LAST Saturday I conducted an auction in the Mullingar Park Hotel at a fundraiser for an MRI scanner in Mullingar Hospital. This was run by the Murphy family, who are well known in Westmeath farming circles, and it was to mark what would have been the 40th birthday of their son Johnny, who died in 2011.

The charity auction saw a number of great items, finishing off with a donkey, which made €3,000. The guest speaker was RTE rugby pundit Brent Pope, about who many remarked how much taller and thinner he was in real life than on the television or in his photograph in the programme. Regrettably they did not say the same about the auctioneer.