Mick Jagger’s hair fetches $6,300 at Bonhams auction in London

A clump of Mick Jagger’s hair has fetched £4,000 ($6,300) at Bonhams auction in London – more than four times the £900 ($1,400) raised by a clump of bandmate Keith Richards’s mop.

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger’s curls were snipped by his first girlfriend Chrissie Shrimpton nearly 50 years ago.

His heirloom had been expected to fetch between £1,500 and £2,000 but sparked a bidding frenzy at the Bonhams sale in central London.

There had been speculation that Mick Jagger himself would instruct a telephone bidder on his behalf.

Access to his hair by interested parties could determine DNA and Mick Jagger guards his privacy jealously after being hit with several paternity suits in the past.

Bonhams would only say that the hair went to a UK-based private collector for £4,000, including the buyer’s premium.

Mick Jagger had his hair – which, along with his pout, was already one of his trademark features – cut when the couple were staying at Chrissie Shrimpton’s family home, Rose Hill Farm.

Unbeknown to Chrissie Shrimpton, her grandmother kept a lock of it for the rest of her life.

On her death, it passed to Chrissie Shrimpton’s aunt and when she died the hair was handed to Shrimpton, now 67, by a cousin taking care of personal effects.

All proceeds from today’s sale will be donated to charity Changing Faces, which supports people with facial disfigurements.

The clump of Keith Richards’s hair was cut from his head by 16-year-old fan Maggie Richardson in the Stones’ dressing room in Preston, Lancashire, in 1964.

It went for £900 at a recent auction.

Chrissie Shrimpton was a Covent Garden secretary whose sister Jean became a 1960s supermodel.

Mick Jagger started dating Chrissie Shrimpton while he was a student at the London School of Economics and on the brink of stardom.

When they met, Mick Jagger was sharing a squalid flat in Kilburn, north London with Keith Richards.

The romance lasted three turbulent years, during which Mick Jagger became one of the world’s biggest music stars with a legion of adoring groupies.

Although the couple became engaged and moved into a flat in Regent’s Park, the relationship ended in 1966.

The Stones’ songs Under My Thumb and Stupid Girl are said to have been inspired by Mick Jagger and Chrissie Shrimpton’s relationship.