A family dispute has broken out over a Thursday auction of George Michael memorabilia, including the guitar the singer played in the video for "Faith," after the brother of the late owner said she "would be horrified" to see her private collection sold to the highest bidder.
The 32 lots being auctioned by Sworders come from the estate of Siobhan Bailey, who spent 20 years as George Michael's personal assistant and confidante before her death in 2014. Because Bailey died without a registered will while still legally married to her estranged husband, Ian Belcher, the collection passed to him under inheritance law — and he is now selling it. Bailey's brother, Gerard Bailey, says the family considers the sale a "breach of her privacy" and has asked the auction house to call it off, or at minimum strip her name from the listing.
A Trusted Confidante, Not a Headline-Seeker
Bailey joined George Michael's team in 1984, the year his duo Wham! scored its first number-one hit with "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," and remained his assistant until shortly before her death, deliberately staying out of the tabloid spotlight that followed the singer for much of his career. "I think she was one of the few people George trusted and whose opinion he valued," her brother told the BBC. "She was always honest and straight with him. I guess that's why she stayed working for him for so long through the very, very good and not so good times."
The Faith guitar, he said, was "a gift" from Michael because "he thought so much of her." Sworders describes the lots as a "remarkable group of memorabilia" from Bailey's collection, which also includes signed photographs from the Wham! era and other items accumulated over two decades at the singer's side.
An Inheritance Twist
The dispute hinges on a quirk of timing and inheritance law: Bailey was in the process of divorcing Belcher when she died, meaning the marriage was technically still intact and her estate passed automatically to her husband rather than to the family members she had reportedly intended to leave the items to. Her brother says she had begun drafting a will shortly before her death that would have left the memorabilia to her nieces and nephews, but it was never formally registered. Had she lived only a few more weeks, he said, Belcher would not have been considered her next of kin at all.
Bailey has told the auction house that selling under his sister's name is "disingenuous" and "wholly unethical," and that profiting from the items is "egregiously shameful." There is no legal dispute over Belcher's right to sell — the estate passed to him lawfully — but the family's objection is a moral one, over whose name the sale carries and whether it honors a woman who spent two decades protecting George Michael's privacy rather than cashing in on it. Both Sworders and Belcher declined to comment ahead of Thursday's sale.
