E195 That Great Business Show - the most famous living Irish businessman you've never heard of...

That Great Business Show

E195 That Great Business Show - the Paddy Meade Triptych - three episodes featuring Ireland's most successful auctioneer.

Paddy Meade is former Deputy Chair and CEO at Bonham Auctioneers, one of the most prestigious sales houses in the world. A born storyteller if you don't laugh out loud we guarantee your money back.

We love a good backstory on TGBS and Paddy has a terrific one, starting with how studying Welsh in University College Dublin (UCD) led him to the top of a worldwide business. He explains how he came first and last in Welsh in UCD. And, he says that one's first choices (including studying Welsh) need have no bearing on future career choices.

An obsessive collector, one of the early items he collected were small Tetra Pak type cream sachets from Aer Lingus flights (no, really).

Later he studied fine arts in Southampton where he came first in the UK in his exams.

Later still, when trying to convince a potential client to sell his goods, he drank the man's teeth. Well, in business, a man's got to do what a man's got to do...

1990 comes and he loses his job. Thanks to a Donnelly visa, the last one ever he says, he headed for the US without a job. Hustling for a job he got frozen to a public phone box.

He then hits a job dilemna. He got a job in Chicago, was there a week, when Christies, the auction house, called with a job offer. Did he jump?

Learn about 'auction school' where you have to learn a secret code. Why he had to be trained by RADA and how he saved a client $700,000 when selling the famous 'Maltese Falcon' cross from the movie of the same name, that starred Humphrey Bogart as investigator Sam Spade.

Paddy's 'hire in a heartbeat is Malcolm Barber of Bonhams.

With thanks to Maxol, a family firm, backing Irish businesses.

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