Geller bids for hotel's spoons at auction

Celebrity spoon-bender Uri Geller went to the Savoy Hotel auction today – and is bidding for 360 spoons.

Furniture, fittings and memorabilia went under the hammer at Bonhams in central London this week, after the landmark hotel closed its doors for a £100m (€138m) facelift.

Paranormalist Geller was attending the sale to bid for four lots of the cutlery from the Savoy, Bonhams spokesperson Josephine Olley confirmed.

“There are 360 spoons in total, and he says he wants to add them to a car he owns which is covered in spoons,” she said.

Geller was just one of three-and-a-half thousand people, largely motivated by fond memories of the hotel on the Strand in London, to bid on the three thousand lots in the sale.

“There seem to be a lot of people keen to buy a keepsake from the Savoy - people who spent their honeymoon, or their 21st birthday, or their wedding there, and who want a trip down memory lane,” Ms Olley said.

The auction, originally predicted to raise around £1m (€1.4m), has already exceeded that total and is estimated to achieve sales worth £1.5m (€2m) by the time it closes this evening.

Highlights so far have included a white baby grand piano once played by Frank Sinatra, which sold for £11,400 (€15,700), four times its original value, and a pair of chandeliers from the hotel’s famous Thames foyer, which made £19,200 (€26,500).

A walnut and ebony bookcase commissioned by the hotel from David Linley in 1996 sold for £18,000 (€25,000), more than six times the original estimate.

The price of the items included buyer’s premium.