Frank Dunphy - Showbiz accountant and manager of artist Damien Hirst
Describe your background
I was born in Portrane, Co Dublin, and educated by the Christian Brothers on North Richmond Street. I had a very, very happy upbringing. My father was a State-registered nurse. My mother was a Tipperary
woman, a member of Cumman na mBan, who fought with Dan Breen during the War of Independence. She brought me into the Dáil to meet him once. He was a big, homely sort of man. I remember he came down to meet us in his slippers.
You left for Britain at 20
Yes, I was met off the boat by the Legion of Mary and taken to a safe house. I applied for a job with an accountant. It was only when I got in there that I discovered he looked after variety artistes, with a big circus clientele. As it happened, this gentleman was getting on in age, so he said: "Right, you're looking after this." I was really thrown in at the deep end.
How does the art world compare to show business? Is there a comparison?
Oh there is, of course. When I started out, I was handling jugglers, opera singers, exotic dancers, stars of the London Palladium. Later it was actors and singers: Gene Pitney, Julia McKenzie, Jimmy Stewart (when he was in London) and latterly Jimmy Nesbit. Artists are all the same; their basic insecurity is always that this might be their last job. So they're always asking "Am I great?"
You met Damien Hirst in the mid-1990s. Did you come up against any snobbery in art circles?
Well, of course. As an Irish person, you're coming around from another side of the field, aren't you? They don't know what to make of you. Curators often ask me what I know about art. But what I do for
Damien as his manager is sell his work. I look after him. I look after his business deals. So, while I have
an appreciation of contemporary art, I don't have to be an expert.
How did the Beautiful Inside My Head Forever auction come about?
It was an idea of mine that dated back to the Pharmacy auction in 2004 [when 168 items from Hirst's Pharmacy restaurant in Notting Hill were auctioned off for a profit of £11 million (¤14 million).] There's no one else who could have staged an auction like this. There's no other artist out there with the breadth of work who could have put 230 new pieces up to auction. It's a big risk, but Damien had the cojones to do it.
What's been the reaction?
Oh, people are just blown away by it. My only regret is that this collection isn't going to be around longer. I had hoped someone would come out of the woodwork and offer to buy the lot to keep it together. It would have been fantastic to install it all in a museum, because we had more than 2,000 people a day coming into see this to preview the auction.
Does Damien still sketch you every morning?
Yes, we meet for breakfast in the Wolseley restaurant and he draws me on the same placemat each time. He dates it and illustrates it to suit the circumstances of the day. I remember on the morning of the Pharmacy auction he put dollar signs in my eyes! Other times there've been happy ones, sad ones. I'm holding on to them for now, but I'll give them all back to him in the end. Maybe one day they'll be the Wolseley Drawings.
You're 70 years old and I presume you have a pretty sizeable payday coming up. Are you tempted to retire?
No, my wife wouldn't let me retire. She wants me to take it easier, though. I play golf occasionally, but I can't do what all my mates are doing and head out to the golf course every day. It wouldn't fulfil me at all. Damien says he has ambitions for me going on to 85. Although, sometimes I catch him looking at his
vitrines and formaldehyde and I think he's sizing me up. Maybe that's what he has in mind!
Is there anything else we should know about you?
I'm not related to Eamon Dunphy.
