Why the Beatles had to stop

With mounting horror, myself and Raul, my Philipino houseboy, watched that televised assassination job on the lovely Heather Mills recently. “What do you think, guilty or not guilty, Boss?” said Raul, at programme’s end, as he busied himself smearing Lo-Lo on my steaming crumpets. “Frankly, my dear Raul,” I replied sadly, “it seems to me that she hasn’t got a leg to stand on.”

Yes, yes, I know, red card to self, beneath me to crack such cheap jokes, terrible to hoot at the misfortunes of others, bringing Snort family name into disrepute, phone calls to Liveline, letters to Madam Hussein in the Times, dirty looks from fellow staffers in office, Fintan O’ Toole mounting high horse and devoting entire column to issue and, worst of all, nightmare scenario of Eoghan Harris rushing to my defence.

Still, Raul got a great laugh out of it, so that’s okay.

However, concern for my own physical well-being as the controversy raged on wasn’t the main reason I opted to give Paul McCartney’s Irish gig a miss last week. No, that had more to do with my deep-rooted allergic reaction to all things Beatle, Bealtey and Beatlesque. Really, was there ever a more over-rated band in the world than the Fab Four? Apart, obviously, from Limerick’s finest, Reform – and there were only three of them.

Lachrymose jingle

Take Macca for a start. Has a way with a tune, to be sure, but then so do thousands of less celebrated tunesmiths around the world from, say, the great Warren Zevon to the bloke who came up with that catchy little DIY number, “Woodies, Woodies, Woodies”. (See, you’re singing it, despite yourself. Just like, “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah”).

Also very much to the credit of the “Woodies” composer is that he didn’t attempt to follow-up his masterpiece with a lachrymose jingle for the Scottish Tourist Board. Unlike Macca, who famously took those mediaeval instruments of torture, the bagpipes, to create the world’s only musical hyprid of maudlin Scots balladry and militant Islam, ‘Mullah Kintyre’.

Christ on a bike, now that I think of it, didn’t Macca also play the white keys to Stevie Wonder’s black keys on ‘Ebony And Ivory’, the kind of poisonously bland confection that even Chris De Burgh might barf on?

The defence rests, mu’Lud.

Then there is, or rather was, George Harrison. Due respect for the dead and all that but, Krishna on a go-cart, was there ever a drearier “quiet man” in the whole history of rock taciturnity. His best-known song sounded exactly like another song and his second best-known song contained one of the most fatuous snippets of conversation in pop history: “You’re asking me will our love grow/I don’t know, I don’t know”. Huh? Surely the correct answer to that question is: certainly, my love, so long as you anoint it with holy oils of the Orient or, in the absence of same, you could just try giving it a good old yank.

And so to Ringo. Drummer, drinker, man who sang ‘Yellow Submarine’. And, er, that’s it. An accessory to the crime, for sure, but hardly Mr Big.

No, the head bull-goose loony of the whole operation was Mr Yoko Ono, otherwise known and revered as John Lennon. Positives? Great rock ‘n’ roll voice, buckets of attitude, went on spectacular benders with Harry Nilsson. Negatives? Took to the bed with his missus to protest against something or other. I mean, Maharaji on a moped, can you imagine the headlines if my good mate Bono and the lovely Ali holed up for a week in the Gresham to complain about, oh I dunno, world hunger or the Dublin Port Tunnel or The Lyrics Board. SAINT BONO TAKES TO SCRATCHER TO PROMOTE WORLD PEACE! BONO BORES AND SNORES FOR INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE! BONO: DROP THE DEBT BUT KEEP THE ROOM SERVICE! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR OWN HOTEL ANYWAY, BONO? And so on.

Wishy-washy

But Lennon? Stripy pyjamas, granny glasses, hair down to his arse and any amount of idiotic scouse blather about bed-ins and peace – and he still ends up being hailed as one of the great Britons of our time, greater even than Freddie Starr.

Of course, nobody was more shocked and upset than me – well, apart from BP Fallon, obviously – when John had a cap popped in his ass outside the Dakota building in Noo Yawk City. Certainly, I would like to have seen him enjoy many more years baking bread in his penthouse apartment and staying well away from recording studios where he might have been tempted to record something else like ‘Imagine’, the kind of song that I suspect even Charlie Lansborough would have rejected as being “a bit on the wishy-washy side”.

So that’s yer Beatles sorted then. I wouldn’t say that I’m in a particularly dark, iconoclastic mood these days but do watch out for next week’s interesting column: “Nelson Mandela – Is he a racist?”

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq