Fast cars, burger bars and the internet seem to be taking over the world.

As yet more of Sussex is concreted over with corporate-owned buildings staffed by nylon-uniformed workers, it's easy to ask where all the characters have gone.

Benedict le Vay has been doing just that for a decade. Pyramid-building, eating meals in a disused Victorian railway signal box and lawnmower grand prix racing are just three of the eccentricities he has uncovered in researching his book.

Benedict said: "The South of England and Sussex in particular seems to draw in unusual people. It's far enough from London to cradle that individuality.

"The whole county is full of goings-on which would seem weird elsewhere.

"Think how the Lewes bonfire parades would look to a Londoner and you realise how odd much of what we do is."

Benedict, 47, who lives near Midhurst, shares some of his subjects' quirkiness.

As honorary secretary of the Friends of the A272, it has become his mission in life to slow the long and winding road even more.

He said: "It's a quintessentially English road. It seems to go from no-where to nowhere, takes an eternity as it winds around and has some lovely scenery on the way.

"What I want to do is replace the new signs with the old finger signs you used to get. That way people will have to slow down to read them.

"I also want all the steam railways in Sussex to reopen so fewer people use the A272 and it becomes even more pleasant."

A study at Edinburgh University found one in every 10,000 people were outright eccentrics.

Benedict thinks they occasionally have some very good ideas.

He said: "Screaming Lord Sutch, who was leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party and spent a lot of his life in Sussex, was the first to suggest the minimum voting age should be 18.

"In the Sixties everyone thought it was a crazy idea. Now it is a well-established fact of political life."

Benedict's favourite character is 'Mad' Jack Fuller, an early-19th Century landlord who built a series of follies on his estate at Brightling, near Heathfield.

They included a fake church tower and a pyramid grave, in the middle of which Jack's 22-stone frame sits on a chair facing a bottle of port.

Benedict said: "He was a fascinating man. Someone who didn't just lie down and take things like too many of us do today with our desire to get ahead of the rat race.

"But what people tend to forget is that eccentrics often have a practical side.

"Mad Jack did a lot for the poor by setting up these building projects. He also supplied Eastbourne's first lifeboat, so it's not as if his ideas were always wrong.

"Luckily in this country we venerate the eccentric far more than elsewhere. In Germany or Switzerland a lot of characters would be avoided as if they were dangerous."

Despite the growing uniformity of a corporate world, eccentricity, in its milder forms, is flourishing.

Benedict said: "A few years ago real ale buffs were seen as odd. Now there are thousands. Morris dancing is popular.

"Events like the Bognor Birdman competition, where people just jump off a pier, have no meaning, but they add to the quality of life."

Benedict's book lists things to do and places to visit. Jack Fuller's follies are listed and mapped in full, as is the Alfriston Corkscrew Museum and a house above a railway tunnel at Clayton.

Benedict said: "The people who create these type of things help us keep a way of life different to the rest of the world and we owe them a great debt of gratitude.

"As the study has developed I have grown to understand more and more just how right eccentrics are. You have to live your life as you want to."

Eccentric Britain is published by Bradt Travel Guides, price £11.95.

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