“I think my father very much influenced me, because he was such a fantastic storyteller. Some people say I’m not that bad myself, but when I’m at home, I don’t say very much because my dad is such a great storyteller, it’s hard to compete with him. So is my sister, and she’s very funny on top of that. We always share a lot of stories.
“Sometimes, he was quite funny with his stories. At one point, I was sleeping right above the antique shop, so I would wake up in the morning and I could hear the stories he was telling the clients. And he would very often say, ‘Oh, this piece, it comes from some special lady, and she lives in a chateau, some castle,’ and people would be like ‘Oh, really?’ and I would be just giggling in my bed, thinking that he probably made that all up. And he sometimes did. When it was about the piece itself, the why and how, of course not, but where it came from, I think he added some juice to it.
“Sometimes, what would happen was people ask him years later about a piece and the amazing story he told them, and if he remembered and can he tell it again, and he can’t remember it. The core was always real, but sometimes he would kind of enhance the story a little bit, to make it more attractive.
“He had stories for everything. He’s the kind of guy who would make stories about nothing. Most of us have a day, and we don’t really feel like we have a story. He would go to the shop and come back, and he’d have a whole story about that. How he met that person, and imitate that person. Some people have that quality, and you’d just be laughing your head off, and all he just did was go to the shop and come back. It’s hard to say what my favourite story is.”