Beatles firing letter could fetch £ 15,000

A LETTER written by the Beatles’ manager following the sacking of the band’s original drummer is to be sold.

Brian Epstein signed up Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Pete Best – the band’s first drummer – on January 24 1962, after hearing them play.

But only months later he fired Best, inset playing with the band, and replaced him with Ringo Starr.

The letter was part of a tranche of communications Epstein sent to “secret Beatle” Joe Flannery, a key figure in the Fab Four’s rise to fame.

Flannery, who died last year aged 87, was the band’s booking manager from 1962- 63, during the early history of the Fab Four.

On September 8. 1962, Epstein wrote to tell him he had released Best from his contract.

He had told the drummer three weeks earlier that he had to leave the band.

The letter has been kept by

Flannery’s family and is now being sold by his nephew. Epstein wrote: “I read from the Mersey Beat ( a Liverpool music publication) Pete Best has now joined The All Stars.

“I have sent, today, to him a certificate of release from his obligations under contract to myself.”

Best previously spoke of how Epstein had told him at a meeting that he was being sacked and replaced by another drummer.

“I went in happy as Larry. The last thing on my mind was that I was going to get kicked out of the Beatles,” he told a BBC documentary. He ( Epstein) said ‘ Pete, I don’t know how to tell you this – the boys want you out’. That was the bombshell. To me, it was like disbelief ... I’ll wake up in the morning and this will be all gone.”

The collection will be go under the hammer at Omega Auctions in Newton- le- Willows, Merseyside, on October 27 with a £ 15,000 estimate.