The £3,700 raspberry
Barker's script under the hammer
Ronnie Barker’s hand-written scripts for The Two Ronnies serial Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town have sold for £3,700.The price was in line with auctioneers’ estimates – although a lot lower than the £48,500 Barker’s handwritten script for the classic Fork Handles sketch fetched last year
Barker donated the 56-page script to a school fundraising auction 32 years ago and it sat in a drawer since then before going up for sale.
The script was adapted from an earlier Spike Milligan piece, and also broadcast in 1976.
The buyer, private autograph collector Valentine Christensen, 59, from Buckinghamshire, paid a total of £4,347.50, including a 17.5 per cent buyer's premium.
He said: ‘To own an original hand-written manuscript is out of this world. "I've always been a fan of Ronnie Barker. I'm going to keep it. I will pass it down the family and never go into the market.’
The foolscap script, signed: ‘With best wishes, Ronnie Barker’, contains insertions, amendments, deletions and corrections in Barker’s own writing.
Published: 22 Jun 2008
