Great names from Beatles to Best all in Judith’s book
AN autograph hunter who met and collected signatures of the likes of Paul McCartney, George Best and other celebrities as a teenager in the 1960s is selling her collection.
Judith Leach, 71, who lives in Moira, has a collection of star signatures that reads like a who’s who of the time.
Other names collected in her youth including Manchester United manager Matt Busby, Graham Nash of The Hollies and later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street.
Judith began collecting autographs of celebrities in 1963.
The mum-of-two has now decided it is time to let someone else share her precious memories. Her autograph book is expected to sell for more than £1,500 at an auction being held next month.
Among her memorable encounters with the stars was the day in 1965 when she was walking with a friend to Granada TV Studios in Manchester, where The Beatles were due to be filming.
“To go to the studio we had to go past The Midland Hotel, near St Peter’s Square,” said Judith. “Outside the hotel was a big black Rolls-Royce with blacked out windows.
“The revolving door started revolving and John and Paul came out. We raced across. My friend grabbed John – and he trod on her foot by accident.
“I grabbed Paul and gave him my autograph book and pen, which I had with me all the time then just in case I happened upon someone.
“But then they were quickly ushered into the Rolls-Royce and Paul still had my book.
“He could tell from the look on my face and quickly signed ‘Paul’ before handing me the pen and book back just as the car sped away.
“Later on, I stuck a photo of Paul next to his photograph so people would realise who it was.
“The next day we went back to the hotel but by that point word had got around and there was a huge crowd outside.”
Judith, who grew up in Heaton Mersey, Stockport, and lived in Manchester until she was 35, went to three Beatles concerts at the city’s Apollo Theatre, in Ardwick Green, and the autograph collection includes her tickets.
“The only way I could describe it is you could have cut a piece of the atmosphere out,” she said.
The head mistress and chaplain at the convent school Judith attended were huge supporters of Manchester
United. The school staged an annual football match on St Patrick’s Day between England and Ireland and that is when, in 1965, Judith met George Best and Matt Busby.
“We were in the only classroom overlooking the car park,” she said.
“Someone spotted that George Best and Matt Busby were arriving and the classroom emptied.
“Everybody had left things for them to sign and, following the match, they had afternoon tea with the nuns.
“But we waited around to meet them again afterwards, and that’s how I got a second signature with a personal message.”
Judith, whose father used to work at the Manchester Evening News and the Manchester Guardian, started the book with autographs of Irish pop group, The Batchelors, in about 1963, in Blackpool.
She obtained many of the signatures in music shops in Manchester or waiting outside concerts.
Her Rolling Stones signatures, however, were obtained with the help of a friend of her mother.
The page features the signatures of Mick Jagger, Keith Richard – an early instance of him dropping the ‘s’ from his surname at the behest of manager Andrew Loog Oldham – Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts, the latter as ‘Charlie Boy.’
Judith said: “It was so many years ago I can’t remember the details but I think it was at a hospital charity event.
“I know it was from one of my mother’s friends and we pasted the precious piece of paper into my book.”
Other famous names in the collection include Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Sandie Shaw, Carl Perkins, Alan Price, The Animals, Elkie Brookes, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Rockin’ Berries and ‘Swingin’ Norman Vaughn.
The book goes under the hammer at The Lichfield Auction Centre as Lot 573 in a two-day auction starting next Monday.
The catalogue can be viewed online at: