COLLECTING things is a peculiarly capitalist activity.

The people in the back streets of New Delhi and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro have more important things to do. Staying alive would be pretty high on their list, if they had time to make lists.

In the rich West we also live hand to mouth but with the intermediary of a pleasantly-designed Ikea fork.

This gives us the leisure and spare dosh to collect things.

I have confessed to being a recovering philatelist. My stamp albums are gathering dust and, I like to think, value, in a cupboard somewhere.

What started me off, aged five, were the little penny packets of Mixed Definitives or Flowers from the Colonies that hung temptingly on the back of the Post Office door.

Go on, Mum. Just one packet.

Stamp collectors who have given up collecting stamps are, like alcoholics, philatelists for the rest of their lives, like it or not.

Those albums are like the bottle of whiskey the alcoholic keeps in a bottom drawer to prove he is strong-willed enough to resist temptation and never touch another drop.

I’m not sure I am strong-willed enough to go to that cupboard, take out my stamps and put them back without developing a twitch and an urge to rush to the nearest Stanley Gibbons catalogue.

Aw, come on, what harm could just one lick of a stamp hinge do?

I have confessed also to being unable to resist picking up conkers and admiring their wonderful, shiny, mahogany patterns at this time of year.

I have no idea how they end up in my pocket. There is no reason why I should be wondering if I can find an auger, a bottle of vinegar and a bootlace of the right length in a hurry.

The Victorians are supposed to have made collecting things popular.

They were fond of rocks, fossils, butterflies and beetles. They liked stuffing animals, the rarer the better.

Oddly, the rarest of the rare, the last complete stuffed dodo, was ordered to be burned by the curator of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum because it had got a bit tatty.

That’s like melting down Tutankhamun’s death mask to make bling for a Beckham birthday.

Taxidermy became very profitable during Victoria’s reign, though not hugely profitable for the millions of animals, birds and fish that got stuffed.

As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to stuff a real fossil, butterfly or dodo into a packet of tea, cigarettes or cornflakes.