ALISTAIR SAMPSON was a man of immense charm and humour, great knowledge and several careers. A fellow antiques dealer summed him up as “the most irritating man I know — and my best friend”.
Alistair Hubert Sampson was born at home in Wimbledon in 1929. His mother, Sheina Catto, née Macgregor, died while he was still young, and his father, Commander Leslie Sampson, a naval paymaster, was a distant parent, so he was largely brought up by his sister, who was ten years his senior.
He was educated at Tonbridge School and Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was elected President of the Union in 1952 — in the same year as Douglas Hurd and Greville Janner. Sampson also wrote lyrics and music for Footlights productions in 1951 and 1952. In the latter year he led a debating team on a successful American tour.
After National Service in the Royal Navy he practised as a barrister on the Western Circuit, living at Winchester. He specialised in criminal and family law and was appointed a judge’s marshal. In 1957 he worked on the celebrated Bodkin Adams case, which concerned an Eastbourne GP accused of murdering several patients whom he had previously persuaded to favour him in their wills. A university and early Bar friend was Geoffrey Howe (now Lord Howe of Aberavon), who gave the speech at Sampson’s 75th birthday party.
He had, he later recorded, been a collector almost all his life, beginning in schooldays with caterpillars, stamps and war souvenirs, and moving on to Leeds creamware when he was a young lawyer. He might well have risen to the higher reaches of the legal profession, but in 1969, on his 40th birthday, he made the long-pondered change to become a dealer in 17th and 18th-century English pottery. He began with a stall in the Antique Hypermarket, shared with David Seligman, and progressed to a proper shop at 156 Brompton Road.
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Initially, he ran this in partnership with Tristram Jellinek — “a marriage of convenience, which because of Tristram’s flair and Alistair’s business cunning lasted longer than anyone expected”, said one friend and rival — later with Toby Jellinek and Antoine Vermoutier, Michael Gillingham and, latterly, Christopher Banks.
Later they expanded into oak, brass and metalwork and needlework, and Sampson made a particular study of English naive paintings. Some years later he moved to his own premises in Mount Street, Mayfair. There the basement gave shelter for a while to the Oriental dealers Roger Keverne and Gillingham, and latterly the business has been run by Banks.
At the same time, Sampson’s theatrical talents were deployed again in the design of his stylish and inviting stands at leading British and international antiques fairs.
A good lawyer shares a number of characteristics with a successful antique trader, including shrewdness, toughness and judgment of character. Sampson had all of these, and a keen eye for quality, even if the toughness was generally hidden by his charm. Dealership ran right through him, and he was never happier than when making a deal.
On one occasion — typically, after a good lunch at Gidleigh Manor, Devon — he and a friend were heading for a pub while their wives spent half an hour in the famous Chagford ironmongers. Spotting a fake amphora priced at £3 in the window of a junk shop, Sampson said: “I bet I can get that for £1.” They missed the drink, but a happy 25 minutes later he had secured the fake at £1.20.
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Sampson was elected to the British Antique Dealers’ Association in 1976, becoming a member of its council in 1979 and serving as London vice-president from 1988 to 1990. He was also a director of the BADA Fair, which was launched at the old Duke of York’s Headquarters in King’s Road in 1994. The association awarded him its distinguished service medal in 1995.
Sampson stood for the SPD/ Liberal Alliance at Honiton, Devon, in the 1983 general election. He halved the Tory majority, winning an honourable second place with 17,833 votes against Sir Peter Emery’s 32,602 for the Conservatives.
In yet another of his careers he was a prolific writer and humorist. He was the tame poet on Cliff Mitchelmore’s Tonight programme on BBC TV, and was a natural contestant on the panel game Call My Bluff in the early 1960s.
As an author he began with four volumes of humorous poems, including Tonight and Other Nights (1959), a collection of his poems from the Tonight programme, and Don’t Be Disgusting (1961), and short stories. His facility in this department also ran to hilarious rhyming speeches to be performed at birthday parties and other celebrations for friends.
Later, his book Cabinet Secrets (1987), an anthology of his Punch columns, communicated real knowledge and the excitement of the antiques business with the lightest of touches. His Guest from Hell (2000) offered guidance on how to be a dreadful guest, while Liquid Limericks: Titillation for Tipplers (2001) and Larder Limericks: Five Liners for Foodies (2004) revelled in the pleasures of cellar and table — he was an entertaining and generous host, always keen to share his enthusiasm for his own wine cellar.
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In a foreword to the last of these books, Antony Worrall Thompson recalled how overawed he had felt as a young chef when the ever-elegant and Garrick-tied Sampson used to lunch at his Beauchamp Place restaurant in the early 1980s: “I often felt like a rebuked schoolboy, as his voice, though confident, appeared to growl like a wolf moving in for the kill . . . Little did I know that beneath this smooth-suited antique dealer’s fearsome charm lay a wit of gargantuan proportions.”
Sampson joined Punch magazine in April 1984 to contribute a weekly column on collecting. This came about because the then editor, Alan Coren, a collector of English delftware, looked into the shop when softened up by a good Beauchamp Place lunch. Always quick to spot an opening, Sampson remarked that Punch had no antiques column, and offered to do one for nothing, knowing that it would bring in business. His first Punch article was “The Fake’s Progress”, and once again he wrote with a winning combination of wit, experience and real authority.
Later there were articles in the Daily and Sunday Express. He also contributed stories to Sebastian Wolfe’s Little Book of Horrors (1992), and he recorded Horrortorio, a choral extravaganza with music by Joseph Horovitz. They had already contributed a song to the King’s Singers’ 1975 album Lollipops. In this last he had been able to pay the homage of emulation to the immortal Gerald Hoffnung, one of his heroes and a close friend from Cambridge days. His preferred time for writing was into the small hours, usually with an unregarded television turned on.
When told by his doctor that his cancer was terminal and that he was likely to survive no more than two months, but perhaps longer if he kept himself active and occupied, Sampson replied that he would get down to writing his autobiography. Even in the last days of his life he was still cracking jokes with his visitors.
He loved shooting and fishing, but at least as much for the social side as for the sports themselves, and for many years he was the heart of joyous house parties on all the Scottish rivers. It was clearly understood that for him all preprandial sporting activity had to stop at 12.30pm, the hour of the gin and tonic. He was also an adept and urbane bridge-player.
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He was twice married: first to an Italian, the Marchesa Marta Luzi di Votalara, in 1958, with whom he had one daughter, Sheina, and second in 1967 to Camilla Madoc, daughter of Major-General Reginald “Rex” Madoc, sometime commanding officer of the Royal Marines at Plymouth and Portsmouth. She survives him, with Sheina and the two daughters of their marriage: Matilda, a publisher, and Daisy, a broadcaster, to whose LBC radio show he contributed a topical poem every day — “Daisy’s Dad’s Daily Ditties”.
Alistair Sampson, barrister, antiques dealer and humorist, was born on May 1, 1929. He died of cancer on January 13, 2006, aged 76.