HANDWRITTEN Beatles lyrics which namecheck Blackburn were yesterday sold at auction for more than £800,000.

A private American collector paid £810,000 for John Lennon’s original words to A Day in the Life after bidding by phone at the Sotheby’s sale in New York.

Experts had expected the lyrics to fetch only about £472,000.

The lyrics for the song famously contain the line ‘4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire’.

Lennon, who wrote the bulk of the song with contributions from Paul McCartney, was inspired to pen the line after reading a Daily Mail report about the state of the roads in the East Lancashire town.

It made Blackburn famous to millions of Beatles fans worldwide and also inspired the Blackburn Rovers fanzine 4,000 Holes.

Yesterday’s auction featured a double-sided sheet of paper with Lennon’s edits and corrections to the words.

It is written in black felt marker and blue ball-point pen with other annotation in red ink.

A Day in the Life, the closing track on the Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, is considered by many experts to be the Beatles’ finest song.

In its day it was controversial, even being banned by the BBC for a number of years for its allegedly drug-inspired lyrics.

US magazine Rolling Stone listed it at number 26 in its compilation of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.