The Very Peculiar Story of Chicken George, an Auction Bidder’s Best Friend

Mecum

At the 11 major auctions that Mecum holds each year, there’s special Chicken George seating in the bidder’s area. It’s for those who are partial to Chicken George, whose name is really George Allen Boswell, a 66-year-old bidder’s assistant who has been working for Mecum for 15 years.

He’s called Chicken George because of something that happened 25 years ago, something that moved the then-roofing contractor from Rockford, Illinois into the national spotlight for weeks. Something we’ll cover in a moment.

But back to the Chicken George section, where we’re seated for an afternoon of weekday bidding at the 4500-vehicle, largest-in-the-world Kissimmee, Florida auction. Frequently, bidders walk up to George to shake his hand, sometimes give him a hug. They ask to sit in his section because “they’re like family,” George says.

The bidder I’m sitting next to has bought and sold cars at Mecum for years. “George is the best,” he says. Apparently other bidder’s assistants, whose main job is to encourage a customer who is bidding on a vehicle to keep raising the bid as competition intensifies, can get a little aggressive. “George isn’t that way. He will ask you once, maybe twice, if you’re sure you want to stop bidding on something, but he’s not overbearing. He knows when no means no.”

Mecum Auction Chicken George
Mecum

Bright red shoes are one of Chicken George’s trademarks, as is his choreography, moving through his section looking like a mobile orchestra leader, constantly scanning for bidders and, when he spots one, making sure their bid is recognized by the auctioneer. He remembers names and faces and families, all over the country.

“I have customers in my area that I’ve dealt with for years,” George says. Apparently the toughest part of being a bidder’s assistant is learning how to keep up with the auctioneer. “It’s really hard if you’re new at this to be following the numbers. And that’s my job, to tell you exactly where we’re at with the money.” Auctioneers swap out every 30 minutes. “Every auctioneer has their own separate chant. It takes a while to learn that and figure out where they are. It took me a while, but I caught on.”

Kissimmee is his favorite auction, because it’s just non-stop, this year running from January 7-19. “On a two- or three-day auction, it’s a little harder to get into a groove. But here, because the auction is so long, we really get into the groove and stay that way.”

Mecum Auctions Kissimmee Corvettes
Mecum

It’s a job that Chicken George loves, and hopes he never has to leave. “It was such a blessing,” he says. “You’ll never meet a more fair man than Dana Mecum,” the company’s founder. “Nobody leaves, because of the way we are treated. I’ll be forever grateful for what the family has done for me.”

George took a peculiar path to end up at an automotive auction. Though his first car was a 1965 Ford Mustang convertible, he wasn’t really a car guy. “Had it, got married, child, house, sold the car. Typical,” he says. “I always loved automobiles, but I’ve never really gotten the chance to get into ‘em.”

Mecum Auctions lights
Mecum

Considering where George was 25 years ago, it was not a bit odd that he ended up at Mecum at all. His family owned a roofing company, mostly spreading tar for commercial applications, “and one day I was up on a roof in the summer and I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way to make a living.’”

It was about that time that his daughter spotted a little story in the paper that said CBS television was casting for a new show, “and they were looking for ‘different and unique’ characters.’” It invited people to send in an application accompanied by a VHS tape showing the applicant doing something that was presumably different and unique.

At the urging of his daughter and his wife, George borrowed a computer and filled out the application, then borrowed a video camera and made a tape in his back yard. He packaged it all up and put it on top of his refrigerator, and promptly forgot about it, until his daughter asked if he’d sent it in. He hadn’t, and the deadline was tomorrow.

So he went to the post office to send it by overnight mail to Hollywood. The clerk said it would cost $15.87. “To me, $15.87 was a six-pack of Blatz and a Dom’s pizza,” so he turned around and headed for the door. Then he stopped short, remembering that he had thrown away $15.87 on plenty of frivolous things. What’s one more? He turned around and sent the package.

And then he forgot about it again. “I’m just a guy from Rockford, Illinois. I had a life, I had a family, I had a business. I’d never been to California, I’d barely ever been on an airplane. They’re not gonna want me.”

He was wrong. They flew him to California, made him take psychological tests, go to the hospital and take a physical, and meet with the producers, including Les Moonves, the head of the entire network. “Les picked the people, because that was his baby,” George says. There was a roundtable with 20 people, and they asked him a bunch of questions.

Afterwards, they flew George home. He was glad he did it. “I got to go to California, see Sunset Boulevard, take the first limousine ride I’d ever had in my life.”

Two weeks later, the phone rang. “We’d really like to have you on the show,” they said. George told them he’d think about it and call them back.

It would be a major commitment. “I could be gone for three months,” he says. He was ready to turn down the opportunity when his wife said, “If you don’t take the chance, you’ll always regret not trying.” It resonated. He accepted.

And George Boswell became one of the 10 people selected for the very first Big Brother, which debuted June 5, 2000. It was an absolute pioneer in reality television, which dominates TV today.

Big-Brother-1-Cast
George Boswell (middle, left) and the inaugural Big Brother 1 cast.CBS

The show was based on a concept that worked in the Netherlands, but it didn’t translate directly to the U.S. version. CBS built a “house” on the old Gilligan’s Island soundstage, where the 10 people selected for the show would be isolated from all outside contact—no phone, TV, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines—for as long as it took to eliminate them one by one, until there was a “winner,” who would take home $500,000. It took 88 days.

