HOW does a law graduate end up an auctioneer in Teesdale, via New York, where he rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous?

Richard Edwards has just joined Addisons in Barnard Castle as a general valuer and auctioneer. But how he arrived there makes fascinating reading.

Mr Edwards, a Glaswegian, studied law at Edinburgh University. But he never wanted to practise, which he discovered only when well into the course.

"I did go on to complete it, and it was a useful degree to have," he said. "But I realised that I would die of boredom if I pursued it as a career."

He then went to London and became a chartered surveyor in the commercial property world. And it was on going to work for a wealthy family firm that he broke into the auction circuit.

"I worked from a base in Savile Row from where I occasionally had to take pieces to the big city auction houses and that is what got me seriously interested," said Mr Edwards.

He also used to do interior design, which saw him going to auctions, and he decided he would like to become involved full-time. However, he knew it would be almost impossible to find a post without training or family connections.

"I was a single man then, so I gave up my job and sold my house," he said. "With the proceeds, I went to do the Christie's course, which cost £12,000 for the year.

"It sounds a lot of money, but it was worth it because many of those on it are society folk who can pay that fee to attract the top experts in the world to teach them," he added. "I loved it. It was the best year of my life and I learned a huge amount."

While on the course he met a group of wealthy Americans who were very well connected, from whence the opportunity arose for him to fill a vacancy at Sotheby's in New York.

"It was wonderful," said Mr Edwards. "The way was smoothed for me. I had no worries about visas, a work permit or dealing with immigration."

However, it was not all plain sailing. What Sotheby's wanted was a front man for the arms and armoury department, which he knew nothing about, but they felt he had the right sort of "British" image to impress their clients.

"It was all smoke and mirrors for the first year, because I had to learn on the job," said Mr Edwards. "But I managed to get away with it because I was not expected to do any serious research or cataloguing. I was just persuading people to buy and sell with us."

While arms and armoury held no huge interest for him, they fell under the banner of European works of art, which did, encompassing anything, other than paintings, pre-dating 1800.

"It was a wonderfully esoteric department with some quirky as well as very important collectors," he said.

Among the rich and famous, he dealt with the new governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose name he can spell from memory, having written it so many times; Madonna, who loved early religious works of art, and Michael Jackson.

"Some movie people buy as an investment and know nothing about what they are buying," he said. "But Schwarzenegger has a great interest in sculpture and knows what he is looking at."

Mr Edwards met Jackson only once, but described him as "extremely strange".

But it was not just about celebrities; one of the most influential men in America - Henry Kravis, a lynchpin in Wall Street - was also a client.

While at Sotheby's, the single, most valuable thing Mr Edwards discovered was a nineteenth century marble sculpture, which he found in a house in California.

"The reasonably affluent couple said it had come with the house, but they did not like it and thought it would fetch a couple of thousands dollars at most," he said. "It was a lifesize nude of a woman in a hammock, which fetched $500,000, of which all the commission went to the auction house."

He left Sotheby's, where he met his English wife, Anne, after six years, tired of the office politics which exist in most global organisations if you want to get ahead.

"I was interested in objects, not jumping through hoops," he said, which led him to the much smaller Doyle, also in New York, where he brushed up his knowledge on lower value interesting items. After three years there he and his wife, then in their early forties, began thinking that, much as they loved New York, it was not a city to grow old in if you were not wealthy.

The clincher for coming back to England was September 11.

"It changed the whole atmosphere overnight," he said. "You could smell the fire all over the city and the usually bustling Manhattan, where we had our apartment, was closed to traffic and became like a ghost town.

"Then there was anthrax, and we were not allowed to touch our post. All of a sudden it made you different to be a foreigner. It's a very international city, but Americans became xenophobic, and the fact that we weren't American suddenly made it difficult. Within a year we packed up and came home."

Staying with parents in Scotland, the couple took some time out to catch up on relatives and friends before Mr Edwards began to seriously look for work.

He saw Addisons' advertisement in a trade magazine, but had no idea where Teesdale was, although he had a vague memory of passing Barnard Castle on voyages south from Scotland as a boy.

However, by coincidence his brother was acquainted with the Carver brothers, who are estate agents in Darlington, and he was able to glean enough background information about the area to tempt him to take a closer look.

"When we travelled down from Scotland it was a glorious day," he said. "We came over the county bridge, saw the castle, the Market Cross and just fell in love.

"It is the smallest place I have ever lived, and the quality of life and house prices are wonderful, although living in the town centre on a Saturday night is worse than Manhattan," he added quite genuinely.

On meeting Addisons directors Simon Nixon and Chris Arundel, he was offered the job there and then, and was happy to accept. Some of his ideas have already been implemented, such as specialist sales, of which he intends to introduce more, as well as upgrading the quality of the general sales. He is also organising an Arts of Teesdale and a Christmas sale, for which 700 tickets for a charity preview evening have gone out.

"The sale will consist of nice, small items that people might want to give as Christmas presents," he said.

Although a collector himself, his pieces are wide ranging. He likes ceramics and has a lot of mainly European porcelain. He also has some nineteenth century bronzes.

If money were no object, he would choose a bronze by Barye, a mid-nineteenth century French sculptor. "For a really good piece I would have to pay around £10,000," he said.

He is happy that Teesdale has an "auction culture" and sees Addisons as having lots of potential. "The people we have to compete with are geographically distant," he said. "It is the perfect place at the perfect time for me and I envisage a long-term future here."

* Sales are advertised regularly in the D&S Times and further information is available on the company web site at www.addisons-auctioneers.co.uk. The next antiques and collectables sale is on Thursday, October 30, at 10am