Builders break Gary Barlow`s 3,000-pound painting

London: A portrait of singer Gary Barlow, worth 3,000 pounds, was smashed by builders working in his apartment while the singer was away.

Barlow never got to know about it as the builders managed to replace the old picture by a similar new one. Made by artist Mathew Andrews, the painting was a gift from Barlow`s mother on his 40th birthday last year. It had a collection of 50 different pictures of the singer collected over the years. "They phoned me up in a panic and said, `We`ve smashed Gary Barlow`s portrait, can you make us another one?" thesun.co.uk quoted Andrews as saying. "I made them a new one within a week and they came to collect it - so I don`t know whether Gary knows about it to this day," he added. IANS