With loons like Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Madonna running around the English countryside, is it really a shock that the Brits passed on taking claim of another psycho?

Bonhams was unable to unload a 20-page score to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho after the minimum price was not met. The auction house had hoped to sell it for somewhere around $56,000. The music was composed by Bernard Herrmann to accompany Hitchcock's 1960 thriller. The manuscript carries the notes to the slashing, shrieking violin sounds that play when a knife-wielding killer bursts in on actress Janet Leigh as she showers in the Bates Motel.

The score is being returned to Hermann’s third wife. Madonna? Sorry, she's staying.
 

Jason Hart, 33, from Farnworth, Greater Manchester (England) really dropped the ball trying to fake his death. Now he’s focused on not dropping the soap.

Hart, who bilked eBay customers out of nearly $50,000 between September 2006 and April 2007 plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and perjury. He was also convicted of perjury after telling the court his mother had died. See ya in 18 to 24 months.

Having collected the cash for items like Xbox consoles, mobile phones, watches and sports tickets, Hart decided it would be easier to stop the calls from angry customers by having “his father” call a local newspaper and report Hart had died in a house fire.
 

Maybe the recession hasn’t quite made it across the ocean. Former reality star of Big Brother, 27-year-old Jade Goody managed to auction off the rights to her wedding over the weekend for the bargain price of $1.4 million. That cake must have been delicious.

Goody, who transformed herself from villain to valiant after being diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer, had no problems selling out her big day.

"People will say I'm doing this for money," she was quoted as saying by The Sun tabloid. "And they're right. I am, but not to buy flash cars or big houses. It's for my sons' future."

With only a few weeks left to live, Goody married 21-year-old Jack Tweed … with painkillers stashed inside her dress.
 

The death mask of Oliver Cromwell is up for auction.

He loathed vanity so much that he insisted his portraits depict him faithfully, 'warts and all'. And even after his death, Oliver Cromwell's instructions were followed to the letter.

This death mask shows the puritanical Lord Protector of England in all his grizzled, lumpy glory. There has been no attempt to conceal the growth on his lower lip or straighten his crooked nose.

All in all, the mask doesn't make an attractive artwork ... though that probably won't bother the person who buys it this week.

The plaster cast, made around 350 years ago, has been put up for sale at auction by a private collector. It has an estimated value of £1,000, even though experts can't be sure exactly when it was made.

Roy Butler, of Wallis and Wallis auctioneers in Lewes, East Sussex, who is selling the mask, said: 'It is clearly a very old cast.

'I think six were made after Cromwell's death and this is either one of those originals or a copy made shortly afterwards.'

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NEW YORK (Jennifer Peltz/AP) — Punk rock is on the block. Make that the auction block.

Memorabilia from some of punk rock's biggest acts and seminal moments - including a scrawled flyer for one of the Clash's first shows and publicity photos signed by the Sex Pistols - is headed for a Nov. 24 Christie's auction.

The event includes more than 120 records, photos and promotional pieces for such punk, garage rock and new wave legends as the Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, the Ramones, David Bowie, Blondie, the Cure and the Smiths.

The auction is Christie's first to focus on punk mementos, signaling the collectible status of a brash, anti-authoritarian rock movement that largely thumbed its nose at posterity.

"Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn't be something we'd be auctioning here," said Simeon Lipman, Christie's pop culture chief. "But now, people of a certain age have a certain ability to splurge on this material."

Should they care to, highlights include a rare poster for a 1976 Ramones concert in London widely credited with helping inspire such British punk titans as the Clash and the Sex Pistols and a flyer for a show later that year featuring the latter two bands and the Buzzcocks.

Other prime finds: a copy of the Sex Pistols' first press release and a 1966 promotional packet in which an up-and-comer called David Jones promulgated his new last name: Bowie.

The various punk items are expected to fetch between $300 and $6,000 apiece.

The items generally weren't designed to last for decades, making the few that have survived all the more tantalizing, Lipman said.

The auction also features artist-designed toys and several big-ticket classic-rock collectibles, such as the portable organ John Lennon played in the Beatles' indelible 1965 appearance at Shea Stadium.

It was broken during the show and quickly traded in at an Atlanta music shop, where the owner realized its significance and held onto it, Lipman said. The now-functioning organ is expected to fetch $150,000 to $200,000.