Paul Martin is a British antiques dealer and professional drummer best known for being the presenter of various BBC televisionantiques programmes including Flog It!, Trust Me, I'm a Dealer and Paul Martin's Handmade Revolution.
Biography
Martin was born in Teddington. His family subsequently moved to Cornwall, where he was educated at Falmouth Grammar School and then studied art and woodwork at Falmouth College of Arts. Following graduation, he was employed at Pinewood Studios, spending two years as a scenic painter on film sets, working first on which starred Dudley Moore. He then developed parallel careers, as an antiques trader and dealer and as a session musician drummer. Martin worked with Average White Band, The Quireboys and The Dogs D'Amour in the 1990s. He still plays with local jazz and blues bands around Wiltshire. From the age of 25, he owned a pitch on London's Portobello Road. He also worked as an antiques props stylist for magazines including Marie Claire and New Woman, whilst undertaking larger projects designing antique sets for television shoots for BBC One's The Clothes Show and Granada TV. More recently he ran the shop The Table Gallery in Marlborough, Wiltshire, specialising in 17th- and 18th-century Welsh and English oak furniture and Victorian lavatories. Martin was discovered by a team from BBC Bristol when he was interviewed about his passion for oak furniture. He was then signed up to present Flog It!, which has led to a series of television shows and spin-off books. In 2014, he began hosting I Never Knew That About Britain for the ITV network. He has presented the BBCCountryfile spin-offs Summer Diaries, Spring Diaries, Autumn Diaries and Winter Diaries since 2016. On 2 October 2018, the BBC announced it would cancel Flog It!, but that Martin would return to host two new similar shows as part of its "modernised" new daytime schedule—one of which would use Martin's skills as a dealer to train members of the public, the second being an antiques-based game show. The first of these programmes, Make Me a Dealer, began its inaugural series on 5 November 2018, followed by the antiques game show Curiosity in spring 2019.
Personal life
Martin is married to BBC production co-ordinator Charlotte Godfrey. In 2007 the couple moved to Seend in Wiltshire, to a property built in the 1830s, with a smallholding of of land, surrounded by its own arboretum.
