Laughing all the way to the bank
SILENT EARNER: The iconic bowler and cane used by comedy genius Charlie Chaplin sold for £75,000 at Bonhams in Los Angeles in 2006.
HEADS UP: Another bowler worn by Stan Laurel, right, in his 1930s films with Oliver Hardy, went for £26,250 in 2011.
RAISING THE BRA: At an auction in 2021, the bikini worn by Barbara Windsor, top right, in the 1969 comedy classic Carry On Camping made a cool £9,500.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A picture of the foot, far right, used in
TV’s Monty Python was sold for £17,000 in 2014.
TURNED
PRICE AGAIN: A fan of comic entertainer George Formby, below left, bought the star’s ukelele for £8 in 1961… and then sold it in 2019 for £8,400.
I SHALL SELL THIS ONLY ONCE: A painting called The Fallen Madonna With The Big Boobies became a running joke in comedy ’Allo! ’Allo. The prop, below right, went under the hammer in 2018, making £15,000.
REAL COSTUME DRAMA: It’s only a tatty jacket, waistcoat and woolly hat, but the outfit worn by Bill Owen as Compo, top left, in TV’s Last Of The Summer Wine notched up a tidy £6,000 in 2023.
An original handwritten script from The Two Ronnies’ Four Candles hardware shop sketch sold for £48,500 in 2007.
THE ONE WHERE… Words from US sitcom Friends went for £22,000 at auction. The two scripts, from The One With Ross’s Wedding Part I and Part II, had been rescued from a bin.
GETTING THE BIRD: In 2018, puppeteer Phil Fletcher snapped up Rod Hull’s Emu for £9,000. He already owned Keith Harris’s Orville.
A PREMIER PRODUCT:
A puppet of exPrime Minister Margaret Thatcher from TV’s Spitting Image sold for £11,224 in a Sotheby’s auction in 2000.
Six
Reliant Regal Supervans were used in the BBC comedy Only
Fools And
Horses. One of them sold for £41,625 in 2017 while two of Del Boy’s caps also fetched £10,000.
TOP OF THE CHOPS: The butcher’s van used by Corporal Jones in the classic sitcom Dad’s Army was sold to a museum in Thetford, Norfolk, in 2012. The 1935 Ford box van went for £63,000.
BEER WE GO: The bar from the 1980s US sitcom Cheers, starring Ted Danson and Kirstie Alley, sold for a glassy £543,000 when it was auctioned off last year.