A top music award for The Beatles’ classic Yellow Submarine is expected to fetch more than £5,000 after it spent 30 years being used – as a doorstop.
The Fab Four scooped the prestigious Ivor Novello Award after it spent four weeks at No1 in 1966 selling 1.2 million copies.
It was that year’s best-selling single and Sir Paul McCartney, John Lennon and the band’s music publishers Northern Songs Ltd scooped the top gong.
But incredibly the award was found abandoned in a London office block due for demolition in the early 1980s.
The unnamed seller saved the Ivor Novello from being destroyed and took it home and used it as a doorstop – for 30 years.
The Novello Award is a bronze figure of Greek mythological figure Euterpe and bears a plaque inscribed Northern Songs Ltd “Yellow Submarine” 1966.
It is due to be sold in auctioneers Dreweatts’ collectors’ sale in Bristol next Tuesday.
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Auctioneer Peter Rixon said: “It’s an amazing find. The Ivor Novellos are the music industry’s most coveted awards.
”To discover one awarded for an iconic Beatles’ song like Yellow Submarine is incredible.
”Our vendor found the Yellow Submarine Novello award wrapped in paper in an empty desk in an office in London’s Waterloo which was due for demolition in the 1980s.
“No-one knew how it came to be there, so she took it home and she has used it as a doorstop for nearly 30 years.”
A Novello award presented to John Lennon for ‘She’s Leaving Home’ – which he later gave to a Beatles’ fan – sold for £7,767 at Christie’s in London in 2004.
Lennon and McCartney set up Northern Songs with their manager Brian Epstein and music publisher Dick James in 1963 to publish The Beatles’ songs.
The company later came under the control of ATV before being bought by Michael Jackson. Northern Songs was dissolved in 1995.
