Chapter 14 High Noone

Meet the Beatles (Again) 1965

By Peter Noone

So around this time (I think it was November 1st or 2nd?) I heard that the Beatles were doing a special at Granada TV in Manchester, and being a totally fab teen star, I decided to go over there and see them.

They were doing a TV show featuring all the people who had recorded their incredible songs, and although I had never recorded one of their songs (I did know all the words) so.’

I decided that as I was well known at Granada TV due to my childhood appearances there as Stanley Fairclough on Coronation Street, so when I got to the studios I drove in the back gate and when the security guard stopped me I said “Beatles” and maybe because it was a beautiful Jaguar he waved me in. I think he thought I was one of the Beatles.

This is what I found about the TV show.

The Music Of Lennon & McCartney.

A Granada TV Special

Peter & Gordon (World Without Love), Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas (Bad To Me), Marianne Faithful (Yesterday), Cilla Black (It’s For You), The Beatles (Daytripper and We Can Work It Out), plus Henry Mancini, Peter Sellers, Dick Rivers, Lulu, Esther Phillips, Alan Haven, Fritz Spiegel, and The George Martin Orchestra.

You may note there is no mention of Peter Noone, or Herman’s Hermits but we all wished we had recorded a Beatles song, because we knew them all completely (and in the original keys too)

So here I find myself backstage at an incredible Beatles event, and nobody knows I am not one of the artists who has recorded one of their songs. I run into Henry Mancini and he is one of the nicest and friendliest men on the planet, but he obviously doesn’t know I am not on the show, so I realize that I can play that game for as; long as it lasts or until someone shouts “HEY he hasn’t recorded a Beatles song so throw him out!”

I can’t believe my good luck, so I basically hang with the vibe, saying hello to everyone and pretending that I am one of the artists and people are now asking me to go to makeup and I am feeling pretty silly, because I know that everyone there thinks I am there for something else, and I am now the total backstage “Wally”, but I decide it is most absolutely worth it. As you know when good fortune smiles upon you, it’s limits require some tests.

First I see George Harrison getting a cup of tea with Terry Doran in the Granada TV cafeteria.

As luck would have it, all the tea ladies there knew me from my previous life on Coronation Street, and cheered me up instantly by making a huge fuss over me in front of a Beatle no less. “Hello Luv” How’s your Mum” (Mum was not my MUM but the one who had played my Mum in the street and gone to live in Australia)

“She’s fine thanks,” No one asked

“What the Ôell are you doin’ ere?”

You have to remember that it is quite probable that George Harrison didn’t know if I had recorded a Beatles song, so he says hello and Terry asks me if this is the same studio I used to do Coronation Street in.

I haven’t been in Coronation Street for 3 years, but because nobody except my Mum and My Auntie Celia watched it every week, nobody knows how very little I did in the show, and of course the Fabs NEVER saw Coronation Street anyway so George now thinks I am still on Coronation Street, and asks “How is Len?”

Len is Len Fairclough and he plays my Dad in Coronation Street but this world is so jumbled that people thought he was my real dad, and it was so difficult to explain that I just used to roll with it and just smile knowingly, which is called “Cheeky Chappie “ in England and not something I am bad at at all.

Chatting with Terry and George (who both call me Herman), I spy out of the corner of my little eye another Beatle. John is looking for a cup of tea and I am felling pretty good about my luck and decide to push it. He wanders over and looks as if he is going to beat me up and says

“What are you doing here”?

I start to waffle on about visiting old friends, and basically apologizing for being there, when I realize that he also doesn’t know I am not Len Faircloughs’ son, when he does a very credible Mancunian accent and says “ Where’s the Rovers Returnips” incredibly as Ena Sharples the female lead in Coronation Street.

I was already old enough to know the meaning of repartee, so I said, “It’s on stage 2 but it’s closed because it’s not a real pub”.

With that he left. I think he already knew that it wasn’t a real pub.