Static cameras were mounted everywhere in the Big Brother house—in the bedrooms, the bathrooms, by the swimming pool outside. Mobile cameras inside and out were manned by real cameramen, but the “houseguests,” as they were called, were forbidden to talk to them.

Those houseguests were a varied lot: They included a lawyer, an actress, a stripper, a politician, a United Nations communications director, and, of course, a Rockford, Illinois roofer. The show was based on 24/7 intrusion into their personal lives. “It is a social experiment,” said Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment. Indeed it was.

The TV show aired in prime-time five, or sometimes six nights a week, and fans could also watch the houseguests live via a website. The show was, and still is—it’s up to season 26—hosted by Julie Chen, who happens to be married to Les Moonves, CBS chairman and CEO until 2018, when he resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

It was obvious on the show that George had been cast as the common man. “George was known for his goofy antics and good nature which made him a likable figure amongst his fellow housemates and the viewing public,” says a Big Brother fan site.

Mecum Auction Chicken George
Mecum

Early on, though, it was clear the producers, now that they had rounded up 10 people, had no idea what to do with them. They were given often absurd tasks, or “challenges,” to perform, the outcome of which was rewarded with things like money for food. One task was to build a clock out of potatoes. Another was to set up 12,000 dominoes and make them fall one by one. They had to ride a stationary bike for 1000 miles. They had to write a poem and jump rope while the rope-holders recited it. There was a sumo wrestling competition.

For no obvious reason, producers built a chicken coop just behind the house. Guess who took care of the chickens? George, aka Chicken George, who had been raised on a farm. The nickname was presumably a mild homage to the original Chicken George, a character on the 1977 slavery-based miniseries Roots.

Despite the absurd execution, Big Brother became a very cheap-to-produce hit for the network. The debut had 22 million viewers.

Inside the house, though, the tension was becoming substantial. A viewer, dubbed the “Megaphone Lady,” frequently stood outside the house and shouted advice to the houseguests, which mostly led to confusion.

Big Brother Season 7 Cast
George and the cast of Big Brother 7.Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Viewers voted each week on who should be “banished,” and unknown to George and the other houseguests, “his wife and family members began campaigning for viewers to vote out some of the more popular houseguests to keep George in the game,” says the Bigbrother.fandom.com website. A houseguest later complained that George’s family and friends had recruited the entire state of Illinois to back him.

But after one of the houseguests learned about the campaign from a banished houseguest, and after airplanes began flying “anti-George” banners over the house, that houseguest told the others.

At that point, George had had enough, and tried to convince the other houseguests to join him in a mass walkout during the next prime-time episode, a classic moment in the history of reality TV, which you can watch here. “There’s more to this show than the stupid banishment, than the stupid challenges,” George preached to the other houseguests. “They were all trying to pit us against each other. What happens if we leave? There ain’t no show! We held the cards in our hands the whole time!”

But George was soon marked for banishment, and was voted off, leaving on day 79 of 88. But Chicken George was a popular contestant, and the producers invited him back for Big Brother 7, the all-star edition, and again for an appearance on Big Brother 10.

Mecum Auction Chicken George
Mecum

“It was an experience I’ll always treasure,” he recalls. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” He has maintained some connection to the houseguests from Big Brother 7, but as for the original edition, “we’ve all drifted apart.”

His 15 minutes of fame was enough for George Boswell, though arguably he still plays a role at Mecum, especially when the cameras are on him. And this role, he enjoys. “I help make people’s dreams come true,” he says. “How many people can say that?”

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Comments

    I love getting these posts from you folks at Hagerty. They’re wildly entertaining and always feature such interesting (and exotic) vehicles. My small stable of collector cars have provided me with endless entertainment over the years, and it’s good to know they’re safely sheltered under the Hagerty umbrella. Keep ‘em coming!
    😀👍

    I bought an M5 at Mecum Dallas, and George was my Bidder’s Assistant. He was fun, focused, and respected where I wanted to go with the bid. I still have the M5, and have been back to Mecum Dallas every year since. I know he has met tens of thousands of people since then, but he still greets me like we just had coffee. He makes the show.

    When I used to buy and sell at Mecum I always sought out Bobby McLaughlin to assist me. He, like George, is a real character. My favorite was when he ran in a circle on the floor (on the main stage to kick off a day of bidding) like Curly did on the Three Stooges.

    In the time it took you to complain, you could have skimmed over and discovered that you somehow missed a bunch of small paragraphs about the topic.

    My 90 year old mother had a sweet conversation with George after her (unsuccessful) attempt to be the winning bidder on a VW Beetle convertible. She repeated his encouraging words (“But you were in the game!”) to anyone who would listen. After watching George when he was not assisting bidders, I was impressed at how soft spoken (and well spoken) he was when he was “off duty” at the Mecum Auction in Glendale, AZ.

    I realize he’s just doing his job, but guys like Chicken George just help run up the prices against bidders who may have a more limited budget. I, for one won’t attend those auctions for that reason.

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