Andy would be delighted to take part in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! for £2. Television producers take note , command three-figure sums on bookselling websites to this day.
Dad, a wartime Spitfire pilot, was the managing director of the family tobacco-blending business based in Barking. My Mum, an avidreader, was a professional trampolinist. We were looked after by Scandinavian au pairs while our mother practised her bouncing. The Germans had caught the antiques bug big-time, so I took along a swag bag of attempted antiques with me. Arriving in Hamburg, I found a general antiques shop owned by Günter Kramm and showed him my offerings. He wanted to specialise in glass and invited me to buy English and French glasses and decanters for him.
We then purchased three houses in and around Rye for £80,000, renovated them and later turned them over for £400,000-plus each. I was regularly tickled at the lengths some folks went to in order to get our 10 per cent cash discount, even when just spending a tenner. They’d walk the equivalent of crossing the Gobi desert to save a quid!, who had exquisite taste and was a lovely man. We only banned one guy – for being rude, though theatre producer Sir Michael Codron, now 93, got close before I recognised him as a kindred spirit so allowed him to stay.
The most important thing I’ve learnt from the show is that it’s my job to help owners enjoy the moment and look great on camera. One lady brought a claret jug to Exmouth which her grandfather won in a piglet catching contest. She was extremely nervous – her face twitching involuntarily. Witnessing her discomfort made me realise that it was my job to chill her by trying to allay her anxieties.