Robbie Williams has won an auction for Eric Morecambe’s glasses and pipe, and has revealed that he cried “happy, childlike tears” after making the winning bid. A range of showbiz memorabilia and personal items from the comedian’s former home, Brachefield in Hertfordshire, were sold in January. The glasses and pipe were expected to fetch between £2,000 and £4,000, but eventually went for £20,000, to Williams, who said he treated himself to the items ahead of his 51st birthday.
The singer was in Los Angeles at the time of the auction and was about to board an aeroplane when the bidding began, but he managed to watch a lot of the bidding online, spurred on by his wife Ayda Field Williams who told him to “keep bidding” when he had doubts. He eventually appointed one of his team to be “chief bidder”, and it was this person who successfully secured the items.
Eric Morecambe died of a heart attack aged 58 in 1984, and his widow, Joan, died aged 97 in March. Their daughter Gail Stuart, who lives in Northamptonshire, said she and her brothers Gary and Steven decided to give fans the opportunity to own some of his belongings, more than 800 of which went under the hammer. Speaking to the BBC, she said: “When mum died, it felt like an end of an era and we decided it could be the start of a new era – and I’ve had so many fans message me with what they’d got at auction and it’s just fabulous”.
Morecambe and Wise had many lean years touring theatres before they broke into TV, appearing on both ITV and the BBC, and by 1977 their Christmas BBC special was watched by 28 million viewers. The auction attracted significant publicity when it was announced by the auction-house Sworders, with many newspapers commenting on whether auctioning the belongings was an appropriate way of remembering a beloved British comedy figure. However, the items were sold in a three-day event, with many fans and collectors buying them at auction as a way of commemorating an iconic UK figure
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