Standing room only at charity antiques show
Rotary club event is a huge success
A rotary club got a lot more than it bargained for last week, when its members held their first ever antiques charity event.
And Rutherglen Rotary Club were delighted that TV star Anita Manning, a fixture on popular TV shows such as Bargain Hunt and Flog It! dropped by to make sure the day, held at the King’s Park hotel, ran smoothly.
A horde of eager locals gathered to have vintage items valued, hoping to find they’d been sitting on some undiscovered treasure.
It was all to raise money for the Rotary Club’s End Polio Now campaign - and the antiques event earned £1810 for the cause.
Rotary club vice president David Paul, who organised the antiques event, said: “There was a buzz around the hotel all day and it was a brilliant success. It was standing room only for a lot of it.
“We had a lot of people telling us that they would be coming along but you are never sure until the day itself and we had people queueing up from eight o’ clock in the morning.
“Anita was fantastic, she was nice and friendly and chatted away to everyone.
“She and her team of experts from Great Western Auctions were so helpful.
“There were some people who were pleasantly surprised by what their items were worth, and there were others who were disappointed, which is part of the fun of it all.
“There was one gentleman with some glassware, a coppery, orange coloured jug and he didn’t know what it was at all.
“It didn’t look like much and it turned out to be a Christopher Dresser item valued at 800 quid. He was a bit surprised at that one.”
The morning also saw a raffle for a painting painted by and kindly donated by artist and Rotarian Phil Spence, while there was a prize voucher kindly donated by Janette Mitchell Flower Design, Burnside.
The £1810 raised will now be doubled by the Bill Gates Foundation, who are trying to end the scourge of polio across the world.
David added: “This is a campaign that has been going for a number of years.
“Polio only exists now in Pakistan, Afghanistan and a pocket of West Africa, but obviously it can still spread, so the aim is to eradicate it completely, and hopefully these donations can help with that.”