BBC Antiques Roadshow expert drops disappointing bombshell on JFK letter: ‘Doesn’t change anything for me’
The latest episode of Antiques Roadshow saw expert Hilary Kay delivering the unwanted news that a JFK “signature” was in fact not authentic.
It came as a guest on the BBC show brought along a signed photograph of the former US President.
“I still make the mistake when I’m driving to where we’re going to do the recording, of thinking, ‘What am I going to see relating to Derbyshire, for instance, here?’” Kay explained.
She admitted: “What I didn’t expect to see was a signed photograph of John F Kennedy, the American President.”
“So we’ve had this in the family now for just over 60 years,” the guest explained.
“It was sent to my great-grandfather, William Ewart Pitt, who at the time in the ’60s was Chief Constable of Derbyshire Police.”
“What was Kennedy doing in the area, then?” the antiques specialist probed.
“So he came over to Ireland, had a couple of days in Ireland on a state visit, and then he was coming down to visit the Prime Minister of the day, who was Harold Macmillan, but he took a detour to RAF Waddington.
“And from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire he took a helicopter to Chatsworth, where his sister is buried in Edensor.
“And as my great-grandad was Chief Constable of Derbyshire Police, he met him at the helicopter, took him to his sister’s graveside, spent a few hours with him then took him back to the helicopter, and the helicopter then flew down to meet Harold Macmillan for the rest of his stay in the UK.”
As Kay labelled the story “amazing,” the owner of the photo continued: “So he went back to the White House, and it was from there that they sent a signed picture, a pin for his tie, from his presidential campaign, and it turned up on the doorstep and there was this lovely, lovely surprise.”
“Well now, Kennedy was a very popular President, as a result he was asked to sign a lot of things,” Kay detailed.
“And 80 per cent of the signatures that we see purporting to be by Kennedy are either secretarial or by the famous Autopen 50.”
“We’ve never had it authenticated, so I don’t know,” the guest admitted.
“OK, well autopen signatures, I mean, if you got that machine fired up and it worked an eight-hour day, it could sign 3,000 pieces of paper in a day,” the BBC star explained.
Dropping the disappointing news, she confessed to the guest: “My feelings looking at this, it seems that the dedication, obviously, to your great-grandfather is in a proper hand. But I think the ‘with best wishes’ and the signature is probably printed.”
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Seeming slightly crushed, the owner replied: “Right, okay.”
“What I can say, though, which is a little gem, is that the little tie clip is right, and that’s a fabulous little representation of the PT-109 that Kennedy was in charge of in the war, out in the South Pacific,” Kay assured him.
She added: “He obviously rated the time that he spent with your great-grandfather because otherwise her wouldn’t have out that pin in.”
She did go on to admit though that the value would be around £150, stating: “An original would be worth a lot more.”
Speaking later to the cameras, the guest commented: “The fact that it’s Autopen doesn’t change anything for me.
“I mean, it’s the story, it was never going to be sold.”