AFOL – Adult Fan Of Lego – Simon Pickard, who is staging an exhibition in Wellington next week, tells Mark Pritchett about his hobby

LEGO enthusiast Simon Pickard, who lives near Wellington, is preparing for his first solo exhibition – set to be held in the town this week.

The 38-year-old master builder, known as an Adult Fan of Lego (AFOL), keeps his creations in five sheds in his garden and says he owns more than two million bricks.

He said: “I have loved Lego since I was a child when my father, David, who was in the army, brought the bricks home after being away.”

His first project, a model depicting the Battle of Thermopylae, used at least 50,000 pieces of Lego and took two years to build. Now, he says, he could make the same 5ft wide, 2 1/2ft deep, 3ft high model in about two months.

One of his latest creations is the Monaco F1 hairpin, which he is hoping to exhibit in the principality. Simon said: “It’s well known in the fan-build community that you can build roads using bricks on their sides but obviously that’s all very rigid because Lego is rectangular.

“I managed to develop a way of creating the same effect but going in a curve. With my latest model, the curve goes uphill – it has taken a long time to devise.”

Many modellers have a theme, focusing on cars, space and so on, but Simon creates all sorts of models, although he loves history and is a member of the Brick in the Past group.

That has members all over the country, who agree on a theme and swap photos as they make parts of the model, which is then assembled at the Great Western Brick Show held at the Steam Museum in Swindon.

The 2014 Lego movie attracted more people to the hobby and that two-day show, started 15 years ago, attracts 4,000 visitors each day and is attended by 80-100 exhibitors.

Simon is trained in childcare but Lego is his full-time occupation, making a living contributing to hobby magazines and through commissions – once he was asked to create a life-sized cat. He is currently involved with a project to make a 300,000-piece model of Exeter Cathedral from Lego bricks.

Simon has also passed on the love of Lego to his five sons – but not his wife Sophie – and, remarkably, he models virtually one-handed. He has almost no use of his left hand after suffering paralysis in his wrist at the age of 15 which gradually became worse.

Simon added: “Lego’s about what you put into it. I played a lot of games with Lego when I was younger. As I’ve become older it has become much more of a creative medium for me.”

His exhibition is at Wellington Baptist Church in South Street on Saturday, August 18, from 11am-5pm. Entry is £3 (under-twos free). Visitors will be able to meet Simon, new and old Lego sets will be for sale, and a build and play zone will be available.