Meet the Irish auctioneer to the stars

From Michael Jackson to the Beatles, Martin Nolan has handled the world’s biggest celebrity auctions. Not bad for a man from Athlone who began his American dream working as a hotel bell man when he won a lottery visa to the states.

WHEN he landed in New York in 1989, Athlone-born Martin Nolan took the first job he could find — just two days off his flight and he was employed as a bell man at the Hilton Hotel. During his two years there he would meet and greet a roll call of celebrities — Stallone, Thatcher, Oprah Winfrey. You name them, he met them.

“They were all very nice,” he recalls. “You know, people are people, it’s all about how you react around them. I was just myself.”