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ANTIQUES, ANXIETY & ANDY
Do you like antiques? Do you love vintage, history, stories and stuff? It was more than 20 years ago, when I worked full-time in tv, that I was asked to produce a regional tv show in the South West of the UK about car boot sales. At the time I was pregnant with my daughter Georgia and, having had a difficult first pregnancy with my older daughter Sammie, it was felt this type of programme would be safer.
It was the start of a journey of discovery for me and I’ve worked in the world of antiques and collectibles ever since. One of the tv projects I’ve worked on — for six years — was a UK day-time show called Flog It!, produced by the BBC and repeated routinely now. It’s been consistently successful and ran for many years though sadly it’s now been shelved. The main presenter of the show was tv presenter and antiques expert, former dealer, Paul Martin. He’s currently got a series running on 5Star in the UK — you can see it here — https://www.channel5.com/show/paul-martin-s-antiques-showdown/season-1/episode-1
When I started working on Flog It!, I didn’t really speak to Paul very much as the filming days were so full on. I was managing a crew and the lead director was working with him. Given we both live in Wiltshire in the UK, that now seems incredible to me. However over time we got to know each other and we’ve become firm friends and I’ve helped to keep Paul’s profile ‘up’…