Going Once, Going Twice!
Going Once, Going Twice!
...David Tennant's relationship with the auction block
The UK auction house Ewbanks recently announced that two items of clothing David’s worn at events and onstage are going up for auction as part of a bigger celebrity auction for the charity Marie Curie. The auction (entitled Diary Of A Wardrobe - A Celebrity Charity Auction for Marie Curie with Jane Horrocks) will commence online and live in their saleroom on 19 September 2024 at 2 pm.
According to their website, Marie Curie provides
expert hospice care, support over the phone, and we push for a better end of life for all by campaigning and sharing research to change the system
David’s been hugely supportive of the kind of work Marie Curie does for some time. His mother Helen was supported by ACCORD Hospice in 2007 after a long battle with cancer, and his dad Sandy became active in the fight for death with dignity after he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis. Sandy wanted the dying to have more end-of-life rights, and called for Church leaders to back laws to give terminally ill people assistance towards a peaceful death. They ultimately refused to do so, but Sandy remained vocal about it until his death in 2016.
The two items of David’s going up for auction are a bespoke three-piece tweed suit he wore in the 2017 play Don Juan in Soho…
….and a pair of red suede Paul Smith shoes he wore while hosting Comic Relief in 2009 with Davina McCall.
The auction house made an oopsie with the shoes, though. It you take a look at the auction listing, Ewbanks says the shoes were used in March 2016. That’s incorrect. The auction house likely has it wrong because someone pulled the photo they’re using in the listing from Pinterest. Yes, it says March 2016, but that’s because this particular Photo of the Day post was written in 2016, not because the photo was taken in 2016! David (and his red shoes) and Davina did their hosting duties in 2009.
So while I’ve got you here and we’re on the subject of David and auctions, how about we revisit a few of the many auctions where items associated with him have been auctioned off (for charity and otherwise) over the past couple of decades, shall we?
Back on 11 December 2019, LA-based Prop Store Auction held a live auction featuring Marvel’s Jessica Jones. Of the 200+ items - including props and memorabilita - offered in the sale, there was also an incredible variety of clothing that David wore in his role as Kilgrave:
Is it just me, or are you also wondering who bought this stuff? I suppose a rabid Kilgrave cosplayer would love having the most screen-accurate of screen-accurate outfits to walk around in, but otherwise? I don’t have a couple grand laying around, do you?
Speaking of clothing auctions, the RSC is pretty famous for holding their own. Over a 10-day period surrounding Shakespeare’s birthday in April 2018, the company held an auction with the intent to help fund their Stitch In Time campaign, which supported the restoration and redevelopment of its Costume Workshop.
David said of the auction:
I have had the pleasure of wearing many costumes at the RSC, created in their workshop in Stratford-upon-Avon. I always think of the very first costume I had when I went there, which was Touchstone in As You Like It. I had this extraordinary, calf-length coat in the jesters’ motley. It was beautifully put together, and the amount of work that had gone into it took my breath away. The attention to detail, the sheer craftsmanship that is engrained in each costume impressed me then and continues to impress me at the company today.
The auction featured 54 costumes from the 1970s to the 2010s, and David had a number of items in the mix. They were:
Hamlet (2008) black dress trousers - £667
Hamlet (2008) brown trainers - £1,045
Love's Labour's Lost (2008) blue military brocade coat and hat - £576
Richard II (2013) white tunic - £3,101
Richard II (2013) cream robe - £2,472
Shakespeare Live! (2016) velvet jacket - £3,204
By the way, if you’re really curious about whether you might one day be able to wear something David wore in an RSC production, keep this little tidbit in mind:
The RSC, a registered charity, makes thousands of costume items each year in its Stratford-upon-Avon based Costume Workshop. Once a production ends, most costumes are placed into the Company’s Costume Store and are available to hire. Some key items go into in the RSC’s Museum Collection and appear in exhibitions in the RSC’s theatres and around the world.
Of course there have been a gazillion auctions of Doctor Who materials - for charity and otherwise - but they’re so plentiful, I think I’ll leave off them for now.
No, the last auction we’ll revisit today is the weirdest one we’ve talked about so far.
Back on 11 November 2009 - which was a Wednesday - David appeared on Absolute Radio on Christian O’ Connell’s Breakfast Show. During the broadcast, David announced his plan to auction off one of his own personal items in two days (i.e., Friday, 13 November 2009), with the proceeds benefiting Children in Need: a wrought iron and brass bed he’d owned since around 1994!
As an aside - if you’ve watched any of the video diaries David made during his Doctor Who days, you might’ve seen this bed in the background.
Anyway, the bed was brought to the Absolute Radio studio and assembled there. The three photos below were taken at the same time a video (below) featuring David and Christian in a “Twittersode,” was made, with Christian sitting on the bed and David alternately sitting, standing and bouncing on it.
And of course Christian and David imply some saucy things about the fact it’s been David’s bed for fifteen years….
David himself called it “a nasty old bed that’s seen some action”!
At some point after this Twittersode was filmed (but before the auction started) the bed ended up getting broken because a large amount of people from British Gas sat on it. But all was not lost. Luckily - even though it was broken - British Gas agreed to purchase it for £5,000, and Children in Need got some well-needed funds!
And that’s it for this installment of David and auctions. Thanks for tuning in!
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(ETA 26 Aug 2024: Thank you’s go out to Nicole M andMcBash for letting me know it wasn’t Christian and David who broke the bed but employees of British Gas! I’ve corrected it above, and you can read even more details in the comments!)
Also the bed was broken by a huge amount of people from British Gas sitting on it at the same time. That is why they decided to bid on it.
I still remember when the whole bed thing was going down back in the day. Though, I'm pretty sure it was actually broken by British Gas themselves, at their own drunken party in the radio studio later that night (which made them even more beholden to buy it because of the whoopsie), not by Christian and David being on it that day on the radio. At least that was the gossip at the time! (Though the bed was literally on it's last legs though, so who knows!) 😆