JOHN MADE JANE ASHER CRY — THEN PAUL SEDUCED HER

THE Beatles quickly got used to fans screaming hysterically during their early performances, but nobody had ever seen a mob like the one which greeted their exit from London’s Royal Albert Hall following a concert there on April 18, 1963.

According to the next day’s newspapers, that was the night Beatlemania was born.

While a crowd of fans blocked the path of their limousine, several climbed on to the roof of the car.

The noise was frightening and I should know because I ’d squeezed in alongside them — and regretted it almost immediately.

Eventually the police managed to clear a path for their getaway but not before several helmets had been sent flying. The problem was, where to go next?

The Ad Lib club off Leicester Square was their usual nightly haunt but, as a very nervous George Harrison pointed out, hundreds of fans would already be making their way there.

‘You can come back to my flat,’ I volunteered — rashly, given I was renting a bedsit on the King’s Road. I hadn’t planned on entertaining four guests and the number swelled to seven with the arrival of singer Shane Fenton (later known as Alvin Stardust, now sadly deceased), his girlfriend Susan and 17-year- old actress Jane Asher, who had been at the Albert Hall to interview The Beatles for The Radio Times. You had to climb three flights of stone stairs to get to the flat.

There were not enough chairs, so we all sat on the carpet and swigged from bottles of Mateus rosé, then the sophisticated drink for the young in this posh part of London.

Soon John grabbed the small bottle of amphetamines sent to me by my mother from our home in Torquay, to help me keep awake when I drove from London to see her. They were prescribed for slimming but we took them as ‘uppers’ and tongues quickly loosened as they took effect.

That was bad news for Miss Asher, who was bombarded with some offensively intimate questions by John and soon began quietly weeping.

After that party-killing interrogation, it was left to Paul to escort the flame-haired beauty back down the stone steps and into the night, beginning a relationship which saw them together for the next five years.