A famous Bradford shirt manufacturer has been forced into liquidation - despite having a list of celebrity customers.

S Seymour and Co, which has been at the cutting edge of shirt design since the 1920s, made customised garments for stars including chart-topper Gareth Gates.

The firm, based in Sunbridge Road, made shirts for Bradford's Pop Idol featuring his trademark GG motif on the cuffs, at the request of his tailor Adam Fisher International, in Addingham.

It also created a special plain black shirt with a black-and-white gingham check piping on the inside collar, with GG on the double cuff, as a gift for Gareth at his home-coming concert in Bradford's Centenary Square last summer.

But increased competition from overseas and a shrinking customer base have forced the firm into liquidation, devastating its owner Michael Graham, pictured handing over a monogrammed shirt made for Gareth Gates.

Paul Philmore, of Wakefield-based corporate recovery and insolvency practitioners, Jackson Jolliffe Cork - which has been appointed as the liquidator -said Seymour's had suffered a gradual decline.

"It has suffered from increasing competition where people have shirts produced overseas, and the customer base has got older and diminished as a result," he said.

"Mr Graham is very upset. He has tried very hard and has invested a lot of money into it."

Mr Philmore said a Leeds company has bought the order book from the firm, which was founded in Great Horton, Bradford, by Sydney Seymour in 1929.

The majority of the 14 staff, some of whom had worked for the company since their teens, have found alternative employment, others have been taken on by the firm who bought the order book.

Since then Seymour shirts have built up a worldwide reputation for the style and quality of its products which were supplied to famous Savile Row tailors and snapped up by the rich and famous.

The company's famous customers included the doyen of British literature, J B Priestley, Second World War RAF ace Sir Douglas Bader and legendary Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery, who led the British to victory in the battle of El Alamein in North Africa. Montgomery reportedly sent a letter thanking the company for a pair of pyjamas.

Latest celebrities to sport Seymour shirts include Bradford's former world snooker champion, Joe Johnson, England football stars Emile Heskey and Kieron Dyer, as well as peers of the realm and MPs.

The company's biggest challenge was creating a shirt for Britain's tallest man.

At 7ft 6.25ins, Chris Greener, of Kent, always had difficulty getting shirts which fit him perfectly.

But after hearing that Seymour could make shirts for anyone at a tall people's convention, the former professional basketball player decided to lay down the challenge.

They succeeded and Britain's biggest man joined the firm's list of satisfied customers