John Lennon makes friend rich

London (ANI): A former friend of late Beatles legend John Lennon is set to make a fortune by selling the singer's handwritten lyrics to the anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance" for up to 300,000 pounds. Gail Renard was a student in Montreal in May 1969, when Lennon and wife Yoko Ono arrived to hold a "bed-in" the city's Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

She and a friend managed to sneak into the hotel and up to the couple's door in order to take their interview for her school magazine. Yoko Ono answered the door and let her in. After meeting her, Lennon decided to give her a radio interview and then asked her to stay for the duration.

"Yoko answered and I asked if I could have an interview for my school newspaper. She graciously said yes. She asked us in, and I was suddenly face-to-face with John Lennon," the Telegraph quoted Renard, as saying. 'Give Peace a Chance', recorded in the hotel room, featured luminaries of the 1960s peace movement including poet Alan Ginsberg and LSD advocate Timothy Leary - plus teenager Gail on tambourine.

Later, Lennon gave Renard the lyrics to the songboard that he wrote for the recording of the song at the end of the bed-in. These spent years hanging on a wall in Renard's study but were then moved for safety, ending up in a vault. Today, the piece is the highlight of Christie's rock and pop memorabilia auction on 10 July in London.

"I thought, this is ridiculous. They should be out with somebody who can enjoy them, and they should be seen again," Renard said. Also being sold is the hand-painted bass drumskin pictured on the front cover of the Beatles' 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Christie's has estimated the songboard will fetch between 200,000 pounds and 300,000 pounds - a tidy sum for the teenager's scoop. "It's all Monopoly money to me. It's unfathomable," Renard said