it might be port or wine. That would have been nice. Inside were these brass pins.

"The liquid: urine, a tiny bit of alcohol, and one human hair."

The bottle also contained a small shelled creature, in what Bruce announced was a measure to keep evil away.

She said: "What this was was not a bottle of port or wine, but a witch's bottle, buried in the house as a talisman."

McConnell said well-wishers had previously enquired about his health after he quaffed the mystery liquid in 2016, and conceded he did it because: "I was always the naughty boy at school . It was too good an opportunity to miss."