Magical Mystery tour party.

I went in to Nems to see Laurie, and Alistair Taylor came over bragging about the party organised for the launch of Magical Mystery tour film to be held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, Bayswater. He seemed to enjoy my discomfort thinking I wouldn’t be going, however Peter Brown invited me, I think he might have felt slightly guilty about what had happened.  It was a fancy dress party, never been good with that, however, I crocheted a pink mini dress and wore a large candy dummy around my neck and went as a baby.   Paul and Jane turned up as Pearly King and Queen; John went as a rocker, Ringo as a dandy and Maureen as a Red Indian squaw.   The Beach boys turned up, brilliant do, I had a ball.

I started my job with Neil at the new offices in Wigmore Street, it was great to be back in the fold.   

The receptions at both Nems and Apple were always interesting, people would just turn up. At Nems it was David Essex and Jonathan King, however we did have a guy turn up trying to get an interview and he suddenly had an epileptic fit, scared the hell out of all of us as we hadn’t got a clue what to do.  At Apple it was Paul Simon, a very quiet guy, I did talk to him and he mentioned his latest song, “Homeward Bound” – I’m sitting on a railway station etc when I asked what station it was, he told me it was Farnworth station, my village near Widnes. What a small world.

I walked in to the main office one morning to find John Lennon with his hands around the throat of Dick James, The Beatles music publisher; he had him up against the wall shouting “why the hell didn’t you ask us first”? I ran out looking for Neil and Mal.    Thankfully Neil managed to calm the whole situation down.   Dick had sold his majority shares in Northern songs and in doing so the Beatles lost the chance to own their own music, guess where my sympathy lay.   Years later, we discovered that Dick James had opened up an office in New York, he would collect his percentage in the States and then send what was left to England where he would take his share again, this was called double dipping.   At one of Ringo’s parties  at Tittenhurst, I was talking to Elton and he mentioned his publisher was Dick James, my first reaction was, be careful, he double dips, Elton said he would never do that to me, so I called Ringo over and he confirmed what I had said.   A few days later Elton phoned to say the same thing was happening to him so he sued, and won. 

The Beatles were going to India,   Ringo phoned, “can you do me a favour Barb, can you get me a suitcase and fill it with baked beans and Dr Collis Browne”?, the latter being an old remedy for stomach upsets, I did feel at the time that he would probably find it hard in India, he had been a very sickly child and strange food did not agree with him, then he told me Maureen had bought adult baby grows because she couldn’t cope with insects, the trip was doomed, they returned within two weeks.

Board Meetings happened frequently and sometimes unplanned, I was allotted to the task to attend. The girls in the office would worry that if a meeting was suddenly called and I might have gone to lunch they would have to cover, so they would always make sure I was given sandwiches to keep me in the office.   What they didn’t know, and I never told them, was that it was always great fun.   They discussed mundane things like the coffee machine.   However, one day I got my comeuppance.   Peter Brown had a new secretary, her name was Carole and at the time she was going out with Jimi Hendrix. She brought in the coffee and as soon as she left John said, “Why can’t we have good looking birds working for us”? He kept ranting as I slowly disappeared down my chair, suddenly George noticed me and said, “but we don’t mean Barbara do we John”. He stopped his rant and said “no, of course not”.   Life was good again.

Every day we got to meet new people, John Crittle, an Australian who had opened up a clothes store called Dandy fashions, very entertaining but you just knew he wasn’t the kind to settle down, in fact one of his offspring was a girl called Darcey Bussell, a beautiful ballerina who has done very well for herself.  Alexis Mardas, the boys called him Magic Alex, he was supposed to be an electronics genius, but I always had my doubts. One of his ideas was to make wall paper with speakers embedded in it for all round sound!!!!!!!   John seemed the most enthusiastic, so they bought a house in Boston Place for him to work from, charlatan was written all over his face, eventually I was proved right.

I got a call from Duke Street Kennels, a local pet shop.   Paul had ordered a Yorkshire Terrier for Jane and the litter had arrived.   I gave Paul the message and told him how much I loved that breed, “tell you what Barb, you can come with me to choose it tomorrow.”  The next day I was taking dictation from Peter Asher who had been employed as head of publishing, another lovely guy, both him and his sister were utterly charming, suddenly I heard a commotion in reception and heard Pauls voice, my first thought was sod it he forgot to pick me up.   Paul walked in and handed me the cutest puppy. Paul said “I bought two, this one is for you,” what a shock.   Peter looked at me and said “that is definitely worth a kiss.”    The problem I had was that so many girls were flinging themselves at the Beatles; I didn’t want to appear a pushy broad so I just thanked him profusely.   On the way home that evening I entered the archaic lift to go home with my new addition when Mal Evans got in. The lift was already full, we all looked at him and said this lift will not take the extra weight, we were right, we spent at least an hour while the engineers tried to get us down to the ground, don’t think I was ever that happy in a lift again.