A hair strand of Elvis Presley saved by his personal barber was sold for £1,055 at an auction.

Homer Gill Gilleland toured with Elvis for more than 20 years. He dyed the singer’s hair black and then cut it, saving strands in a towel.

He would then bundle up the towel, with hair inside, and take it home in a bag, friends of Gilleland said.

Originally, the piece of hair had been expected to fetch only up to £250 at Saturday’s auction in Devizes, Wiltshire.

Gilleland is said to have started selling strands of the hair in a souvenir shop on the street opposite the singer’s home Graceland in Memphis in the US after Elvis’s death in 1977.

The auctioned strand was given to Thomas B Morgan Jr. in 2002 by the barber. Morgan worked in the Sheriff’s Office of Shelby County and knew Elvis.

A strand of Elvis’s hair sold for $115,000 in an internet auction in November 2002.