In retrospect, I wish I had said “Oh hello John, I can show you where it is, because before I was Herman I used to be Stanley Fairclough and my dad Len (in the play) went there every night after work and that’s why my Mum left him and moved to Australia and she took me with him so I am not on the telly any more, but between you and me, I would have preferred to have stayed here with my dad”. But he would have thought that Len was my real dad, and the pub were fake and that would only lead to more confusion.

The chat at the cafeteria table turned to cars, so I hastily beat my retreat, so as not to be found out to have L-plates on my car if they wanted to see it.

(Until you pass the driving test in England you are required to wear L plates which are large white cubes which are worn on the front and the back of a car to warn everyone that you are still unable to drive alone which I did with the L plates on anyway. This was easier to explain to a police officer than it was to explain to George Harrison and Terry Doran. Terry Doran was the man from the motor trade who Eleanor Rigby was going to meet that was sung about in a later Beatles song I think) (L Plates were also a great way to NOT pick up girls, so I would often hide them).

I scarpered back to the music studio and incredibly found myself walking into the Beatles dressing room only to find George Martin and Paul McCartney in an intellectual discussion on the compression on Fats Domino record, and as I recall they were discussing in some detail how some of the track “dropped out” when Fats sang, and I had heard of fats Domino, so I joined in.

Before I was discovered to have absolutely no knowledge of compression I was saved by Johnny Hamp. Johnny was a producer from Granada who had given Herman and the Hermits their first break by using us on his TV show Scene at 630, and he said, “What are you doing here”?

“I came to watch the show you are doing,” I stated, realizing that honesty wouldn’t get me thrown out.

He laughed. That’s right. He laughed.

Paul and George continued to chat about compression and I was allowed to stay because each of the parties thought that I had been invited by the other.

“What are you doing here Herman. You never recorded a Beatle song?” Billy J. Kramer.

I wanted so badly to say, “They wrote one for me. For No one”. But I was 16 and having taken an acting lesson live in front of 22 million people in Coronation Street, I had learned that if I didn’t have a good line, or had forgotten the scripted ones, then somebody would invariably chip in with a better line than the one I had waited too long to say, and I would look much more intelligent if I said nothing at all.

Just then Lulu walked over and I was saved by the bell again.

Lulu was a great friend who I had dated and we were good friends and she was a lovely person, and probably knew why I was there, and wondered if I actually had an engagement ring with me for her, but her boyfriend wasn’t going to let me get it out.

Suddenly I saw Dick Rivers. Dick sold me his stage suits years before and was responsible for me wearing the two most hideous suits anyone ever saw. One a blue silver lame number and another maroon suit that would fit all the Hermits combined, but my Mum thought I could pull it off, and paid him cash. I almost did.

“What are you doing here Hermit? You never recorded a Beatles song and you haven’t been on Coronation Street for 2 years. I know because I watch it every Tuesday and Thursday night”

Luckily I had my stun gun with me so I stunned him by grabbing him by the throat.

He stopped breathing and I instantly began to feel some remorse, but then I noticed he still had his eyes open and turned to see Marianne Faithful. I think he had heard the rumors that she wasn’t, and wanted to introduce me to her, but he just wriggled free and went over and introduced himself to her, ignoring me completely and offered to demonstrate the “Liverpool Kiss” to Gordon Waller who was lurking nearby, if he didn’t cease and desist looking at her.

I wanted to go and say hello, but knew I had the L plates on my car outside and would not be able to remove them before she saw I was a provisional driver and lover, in the very late stages of wanton.

The show is a blur, because I saw so many since then, but I had an incredible day and learned a wonderful trick. Just show up and pretend to be with someone. Make sure that nobody “outs you” by not giving them an opportunity to speak.

After the TV show I wanted to drive off with the fabs, but I managed to end up going to George Best’s nightclub in Manchester with Tony Bramwell, who worked for the Beatles and we became good friends. Tony Bramwell recently wrote a book and I am anxious to read what he thinks I was doing there, or at the Ad Lib with John Lennon when I was under age and should have been denied entrance. I’m in with the in crowd?

That’s another chapter.

Chapter 14 High Noone

Meet the Beatles (Again) 1965

—Peter Noone

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