Gift of the gab makes bucks for charity

It's the season of charity balls and parties and if you are getting set to organise one, then first book your auctioneer. More and more charities are using professionals to run auctions as part of an evening's entertainment and to raise extra money. A good charity auction can bring in tens of thousands of pounds with items on the block ranging from valuable paintings to holidays in the Caribbean or a meal cooked in your home by a celebrity chef. No matter how tempting the prizes, it takes a lot of auctioneering skill and a sharp sense of humour to keep hundreds of people entertained after a heavy meal. It looks fun - the spectacle of an auctioneer in all-powerful form playing with the greed, need and dreams of a room full of people - but effortless it is not.

A career auctioneer might be able to dispose of millions of pounds worth of property in an afternoon, but put one on a stage with nothing more to offer than a crystal vase or a year's golf sub, and that's skill.

To carry off a good charity auction, the auctioneer has to be a performer, able to take charge and pull out all the stops once on the rostrum - just as in the auction room you have to know your bidders, to estimate how far they will go. But most of all, a good auctioneer must put on a show.

At the heart of the show is control and authority, words used all the time when auctioneers get to talking about their business. Used unequivocally by Michael Farrelly, a man made by auctioneering and who has, in his time and apart from regular stints on the charity auction circuit, sold cattle, sheep, pigs, cars and property.

"The local superintendent of the guards has said to me that my Lions Club auctions were the nearest thing he's seen to robbery with menaces," Mr Farrelly admits gleefully. "Thing is, once I stand on a rostrum, I'm God. That's it! I control the room and dare anyone cross me. If you have that control, people will have faith in you."

Mr Farrelly, who works with T E Potterton of Trim, Co Meath, has a natural advantage, admitting cheerfully to being "an imposing fellow" - he is 6ft 2ins and weighs 20 stone - and to being a naturally outgoing type who "hunts, rides horses and all those sort of things". Anne Lait too, of Harrington Lait, in Wicklow, says a presence is helpful - and that she, quite simply "loves the fun of a charity auction. It has to be entertaining and I try to make it so. I'm 5ft 11 and have a commanding voice. The voice is important, but control of the room is in the scanning. You have to scan the room and make eye contact all the time, get everyone's attention, stop them talking, keep the auction fairly lively and quick and keep it loud, but don't shout too much. Your voice really is the thing." The authority word comes up again when talking to Sean Buckley of Buckleys Auctioneers in Sandycove, Co Dublin - a man who comes to life in a dream auction. Give him a list of improbable items to sell and he becomes a stand-up comedian and gets a good price at the same time. He can draw out each lot - whether it's a bale of briquettes delivered to your door or lunch for six in a restaurant - until the audience is in fits of laughter. The skill is born of years of weekly auctions, selling off what he calls "general goods" (mostly furniture) when he keeps his sense of humour reined in.

He does about 12 charity auctions throughout the year. "I'll do an auction for anyone, almost, from the PDs to the local school; anyone who asks and gathers together between 50-100 items. I've sold everything from weekends in Paris to Labrador pups." He says that he asserts his authority "from the outset. I set out ground rules, such as that mine is the only voice I want to hear in the room. I'll be belligerent in a fun way, but do seriously require that they listen to me."

The vocabulary may be the same but good auctioneers get to the rostrum through a variety of routes.

MICHAEL Farrelly came to the business via the marts when, 20 years ago and as an 18-year-old, he began selling "baby calves. It was the best of training grounds. Working in the marts you're selling 200-300 lots a day and handling men who are tough wheelers and dealers. When I started I couldn't sit down on the rostrum, I used feel so sick in my stomach I had to stand. You had to put manners on those guys and you had to get the vendor a fair deal. The vendor is the person you must look after".

This last fact, the overriding importance of the vendor's interest (or money for the charity of the night), is another core value with auctioneers. Anne Lait is succinct: "Our job when selling is to get the maximum money for our client."

Michael Farrelly laments that today's auctioneers "have never worked the marts. They're the best training ground possible". Known for his wit and style on the rostrum, he still sells cattle and sheep a couple of times a week. "One witty remark can break the tension in a room, but these come easily when you've got the hammer in your hand and the flow is going." He would love, he says, to sell at Tattersalls or Goffs or, creme de la creme, at Sothebys. "The excitement is in the huge money. Sums like £5 million or £7 million would roll very nicely off the tongue!"

Sean Buckley, too, thinks auctioneering when he talks of his future. "I couldn't do anything else," he admits, "it's in the blood. I even take a busman's holiday in that I'd go to an auction if there was one in the area when I'm away." Mr Buckley, born to the business, has been an auctioneer for 30 years and says his father before him "was 52 years at it. I trained in the family business, eating, sleeping and dreaming auctioneering since the day I was born. I was weaned on it too. My father was brilliant and people used come just to be entertained by him. He taught me the tricks of the trade, the patter of the auction".

Latter-day pressures and competition have eliminated some of the jollity from the auction room, he says, but only some. While charity auctions are fun, the Thursday auctions in Sandycove are his bread and butter. "Up to 95 per cent of the clientele are regulars," he says, "and we get between 400 to 500 lots to sell each week."

As with charity auctions, "speed is of the essence and I make it as topical as possible, with jokes tied to the financial and political worlds. If you keep them interested and amused people will spend".

Anne Lait was bitten by the bug early on - her first sale was of a county council cottage - and decided to go it alone in the auctioneering business in the late 1970s, a time when it wasn't easy for a woman to become established.

"I went at it bull-headed and the bank decided to take a chance on me," she says. These days, for her bread and butter, she deals mostly in furniture and property auctions and says she "can remember everyone who makes a bid", likes "things to be personal" and "concentrates totally. Bids are made in different ways, it may be the blink of a lid so the eye contact is important".

SHE never repeats herself, a cardinal sin, and "loves conducting auctions. When you're on the rostrum you can read people's faces very easily, and I know when I can squeeze another £500 out of someone. It has to do with body language, even the way a person sits will tell you something". Auctioneers, in Anne Lait's final judgement, "need to be able to please people and keep their feet on the ground".