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.

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.

"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'

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 sister had lived a few weeks longer, the items would not have passed to Belcher because he would not have been considered her next of kin.

In a letter to the auction house seen by the BBC, Bailey said the rest of the family considered the auction a "breach of [Siobhan's] privacy", adding that the use of her name was "disingenuous" and "wholly unethical".

Bailey asked that the auction should not go ahead, or be in Belcher's name rather than Siobhan's.

Siobhan Bailey began working as Michael's personal assistant in 1984, joining him in the year Wham! had their first number-one hit with Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.

She remained his PA for 20 years, and her brother told BBC News she avoided the limelight and guarded the pop star's privacy, despite the attention of tabloid journalists hoping for stories.

"She was always honest and straight with him. I guess that's why she stayed working for him for so long through the very, very good and not so good times."

The instrument had a key role to play in Michael's reinvention from teen pop idol to serious solo artist.

In the 1987 video for Faith, Michael - in ripped blue Levi's jeans, white T-shirt and black leather biker jacket - strummed the vintage acoustic guitar that he reportedly picked up in a shop in Los Angeles shortly beforehand.

The auction's biggest sales

• £180,000 - The Rockabilly Rebel guitar from the Faith video, with original hardshell case and leather guitar strap

• £5,000 - A Faith Tour ringbound itinerary from George Michael's 1988 world tour

• £4,200 - A gold disc of George Michael's I Want Your Sex

Other items on sale included a note written "with love and admiration" from Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, an official Wham! photograph signed "To Siobhan (Special...)", and an invitation to Ridgeley's 21st birthday party.

"I know she was proud of the various personalised gold and platinum discs she got, though she was very modest about it all," Bailey said.

"I think she'd be devastated that something as personal as her Filofax [tour itinerary] and notes from George are up for grabs. It's just so tawdry and contrary to how she was," he said.

Siobhan died suddenly and unexpectedly of natural causes at the age of 56. According to her brother, she wanted the possessions to "have remained with her family and we would never have sold".

Bailey acknowledged that Belcher had a legal right to sell the items but called it "disingenuous" that the sale was being promoted in her name.

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