George Michael’s Faith guitar sells for £180k after auction row

The guitar George Michael performed with in his 1987 Faith music video has sold for £180,000 at auction, after a row over the sale of memorabilia related to the singer. The guitar was one of more than 30 items auctioned by Sworders from the collection of Siobhan Bailey, Michael’s long-time personal assistant. The sale fetched a total of £238,000 excluding buyers’ premium. Bailey died in 2014 and the items were sold by her estranged husband Ian Belcher, who inherited them after her death. Gerard Bailey, Siobhan’s brother, told the BBC she “would be horrified at the prospect of the auction being held in her name and that her personal, cherished possessions are being sold off to the highest bidder”. Belcher declined to comment. Sworders chairman Guy Schooling said Belcher had been “nothing but delightful” during their interactions over the past two-and-a-half years.

“There are two ways of looking at this – it can be cashing in, or it can be a bit of a memorial and a tribute to Siobhan, and that’s the way we’ve looked at it,” he told BBC News. The auction house billed the 32 lots, including signed photographs, invitations to events and presentation CDs and discs,as a “remarkable group of memorabilia from the collection of Siobhan Bailey, George Michael’s long-time personal assistant and trusted confidante”. ‘Dishonourable and shameful’ Siobhan was in the process of divorcing Belcher when she died, but was legally still married to him. She did not leave a will. Her brother claimed she had started to draw up a will shortly before she died, which would have left the items to her nieces and nephews, but it was not registered. There is no suggestion that Belcher did not have the right to sell the items, because her estate legally passed to him when she died. Bailey said if his…