Live Auction

Florian Inhauser has been an anchor on Tagesschau, the Swiss TV news show, for 14 years. While working as foreign correspondent in Britain, special international correspondent and foreign editor, he produced about 2,000 news reports and made countless live broadcasts from two dozen countries.

As a history and English scholar, over the course of his career he stared down the barrel of Kalashnikov rifles and was housed in hotels targeted by a bomb attack the day he left. He hitched a lift on flights from provincial Iranian airports and spent the night in the cargo hold of a Herkules C130 belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force. In the middle of a war in Mali, he was the guest of a traditional West African wedding, and survived without getting an upset stomach.

But he has never run an auction.

So, when the Gala Committee asked him, Florian Inhauser’s first thought was that he never shied away from new experiences. And then, that he wasn’t afraid of embarrassing himself either. However, it was important for him to be tutored in the art of auctioneering from professionals. Just so that, if possible, the embarrassment wouldn’t be ‘of monumental proportions’.