Beatles fans can ‘eat, sleep and party’ in Liverpool club turned into B&B by original member Pete Best
Standing on the top floor of the house where he used to live, Pete Best is staring up at a cluster of framed photographs.
Now 82, he’s looking back at a younger version of himself. One, with dark hair in a leather jacket, is sitting in front of a drum kit.
The three men who stood beside him are easy to recognise – his former bandmates, George Harrison, Sir Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
They’d go on to form part of music’s most famous quartet.
Best said he has had time to reflect on one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ in music. Pic: PA
While Best was dropped from the line-up and replaced by Ringo Starr, six decades on, he says he has had time to reflect on one of the biggest “what ifs” in pop history.
“I’ve had 60 great years of being Pete as well as being a Beatle. It is part of your life, it’s lovely to be associated with it, but life goes on,” he said.
“Initially it was a lot of hardship and financial embarrassment, but life compensates. Maybe it was my karma, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”
As well as taking the time to think, Best has come up with business ventures founded on his connection to the group.
The latest, launched today by Best and his younger brother Roag, gives the public a chance to stay in their old home.
The house at 8 Hayman’s Green in the West Derby area of Liverpool. Pic: PA
It also happened to be one of the places where the Beatles began to take their first steps in the industry.
The Casbah Club is a grade II listed Victorian mansion, bought by Best’s mother Mona, who had the idea of a members-only club for her sons and their friends, to meet and listen to music.
The imprints of The Beatles, then known as The Quarrymen, are all over the basement where they would have played.
The group helped decorate the space and you can still see where John Lennon carved his name into the walls with a penknife. On sweaty evenings, hundreds of people would have crammed in to watch their gigs.
The Lennon Suite. Pic: PA
The Best Suite. Pic: PA
Today, there were dozens of people downstairs and more people in the rooms upstairs, which guests can now book.
The suites are named after Paul, John, George, Peter and original bass player Stuart Sutcliffe – but not Ringo.
The Sutcliffe Suite. Pic: PA
The Harrison Suite. Pic: PA
“The Beatles played here, The Beatles partied here and The Beatles slept here,” said Best, adding the accommodation was a “projection” of his mother’s dream.
This moment is also a reminder of the fact that after Beatlemania, came a nostalgia that still has an appeal and still sells.
The McCartney Suite. Pic: PA
Evelyn and Andy were the first to book a room, travelling from Glasgow.
In the Paul McCartney suite, dotted with pictures of the man it’s named after, as well as a replica of his guitar, Evelyn described the Beatles as “almost like friends” to her. She added that she does her best to go to Beatles-themed events and places whenever she can.
But as well as a business opportunity, the house now being used as a bed and breakfast is a reflection on how close Best came to being part of Beatlemania.
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Debbie Greenberg, who ran the Cavern Club, another Liverpool venue famously linked to the group, can still remember when he was dropped from the line-up.
“Pete was a very good-looking guy and had a lot of followers. The word got round he’d been replaced by Ringo and we all started to chant,” recalled Ms Greenberg.
“We were all chanting ‘Pete forever, Ringo never’. To be suddenly replaced, when they were on the verge of something big, must have been so soul-destroying for him. So, you know he deserves everything he’s got today,” she added.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
The Salt Path author Raynor Winn’s fourth book has been delayed by her publisher.
It comes amid claims that the author lied about her story in her hit first book. Winn previously described the claims as “highly misleading” and called suggestions that her husband had Moth made up his illness “utterly vile”.
In a statement, Penguin Michael Joseph, said it had delayed the publication of Winn’s latest book On Winter Hill – which had been set for release 23 October.
The publisher said the decision had been made in light of “recent events, in particular intrusive conjecture around Moth’s health”, which it said had caused “considerable distress” to the author and her family.
“It is our priority to support the author at this time,” the publisher said.
“With this in mind, Penguin Michael Joseph, together with the author, has made the decision to delay the publication of On Winter Hill from this October.”
A new release date will be announced in due course, the publisher added.
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Winn’s first book, released in 2018, detailed the journey she and husband took along the South West Coast Path – familiarly known as The Salt Path – after they lost their family farm and Moth received a terminal health diagnosis of Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD).
But a report in The Observer disputed key aspects of the 2018 “true” story – which was recently turned into a film starring Jason Isaacs and Gillian Anderson.
Raynor and husband Moth (centre) with actors Jason Isaacs (L) and Gillian Anderson (R). Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
Experts ‘sceptical of health claims’
As part of the article, published last weekend, The Observer claimed to have spoken to experts who were “sceptical” about elements of Moth’s terminal diagnosis, such as a “lack of acute symptoms and his apparent ability to reverse them”.
In the ensuing controversy, PSPA, a charity that supports people with CBD, cut ties with the couple.
The Observer article also claimed the portrayal of a failed investment in a friend’s business wasn’t true, but said the couple – whose names are Sally and Tim Walker – lost their home after Raynor Winn embezzled money from her employer and had to borrow to pay it back and avoid police action.
Anderson played Winn in a movie about the couple’s journey. Pic: Steve Tanner/Black Bear
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It also said that, rather than being homeless, the couple had owned a house in France since 2007.
Winn’s statement said the dispute with her employer wasn’t the reason the couple lost their home – but admitted she may have made “mistakes” while in the job.
“For me it was a pressured time,” she wrote. “It was also a time when mistakes were being made in the business. Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.”
She admitted being questioned by police but said she wasn’t charged.
The author also said accusations that Moth lied about having CBD/CBS were false and had “emotionally devastated” him.
“I have charted Moth’s condition with such a level of honesty, that this is the most unbearable of the allegations,” Winn wrote on her website.
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