KEN Dodd is one of Liverpool's and the country's most-loved comedians. The Squire of Knotty Ash was unimpressed by the very raw Beatles when they first played together on a bill at the Albany Cinema in Maghull one Sunday afternoon in October 1961.
Says Ken: "I got there about 3 o'clock and there was chaos. People were walking out in droves because some idiots on the stage were making the most terrible row. I said 'You've got to get these fellers off they're killing the show completely'.
Ken says that two years later his agent approached him with a proposition, asking him how he would like The Beatles on his popular radio show for two dates.
"I said, 'I'm not sure - what do you think?' He said, 'I think we should just have them for one show because they are going to be one of these groups that fade overnight'.
Ken brought them in for one show and Paul McCartney said, "We've worked with you before, Doddy."
"I said, 'No, you've never worked with me, lad'. He said, 'Yes, at the Albany, Maghull'. I said, 'That noise wasn't YOU was it?' He replied: "Yeah, we were rubbish, weren't we?'
"I said: 'You certainly were; I had you thrown off'."
But Ken, like the rest of the UK and the world, realised these lads were something special.
Says Ken, who has been made a Freeman of the City: "Liverpool exports more entertainers than any other city in the world and whatever else Liverpool entertainers do, it's always done with tremendous enthusiasm.
"People in Liverpool live their lives in a higher gear than most people. We are very enthusiastic people and The Beatles were four young men with a tremendous desire for life and with the typical Liverpool trait of not caring what they said.
"They ad-libbed everything and they personified life and brought a lot of credit to Liverpool."
