YOKO ONO has spoken about how she fell “madly in love” with John Lennon, and of their last moments together before he was shot dead. Ono was a guest on Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs yesterday, and gave a rare and poignant insight into her life with the former Beatle. The Japanese artist, who recently visited Liverpool to launch a research foundation at Alder Hey hospital in memory of Lennon and celebrate the new air link with her home city of New York, said that, on the night of his death, he had been desperate to return to their son, Sean, before his bedtime. She said: “We were returning from the studio and I said, ‘Should we go and have dinner before we go home?’ and John was saying ‘No, let’s go home because I want to see Sean before he goes to sleep’. “And it was like he wasn’t sure if we would get home before he went to sleep and he was concerned about that. “That was the last thing he said, that he wanted to see Sean.” Ono revealed that her relationship with Lennon had been so turbulent at times that she considered an abortion when she fell pregnant with Sean, their only child. “I thought I should let John decide whether to keep it or not. “We’d just got back together and I became pregnant, and I didn’t know if it was the right moment to have a child. “I just didn’t want to burden him with something he didn’t want.” Ono and Lennon met in 1966 whilst the Beatles frontman was still married to his first wife, Cynthia. Fans turned on Ono as a figure of hate when the band split up, believing her to be responsible for trying to change Lennon. She disagreed: “He was a very, very strong man. “I was just there loving him.” She said: “It was hurtful in a way, but it helped that I had John by my side. “It did seem that those things were happening in the distance. “What was said out there didn’t hurt so much.” She said the couple’s famous bed-in for peace was “narcissistic” on their part but also “a good thing”. Songs the artist picked for her Desert Island Discs included When I Grow Too Old To Dream, by Gracie Fields; Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien, by Edith Piaf; and Beautiful Boy, a song Lennon wrote for their son. SOME rare Beatles memorabilia is to go on show at a special exhibition celebrating the band’s links with Scotland. The earliest known set of autographs from the group and another signed “MacLennon” by a playful John Lennon will be among the exhibits displayed later this year. Also included are previously unpublished photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and of the Beatles themselves on tour in Scotland. McCartneys hold truce to spend Sir Paul’s 65th together THE bitter divorce battle between Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills is “on hold”, according to reports this weekend. The couple are believed to be planning to spend Sir Paul’s 65th birthday together at his Peasmarsh country estate next Monday. It is thought the two have been meeting up with their three-year-old daughter, Beatrice, and speaking on the telephone in a complete turnaround of their very public split. Mills, 39, is even thought to have bought a present for her estranged husband. It looked as if the split would be one of the costliest divorce cases in legal history. Now friends say they are in “no hurry” to finalise the split. | 
