IN this time of continued lockdown isolation if you find you have time on your hands you could do worse than have a rummage in your attic, garage or shed.
You may be surprised if you turn up some long-forgotten item to discover that it actually now has value.
About a year ago, whilst sorting through boxes of stuff accumulated from 50 years in the music business, I came across a roll of posters frayed at the ends that I had not opened in years and which I had forgotten was there.
One of them was bright and cheery and had sentimental memories, so I got it framed and hung it in the corridor outside my study.
Michael McDonagh appeared on the Antiques Roadshow with his postersI had come to London from Cheshire in 1965 as a student and from January 1966 I ended up booking all the bands for our student union ‘dances’.
In March 1967 I was persuaded by music managers Peter Jenner and Andrew King to book their then unknown band for £40 to play for us and as they were completely different to all the usual bands and uniquely came with a liquid light show, I took the risk.
They were called Pink Floyd and it was just one week after their first single Arnold Layne was released by EMI and the poster I found in the roll was one of the few I had printed to publicise the event.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, the popular BBC programme the Antiques Roadshow could not film their shows as usual, with a big public audience, in 2020.
As an alternative they went to the various locations they had planned for the series but, for safety purposes, they invited selected people to come up with a treasured item to be valued under socially distanced conditions.
In September 2020 I was asked to take my Pink Floyd poster up to Forty Hall in Enfield, where they were filming an episode for the series.
While there I was astonished when the top man from the prestigious Bonhams auctioneers told me the current value of what, to me, was just a student gig poster that had languished in my dusty loft for years.
If you happened to catch the programme that was broadcast on January 3, you would have seen for yourself my surprise when expert John Baddeley calmly told me that my frayed simple silk screen poster was now worth about as much as the price we had paid for our first house.
Michael McDonagh's Pink Floyd poster, which proved far more valuable than he expectedI had hoped as a collector’s item for Pink Floyd fans it might be worth about £1000, but his estimation was a staggering £8-12,000.
If that does not have you rushing to rummage around your own stored memories, I don’t know what will.
Being a war baby, to the despair of my family, I throw nothing away.
I have loads of stuff I have accumulated over the years stuffed in lock up garages.
In the same roll were posters for the very first concert Ralph McTell ever performed, when his brother Bruce and I put him on at Hornsey Town Hall.
I had graduated in 1969 and was trying to find a way of getting into the music business.
I signed on for the dole in Camden Town, where I had a flat, and started to work freelance with some folkies I had met - like Ralph and Christy Moore - and in December of that year, as complete beginners, we put on two concerts.
On a cold, snowy December night in 1969 we put the unknown duo the Humblebums on at the Conway Hall, with London Blues singer Jo Ann Kelly and my favourite band of the time Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts.
They had a young Jona Lewie on piano and later had a big hit, Seaside Shuffle, under a different name, before Jona had hits with You Will Always Find Me In The Kitchen at Parties and Stop the Cavalry.
Up to that time Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty, who were known as the Humblebums, like Ralph, had only played folk clubs, but that night changed our lives.
The concert was a something of a financial disaster because the snow kept the audience at home, which meant that for the grand finale there were probably more people on the stage than were sitting in the hall.
However, it turned out well for me as in the pub after the show Nat Joseph, who owned the folk label Transatlantic Records, asked me to call him after Christmas as he thought I had done a good job.
The result was that on January 23, 1970 I flew up to Glasgow to join Billy and Gerry at City Hall.
They were starting a tour supporting Kenny Rogers and I was their new manager.
It was my first paid job in the music business, giving me a foot in the door.
I got paid the princely sum of £8 per week and Billy and Gerry got £11 and we toured around Europe for almost two years.
Then they spilt up and, as the saying goes, the rest is history.
I think Billy – who obviously went on to become a legendary comedian - was getting a little more than £11 per week when he recently retired.
The poster for the first ever proper concert that Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty ever did was also in the tatty roll that I found in my attic.
Another poster in that roll was for the first ever London Concert by Planxty.
Mr McDonagh also had an old Planxty poster in this atticIn 1975 I put them on at the New London Theatre in Drury Lane for a memorable concert as part of their first tour of the UK with a line-up that included Paul Brady, Andy Irvine and Liam O’Flynn.
There were also posters for De Dannan, from when we photographed them in Oranmore Castle in Galway in about 1977, and lots of posters for various Furey Brothers gigs, including for the time I put them on at the Royal Albert Hall after the success of When you Were Sweet 16.
In there too was a big poster for Daniel O’Donnell taken in Killarney, which always confused him.
On the day he was wearing a yellow sweater but when the poster and album cover came out he was wearing blue and he was mystified.
There was no Photoshop back then but sophisticated digital scanning had just come in and we were able to have each pixel of the sweater hand coloured at great expense to show him in a blue sweater as we felt that suited him better.
Apart from that lot there are boxes in my loft with about 2000 vinyl albums, some signed and given to me from as far back as 1966, from people like Gordon Lightfoot and Alice Cooper but sorting through them is another day’s work.
I was so amazed by the happy news that the man from Bonhams gave to me on Antiques Roadshow that I’m now on a mission to go through my stuff with a fresh look.
I really do suggest you go and have a rummage as you too may find a gem of memorabilia to keep – or sell – and who knows, it may worth as much as my 54-year-old Pink Floyd poster.
For those who did not see the programme the clip is available on the BBC website here.
