Guitar played on Ghost Town sells for thousands

A guitar played on a famous 80s hit has sold for more than £11,000 at auction after its previous owner bought it for £200.

The 1971 blue Fender Precision sold for £11,376 after its previous owner spotted the Specials guitar in a music shop in Kettering and bought it for just a few hundred pounds.

It was played by Horace Panter in May 1981 to record the Coventry-based band's seminal single Ghost Town.

The bass was sold at Gardiner Houlgate auctions in Corsham, Wiltshire, where auctioneers previously predicted it could fetch up to £20,000.

Auctioneer Luke Hobbs predicted the instrument would "stir up quite a lot of interest among fans and collectors".

He added: "Ghost Town is such an evocative track reflecting the social and political unrest of Britain at that time - and Horace Panter's bass is a big part of it."

Ghost Town stayed at number one in the UK charts for three weeks and spent 11 weeks in the UK Top 40 when it was first released.

After The Specials broke up in 1981, Panter used the bass with new wave supergroup General Public, who had a US hit in 1984 with Tenderness.

Follow BBC Wiltshire on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.