Status Updates From One Two Three Four: The Bea...

Throughout the Beatles' tour of the UK, reporters struggled to describe the sound of thousands of adolescents screaming at the top of their voices. 'I have not attended the mass torture or execution of 5000 assorted farmyard animals', wrote the Newcastle Journals reporter Rodney Pybus. 'But I imagine the noise they would make would be very similar to that which forced my fingertips deep into my ears'.

The students of Leeds University elected Ringo Starr their vice-president.
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In Hollywood, top movie stars Edward G. Robinson, Dean Martin, Lloyd Bridges, Kirk Douglas, Shelley Winters, Jack Palance, Jack Lemmon — donated money to charity in order to queue for their autographs. In exile in France, the Duchess of Windsor sang their songs to herself. 'Oh, the Beatles. Don't you just love 'em?' she said.

There are over a thousand Beatles tribute acts in the world today. Many of them — the Tefeatles from Guatemala, Rubber Soul from Brazil, the Nowhere Boys from Colombia, Abbey Road from Spain — have now been together longer than the Beatles themselves: Britain's Bootleg Beatles and Australia's Beatnix have both been going for forty years.

Unsurprisingly, it is John who pops the poppermost, and to the greatest effect, yelling obscenities, rolling around on the stage, throwing food at other band members, pretending to be a hunchback, jumping on Paul's back, hurling himself into the audience, delighting in calling them 'fucking Krauts' or 'Nazis' or 'German spassies.
Diplomacy has never come naturally to him.