Election fever grips Moore Allen

ELECTION fever has gripped auctioneers Moore Allen & Innocent, with the clever money on one of the political heavyweights of modern times.

Before the late Screaming Lord Sutch formed the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in 1983, he was a musician – although, it has to be said, not one of great note: Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends was named Worst Album of All Time in a 1998 BBC poll. 

Regardless, his LP Alive and Well (1980) has turned up in large and eclectic collection of vinyl records, which will go under the hammer in Cirencester on Friday, April 30 from 10am. 

Among the rarest albums in the collection is an original pressing of The Beatles’ White Album, with its unique serial number and embossed – rather than printed – Beatles logo.

Collectors go mad for this one – especially when it is complete, as this one is, with the portrait prints of the four band members, and lyrics sheet. The collection also includes some early Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Eagles and Johnny Kidd and The Pirates.

A bid of around £100 to £150 should secure the cream of the collection, while the remainder, and the 7-inch singles, will be auctioned as separate lots.

As an aside, Screaming Lord Sutch was, eventually, elected Prime Minister in the 1990s – although only in a fantasy advertisement for Heineken – but he actually managed to finish off the SDP, by polling more than David Owen’s party in the 1990 Bootle by-election. Days later, the SDP was dissolved. 

With the economy dominating this year’s election, and voters still angry over bankers’ bonuses, it will be interesting to see how well received a Natwest marketing gimmick from the 1980s is. 

Back when people had savings, the high street bank encouraged children to open accounts by offering a family of piggy banks if, as the adverts pointed out, they saved enough.

Most children got baby Woody with their £3 deposit plus £1 membership, while regular savers could collect daughter Annabel, son Maxwell, mother Lady Hilary and – assuming your father actually was a peer, or a banker – Lord Nathaniel Westminster. 

It’s rare to find a set of five Wade piggies, mainly because children were such fickle savers, but also because pre-teens and porcelain rarely mix well, so a winning bid of between £80 and £100 is expected. 

Also in the ceramics section is a familiar pub plaque for West Country Ales, circa 1958. The brewery was formed from the amalgamation of the Cheltenham Brewery and the Stroud Brewery. Coincidentally, both had started production in 1760, and so the date appeared on the plaque along with a castellated tower, previously the logo of the Cheltenham Brewery.

The plaques were cemented onto the walls of tied houses across Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Herefordshire and even into Wales. As such, it’s unusual to find one in pristine condition, and this example is expected to achieve £100 to £150.

Finally, while the Cotswolds enjoys a sunny spring, a large collection of garden furniture and ornaments has amassed at the auction house. Good quality garden tables are expected to sell for around £100, with sets of chairs estimated at between £50 and £200. 

Creating a real buzz is a wooden beehive, which is expected to sell for between £100 and £150, as is an attractive Cotswold Stone dovecote, standing at about four feet tall.

Sir Nathaniel Westminster, and his family of “beautiful porcelain pigs”, as the advertisement jingle insisted	A West Country Ales plaque
A collection of vinyl records including classics by The Beatles and, erm, Screaming Lord Sutch