Rare film footage of an unscheduled concert by the Beatles in Kansas City during their first US tour 44 years ago fetched £4,100 when it went under the hammer on Tuesday.

The two-minute silent, colour 8mm film was uncovered by American Drew Dimmel who attended the concert as a young boy in Kansas City in September 1964 but had forgotten about the footage until he was clearing out his parents' home.

The footage was estimated to fetch between £4,000 to £6,000.

"This was their first tour and what happened was this very rich baseball club owner (Charles O. Finley) promised to bring the Beatles to Kansas City," Alan Pritchard of Berkshire-based Cameo Auctioneers told Reuters Television. "Unfortunately it wasn't on their scheduled tour so he talked to Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, and he persuaded them to come on their day off. I think he paid something like $150,000 for their 30 minute or so appearance."

Mr Pritchard said Mr Dimmel had managed to borrow his father's new cinecamera and took it into the stadium, passed it to his father's friend in the orchestra who took a clip of the Beatles doing their first number.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.