“What's incredible about this guitar is that it was Marc Bolan's before. That's a double whammy”: Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells Telecaster has cropped up on the BBC's Antiques Roadshow – after it was bought for $12,500

Detail of a vintage 1966 Fender Telecaster electric guitar previously owned by English musician Mike Oldfield, taken on July 28, 2015. The instrument was also the guitar used to record Oldfield's hugely popular 'Tubular Bells' album.

“Tubular Bells” and “Mike Oldfield” immediately evoke the iconic earworm that is the tune's opening piano motif, which, on a broader pop culture level, is inextricably linked to William Friedkin's 1973 horror film The Exorcist. So how exactly do guitars play a role in this story?

Well, Mike Oldfield, who recorded Tubular Bells at just 19, used only one guitar on it: a 1966 Fender Telecaster. Over fifty years later, this same guitar re-emerged in the public consciousness via none other than the BBC's Antiques Roadshow, which aired just last Sunday.