DAY I TRACKED DOWN JOHN’S DAD

IF I had used a tape recorder when doing the Beatles book, I would not only have had historic material from them, talking about their work at the time it was happening, but I would also have recordings of so many associated with them who are now long since dead — such as John’s Aunt Mimi, Paul’s father Jim, George’s parents, Ringo’s parents.

I even managed to find Ringo’s real father, who had split from Ringo’s mother when his son was very small. He was a window cleaner in Crewe and had refused all interviews and publicity. He had never come forward when Ringo became famous, unlike John Lennon’s father, Alfred.

John (right) had refused to see Alf for several years but I tracked him down, washing dishes in a roadside pub. He was a great talker and very funny. I told John about him, and John decided he would meet him, but secretly. It would have been good to have had Alfred on tape, a spoken record of his memories of meeting and marrying John’s mother, and then abandoning John.

Then, John’s Aunt Mimi got a copy of the manuscript of the book and began moaning to John about it. I went to see her and it turned out she wanted me to take out John’s bad language.

I refused. Instead, I kept Mimi quiet by putting in an extra quote from her at the end of an early chapter, saying John as a boy was ‘as happy as the day was long’.