Wow! Waiter lands a whopper with Ali art on Antiques Roadshow
A HEAD waiter at a Dublin restaurant left Antiques Roadshow presenter Fiona Bruce almost speechless, after unveiling a one-of-akind artwork drawn by Muhammad Ali.
The late heavyweight boxer had visited The Lobster Pot in Ballsbridge in 2003 when he was in town for the Special Olympics, doodled on a napkin and allowed Michael Gartland to keep the sketch.
Raj Bisram, an expert on the BBC show, estimated that the artwork, which even features food stains where Ali had dabbed his mouth, could fetch at the very least between £6,000 (€7,020) to £8,000 (€9,350).
He described it as a ‘real iconic sporting item’.
Ms Bruce had remarked after seeing the napkin: ‘Of all the things we might see today… That’s why I love this job. You never know what someone’s going to bring along. And this has blown me away. But wow! What a brilliant, brilliant thing. You lucky man.’
Mr Gartland, 82, told the Irish Daily Mail that his son had signed him up for the show, and that it was filmed in Derry last October.
He said: ‘My son said: “Dad, it should be shown because it is so unique” – I did have it on my wall once, but it’s only lying at the back of the wardrobe now.’
He said he was hoping Mr Bisram might auction the piece for him – and that he planned to put the money towards a holiday.
Before the valuation, which was aired last Sunday, Mr Bisram had asked Mr Gartland how he had come to possess an artwork from one of the greatest boxers of all time.
The waiter explained: ‘One night [in 2003] I got a phone call to my restaurant where I work for a table of eight people for Muhammad Ali.
‘They reckon he was here for the Special Olympics. And Muhammad Ali’s wife asked me could if I cut up the steak for him because he couldn’t use his hands.
‘So I said to our chef: “Will you cut them up for Muhammad Ali, but put them back together nicely?”
‘So when I put it down in front of him, Muhammad Ali’s wife said to me: “I thought you were going to cut them up.” I said: “They are.” And she was very impressed by the presentation.’
Mr Gartland said Ali had then politely asked if he would be able to draw on the napkin; he obliged and also gave him a pen to draw with, in the hopes he would be able to keep the sketch.
He continued: ‘I put the bill on the table and I said to his wife: “Can I take the napkin?” So she said: “Of course you can have it. You’ve done such a wonderful job and we are very impressed.”’
Ali signed his name and addressed it to Mr Gartland.
During the show, Mr Gartland joked that the napkin bore Ali’s DNA and pointed out several marks where the heavyweight champion had wiped food from his mouth.
He recalled: ‘It was great to have shaken his hand. I can still feel it now, shaking his hand.’
Mr Bisram said that the sketch was called The Guiding Light, which Ali, who had Parkinson’s disease, had first drawn in 1979 and had reproduced several times after that.
The expert went on: ‘What a lot of people don’t know is that Muhammad Ali was part-Irish. His great-grandfather actually came from Co. Clare, a place called Ennis, and he went in the late 1860s to America and he met a black African-American lady. They married and a couple of generations later, there was Muhammad Ali.’
In a few months’ time, the
‘Lying at the back of a wardrobe’ ‘Great to have shaken his hand’
Antiques Roadshow is due to return to Derry to look at the Derry Girls exhibition at the city’s Tower Museum.
This was created on the back of the hugely popular Lisa McGeewritten comedy show.
The exhibition focuses on the 1990s and includes props from the era used in the Channel 4 comedy series.