neil harrison of the bootleg beatles and carol singing for macca

By Catherine Jones on Dec 10, 09 12:18 PM

The Bootleg Beatles are 30 years old - that's three times the life of the original group - and they're playing the Philharmonic Hall tonight.
I had a chat with Neil Harrison, who has played John Lennon since the start, a while ago for my arts page and he was telling me about the Christmas he and his friends went carol singing outside the McCartney home in Wirral.

He told me: "I was born in West Kirby and lived in Heswall until I was 19. And Paul had bought his dad a house in Heswall so about six of us went round carol singing on Christmas Eve 1968 knowing full well that Paul was staying there.
"Eventually the Holly and the Ivy turned into Help! I think and then he appeared on the porch and invited us all in because it was freezing cold, and we sat around and played Beatles songs from the White Album for about 45 minutes in his hallway.
"I remember him saying let's do Rocky Racoon and then he showed me the chords of I've Got a Feeling which is a song that he'd just written, so I knew this Beatles song that nobody else knew - which was pretty amazing.
"Then I met him at the Queen's jubilee in 2002 and related the story back to him and he was nodding away and Andre said 'you don't remember this do you?' and he went "nope".
"It was such a highlight of my life, this almost semi-religious experience."