One of my favourite childhood books was Professor Branestawm. Its eponymous hero is a querulous inventor, with a multitude of spectacles perched on his vast forehead, who spends his days creating fantastical machines, most of which don't work properly, or catch the user unawares. He's a bit absent-minded, adorable and above all, eccentric. Tim Hunkin, the creator of the Under the Pier show in Southwold, Suffolk is as close as you'll ever get to a real-life Branestawm. He's softly spoken and has a playful air of mischief about him; his shoulders are ever so slightly hunched and I suspect he spends much of his time giggling. I adore him from the off. Tim's passion is coin-operated machines, but coin-operated machines the like of which you have never seen.

Amusement arcades have been a staple of seaside entertainment for more than a century. The Victorian Mutoscope and its titillating What the Butler Saw flicker book provided many with their first experience of a moving picture, in the 1930s pinball machines were a real innovation, and in the 1970s, Space Invader games machines were at the cutting edge of the computer revolution.

But arcades became a bit "samey" and so Hunkin, with his boundless imagination and a deep hankering to entertain, decided to create some machines of his own. Working models – coin-operated automatons that told cautionary tales – used to be very popular and Hunkin, as a boy, loved Blackpool Tower's collection of old John Dennison machines.

"They're slightly macabre and cautionary, but funny nonetheless. There's a machine called Is Marriage a Failure?, in which a man is shown looking after babies and sewing while all the time being beaten over the head with a rolling pin by his wife. They slipped from fashion and have been replaced with fruit machines and crane grab booths."

Tim made his first machine in 1975 – it was called The Birth of Venus and, for 2p, you could watch as a water-operated Raquel Welch emerged from a bathtub.

"I started off using cardboard and Sellotape," he tells me, as we sit on his Quickfitcorrect creation from 2003 – it's a large massage table covered in baby-blue towelling that promises "No embarrassing perspiration, no revolting display of sinews and no obnoxious panting" – "but the batteries kept dying. So I switched to coin operation. It's more reliable."

In the 1980s, he collaborated with the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre in Covent Garden, making machines that stood outside the museum to draw people in. But it was his Instant Eclipse machine, an oval cupboard that you shut yourself into, that changed things forever.

"I stood it outside my house," he says, ruefully, "but the neighbours complained. So I asked Chris Iredale, owner of Southwold Pier, whether I could put it outside the pier cafe. He said yes, but the salt air kept breaking it."

Iredale clearly recognised Tim's peculiar genius, and when he rebuilt the pier in 2001, he gave up a small space to Tim and his incredible creations.

They are absolutely brilliant. The Microbreak (pictured) is a chintzy armchair set in front of a 1950s-style portable TV that sets out to take the "busy executive" on a holiday that lasts "no more than 3 minutes". As an added incentive, there's "No risk of deep vein thrombosis" which, I must confess, I found very enticing. It's built on the chassis of a 1985 Sega Space Harrier arcade game, and once you've put your money in the slot, you are whisked away as the armchair tips and rocks and an animated film of your holiday appears in front of you. It's hilarious.

"I built that because I hate holidays," Tim tells me. "I find them stressful and depressing. That's my favourite ride."

In the Mobility Masterclass, you play a pensioner (choosing quite how ancient you want to be) and have to control a real Zimmer frame as you cross three lanes of a motorway to get to the Rivoli Danceroom.

I think what I found most wonderful about the Under the Pier show is that everywhere I looked, adults were grinning, children were wide-eyed and everyone was laughing. The Expressive Photobooth is brilliant, Rent-A Dog is joyous, AutoFrisk made me howl and the Bathyscape made me rethink everything I've ever seen in a natural history programme. The Under the Pier show's strength is that, despite being very modern, it has a wonderfully nostalgic feel to it. I can't recommend it highly enough. Once seen, never forgotten. Go. Go. Go.

• The Under the Pier Show (underthepier.com) is on Southwold Pier. Entry is free. The machines cost from 40p to £2 a go