Lennon's college pal spills the beans on Beatle's shoplifting sprees
Jan 28 2005
By Joe Riley, Liverpool Echo
GROWING up as a friend of John Lennon was never going to be ordinary.
But actor Richard Tate could never have guessed just how EXTRAordinary the experience would prove.
Richard, 64, has returned to his home city, where he made his stage debut 50 years ago, to star in a revival of the classic Lancashire comedy, Hobson's Choice.
And it was on the way to rehearsals that he saw the bus with an advert on the side for Liverpool John Lennon airport.
"I still have to pinch myself," says Richard. "John Lennon, the lad I went to college with, and now an international icon."
It was on the old green Crosville buses that Richard and John, a fellow art school student, would play what they called "the TB game".
'We'd turn around and interview anyone who coughed. It was all part of John's ploy to see how far he could go and how much he could get away with."
The most shocking example was Lennon's habit of stealing from the St Paul's Roman Catholic bookshop in Manchester Street, near the Mersey tunnel entrance.
Recalls Richard: "He used to go in there and nick things. It was almost as if he wanted to get struck down by a thunderbolt.
