LONDON - Lyrics to "Give Peace a Chance" handwritten in black marker by John Lennon have fetched over $800,000 at auction for a Montreal-raised TV writer.
Christie's said Gail Renard sold the item Thursday at its rock and pop memorabilia sale for 421,250 pounds -- about C$840,000.
That's about $200,000 over what it was expected to fetch.
Renard received the prized memento from the Beatles singer during the "bed-in for peace" held by Lennon and Yoko Ono at Montreal's Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969.
Just 16 at the time of the "bed-in" -- which attracted an array of eclectic personalities -- Renard has said she was able to get into Lennon's suite with her schoolmate by sneaking in through back staircases and a fire escape, and by outsmarting a security guard.
Renard has said a pyjamas-clad Lennon gave her the lyrics himself.
"He was always insistent that these things would be worth something one day," she said earlier this year.
She kept the item framed on her wall and later in a vault but recently decided to sell it so it "could be enjoyed."
The "bed-in" was the second held by Lennon and Ono (the first was in Amsterdam) as a way to draw attention to the war in Vietnam, when the Beatles were on the verge of breaking up.
Visitors to the Montreal event included comedian Tommy Smothers, drug guru Timothy Leary and a group of Hare Krishnas, all of whom can be heard chanting on "Give Peace a Chance."
Renard remained friends with Lennon for years after that fateful week in suite 1742, meeting up with him in Toronto and calling him on his "magic" phone number.
"Wherever he was in the world, if you needed something, if you rang that number they would get in touch (with him), and it worked," she said earlier this year.
Lennon even helped jumpstart her journalism career by calling the Beatles Monthly magazine in Britain and insisting they publish Renard's article on the bed-in.
