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Tony Iommi's Auction Raises £19,000 For Birmingham's Heartlands Hospital

The Black Sabbath guitarist flogged a load of genuinely one-off stuff for the cause...

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi's auction to raise funds for Birmingham's Heartlands hospital has finished, and the total raised clocks in at a whopping £19,000. As well as signed albums and DVDs, one of the great man's guitars fetched over 11 grand on its own.

Last month, the Lord Of The Riffs announced that, while his planned Evening With Tony Iommi event fundraiser was having to be postponed, he'd be selling some special stuff to raise cash instead.

“Now as all charitable events have been cancelled, I wanted to still do something to help," he said on Twitter. "So, I’ve put a few things together of my own up for auction. All the money raised will go to the Birmingham’s Heartlands hospital charity.

“Please! I hope that you can help – they really do need our support. Without these doctors and nurses, what would we do? We owe them so much.”

Tony has ties to the hospital, having undergone treatment for his now-clear non-Hodgkins lymphoma there. With the current crisis, he wanted to do something to help the staff continue their vital work.

“[Coronavirus is] horrible, but in some ways it’s bringing people together more," he said. "[We're] realising what we have in this country with the NHS and the great things they do.”