 May, 55, has been in Liverpool searching for a suitable venue for a planned photographic exhibition. She has with her a contact sheet of photographs of John Lennon, a reflection of their time spent together. There are about 100 of them, but she is not showing them just yet. "I feel like I am getting air- brushed out of the whole Lennon story," she says. "In fact, there is a musical show in progress in New York about John and I saw the synopsis - there is not one reference to me at all - I'm airbrushed out again." When the then New York-based John turned 33, Yoko sent him away from the Dakota Building in June 1973 with her then PA, May. She was ordered to "look after him as his companion", as Yoko felt she and John "needed a break". May was a 23-year-old native New Yorker from the Spanish Harlem district. He was 10 years older, insecure and lost. It turned into an affair that became known as the infamous "Lost Weekend", named after a film about a serial drinker. When John was photographed in bars with Harry Nilsson, he seemed to be having a hellraising time of it, drinking brandy Alexanders and, according to the papparazi, getting wasted. May frowns when she recalls the period: "That lost weekend was a misleading quote used by John. He said he had to say something to the press and that summed up the evenings he had enjoying himself after working hard. That was his most productive period in which he wrote his first number one, Whatever Gets You Through The Night, which was inspired by a certain Reverend he heard on the TV saying that very line. "John was working hard at that time," says May. "I was there with him organising and co-ordinating music projects such as his Walls and Bridges and Rock 'n' Roll albums. It is an expensive business and studio time has to be used by the hour. "You can't do that amount of work if you are high on drink and drugs. "He was very disciplined in the studio and would tell off anyone who turned up even 10 minutes late." | 
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