AUTOGRAPHS OF John Lennon and Yoko Ono, obtained in Co Mayo more than 40 years ago, will be auctioned next week.
Sheppard’s Irish Auction House has valued a page bearing both signatures at €500 to €800 for its auction next Wednesday afternoon in Durrow, Co Laois.
Auctioneer Michael Sheppard said the autographs were being sold by a Mayo man who, as a teenager, had asked the couple to sign his autograph book during their visit in 1968.
That summer, Beatle John Lennon and his partner Yoko Ono stayed at the Great Southern Hotel in Mulranny. Mr Sheppard said the teenager had “psyched himself up” and gone to the hotel on June 23rd to ask for the autographs and found that the famous couple were “as sweet as pie”.
Lennon was visiting Mayo because he had bought Dorinish, a 19-acre uninhabited island in Clew Bay, the previous year. He had reputedly wanted to build a house on the island to use as a retreat but the plan never materialised.
Instead, in 1970, he granted permission to London-based squatter and “land-rights activist” Sid Rawle to use the island.
Rawle established a “hippy colony” on Dorinish that lasted for two years. The 25-strong group, known as “The Diggers”, provoked huge publicity and considerable controversy at the time.
Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980. Ono subsequently sold Dorinish to a local farmer and it reverted to sheep grazing.
