Apple People.

What a great crowd they were.   Before entering the door in the morning the Apple Scruffs would be sitting on the basement steps waiting for the boys to arrive.   They were a lovely bunch of girls, always cheerful, I often felt guilty when the weather was cold, although I was a huge fan of the Beatles, I could never have been so dedicated, they must have wonderful memories of that time because they even had their own magazine and certainly became part of life at Apple, George dedicated a song to them.   Not many people can say that.

Jimmy Clark was the commissionaire, he was kitted out with a dark green uniform made for him by Tommy Nutter, very chic.   He had a great personality and would write poetry, I still have one of his missives. Debbie Wellum was on reception and always a pleasure to talk to and of course Laurie on the switchboard.   I was sitting with her one day and Edward Heath walked in, he asked to speak to Robin Cruikshank, Laurie looked up and said, could I have your name, I suddenly realised her eyesight was the problem, he went a vivid red with anger, I quickly phoned Robin and it was rectified, Lol and I had a good laugh, it was pretty obvious he didn’t like women.

Tony King was the Adonis of the office, not only was he the best looking guy  but also had a great sense of humour, everybody loved him.   One of his great friends was Elton John, Tony would spend Christmas with him and he was always so generous, I couldn’t wait to hear what he got.   One year Elton had bought beautiful Harrods crackers and replaced the gifts with solid silver miniatures.   I popped up to his office one day, he was talking to a guy and I waited for the conversation to end, the guy asked if he could be helped getting out of the chair, Tony went to giving him a helping hand, no said the guy, there is a handle on my back, there is no answer to that as Tony had to get him down to the ground floor into a taxi.

We all received a memo from George, the American branch of Hells Angels were due to arrive and his instructions were to make them welcome.    He had obviously made the offer when he was over there, I don’t think he imagined they would come, however he did look a bit sheepish when I mentioned them actually living at Apple.   I can’t say we greeted them with open arms, in fact they were quite scary, and we ended up having our Christmas party with them, very relieved when they finally departed.

My office was in between the two main offices on the first floor.   I had been working late and was just about to open Peter Brown’s door when I realised he had a meeting so decided to go through Neil Aspinall’s,  on opening the door I saw Neil and Mal sitting by the fire recording memories for the Long and winding road film, I was just about to walk through and suddenly looked down, right in front of me screwing on the carpet was one of our press officers, hump death came to mind so I closed my eyes and jumped over them, Neil and Mal were oblivious.

Confession time.

I usually did the interviews, the girls on the ground floor, Laurie, Debbie and Shirley would buzz up and say if they thought the candidate would fit in, in other words, if they were too pretty, forget it.  If the Beatles were in, they sat in Peter’s office and would instruct me to leave my door ajar so they could see the legs, then they would phone to say if she passed the test or not. Sometimes the girls down stairs had already decided that the candidate wasn’t suitable so I had typed a badly written letter and went into the boys showing the spelling mistakes and saying unfortunately she would not be any good, what a cow I could be.   In my defence I loved the girls and would have missed our lunches.