 A QUESTIONNAIRE completed by The Beatles when they could not afford to buy food was sold yesterday. The group were once so hard up that Paul McCartney and George Harrison did not eat for 28 hours as they hitch-hiked around England on tour. The unpublished document from 1963 was sold at Christie's pop memorabilia auction in South Kensington, London, for £14,300 to a mystery collector. Sir Paul McCartney writes about life on the road: "Didn't eat for 28 hours once, used to cook tins of spaghetti on primus by roadside." Asked about his ambitions outside music, Sir Paul replies: "Money." And he lists his main extravagances as "little things - clothes and food." But he would be embarrassed to recall Harrison's first impression of him as: "fat and friendly." The questionnaire was prepared by Record Mirror but was not used because John Lennon did not complete his section and the others only partially completed theirs. Very few documents have appeared on the market from this period that are handwritten by any of The Beatles with such detailed responses. Sir Paul, asked about his parents' view of his emerging stardom, replies: "My dad likes it but thinks we're away a bit too much." Asked if his family encouraged him, he responds: "Yes, not half...suffered my practising for years." He also describes Brian Epstein as a "good manager: astute, sympathetic, good lad, dad!" George Harrison describes his first meeting with the other Beatles in detail. "Met Paul first, on the bus home from school eight years ago. Met John one year later in the chip shop by school. Met Ringo in Kaiserkeller Club, Hamburg." Of Lennon, he writes: "He doesn't get his hair cut too!" Of Ringo, he says: "Looked moody but found he was quite different once I got to know him." Ringo Starr pays tribute to manager Brian Epstein. "Without Brian none of us would have had some of the wonderful chances which his management has opened for us." The drummer gives a poignantly honest answer to a question regarding the effect his success has had on his life. "Mother has worked all her life - doesn't have to work any more," he writes. He adds that his ambition in life is "to play everything with either left or right hand". Also at that point, the worst moment in his professional career was the "first show at Empire L/pool when the tabs opened I was still setting up." * LIGHT and sound man Alexis Mardas, who was sacked by the Beatles, had the last laugh yesterday when a leather collar given to him by John Lennon fetched £117,250. | 
