Good Ol' Freda Page #5

the Bassnett Bar.

He was trying to educate me

on the cures and cheeses

and coffee and things like that.

Well, I would stay

there and get sozzled,

you know, 'cos I'd be trying

all these different things with them,

and then they would

just put me in a taxi

and I'd go home and

go straight to bed.

Now, John's family...

he only had Mimi.

Mimi was John's aunt.

She took John in when he was about five,

when his parents split up.

Mimi didn't let anybody in that house;

very few people got in.

You had to go 'round the back,

you know, like the tradesmen's entrance,

but I actually went up

and knocked on the front door,

and I got in the front door.

It wasn't that you were

frightened of Mimi,

you just watched

your Ps and Qs.

To me, Mimi was like my father,

she was old-school.

Any time I saw her with John,

which wasn't very often,

she was quite stern

but he did obey her.

I think

the Harrisons enjoyed the fame

more than any of

the other parents.

Mr. and Mrs. Harrison loved it.

They took to it more.

She was

excellent with the fans,

would let them into her house,

would give them a cup of tea,

you know,

every day, she just sat down

and wrote letters

to all these kids.

But they were very

protective of George,

maybe it was because he was

the youngest Beatle.

Mr. Harrison... Harry Harrison...

was always saying to me,

"You should learn

to dance properly,"

and I said "I don't

wanna learn ballroom

dancing,

I don't really like it,"

and he said "No,

I'm going to teach you. "

He would get me up to dance

and show me how to do the quick-step

and the waltz and everything.

So we were like there...

I was really self-conscious about it,

I just did not want to learn

to ballroom dance.

You know, all the families

and all the boys believed in her.

She was 'good old Freda' to them,

in other words.

Seeing them on

a regular basis, coming in

and out the office,

going to their homes,

it didn't hit me how big they were

or worshipped they were

until the civic reception,

which was at

the Town Hall in Liverpool.

The only people that

were invited really

were The Beatles themselves

and The Beatles' families,

and that was it,

but Ritchie's family put me down

as one of their family.

We were picked up in a car

from the counsel,

we must have come

in the back way,

and the lads

were already here,

and we had a meal,

so we were all relaxed and everything,

and then next minute,

they then had to go out onto the balcony

and, just as they

opened these doors,

the noise hit us,

with the shouts and the screaming,

and then I came to

behind the door here

and I just couldn't

believe Castle Street.

It was just full of people;

as far as the eye could see

was people, everywhere.

I mean, the noise was deafening,

there was chaos in the street,

girls were wriggling and pushing

to get through the crowd,

and they were fainting,

and the ambulance men and police

were just passing

them over the crowds

to get them

into the ambulance.

It was unbelievable.

I think the penny

actually dropped

with me then,

how big they were,

'cos it hadn't really hit home

until I saw that amount of people,

it was about 200,000 people...

I couldn't even visualize 200,000 people

until I saw it that day.

I think now,

and I think the parents

must have been

so proud of 'em,

that their sons were

out on the balcony,

and Liverpool was

reacting to them.

I'm very proud that

I worked for them.

So what was Beatlemania

to you at the height of it,

when it was its busiest,

what, 1964, '65?

No sleep

with all the mail.

How many letters a week

were you getting, roughly?

Oh, God, thousands,

two to three thousand a day.

Must have sat up 'til 4,

5 o'clock in the morning

just answering... I used to do all

what we call detail letters...

I used to just

bring all them home

and then go back to work with

me little parcel the next day.

I don't know how I lived.

In the wake of the outbreak

of Beatlemania,

there was a very very sudden increase

in interest amongst fans,

people writing in,

asking for autographs,

asking to join

the Beatles fan club, etc.

Brian Epstein decided

that we would have a stamp.

It looked like

a proper signature.

And I remember, sometimes,

I would roll it across the autograph book,

and only half of

it would turn out,

or it would smudge.

I ruined so many

kids' autograph books.

And of course,

I'm a Beatle fan,

so I'm thinking

the way they're thinking,

and I thought "I'd go

mad if that was me. "

I know I was against them

and John Lennon was against them as well,

I think he thought because

of the falseness.

I remember John coming in,

and I asked him to sign something,

and he said, "I did that,"

"You don't normally

sign it that way,"

and he said "I've decided to sign that way

from now on,"

and I said,

"Is that because our stamps

look like you

wrote the signature?"

He went "Yeah. "

In the end, I thought,

"Oh, I'm dumping them. "

I never told Eppy,

I just thought, "Right,

I'll just keep all

these autograph books

and photographs

in the cupboard,

and when the lads come in,

I'll still carry on. "

I would know when they were staying

at home in their own houses,

I would know in advance that,

oh, George is coming home tonight,

so I'll nab him, I'll go from the office

straight to Mackets Lane,

so I would go

'round and get them

to sign stuff in

their own house,

say, "Oh,

while you're sitting there,

watching the telly,

do us a favor.

Can you just

sign that bagful?"

So, if some of the fans,

especially in the foreign countries,

they didn't have the address

of the fan club,

so they just knew that they lived

in England somewhere,

so they would just

put 'To Paul McCartney'

or 'To George Harrison,

England,'

but it would come

through the system.

The post office, give them their due,

were very good,

they just knew where

the fan club existed.

The type of

questions kids would ask

in the fan club

letters was, you know,

'Can I have

a piece of Paul's shirt?'

or 'If I send you a map,

can you ask

Paul to come

'round at 6 o'clock?

Because I'm having a party

and I'd like him to come. '

But then it got

a bit out of hand,

because then

people wanted hair,

and it was

the same barber that cut

their hair,

it was always this one guy.

I mean, it was their hair,

they'd probably do DNA on it now.

He would have

a mat down on the floor

or something,

and cut their hair...

'cos he thought I was mental.

And he'd just say "There you go,

do you want that bit?"

I'd go "Yeah, yeah, thanks. "

Somebody sent a pillowcase in

and said "Can you get Ritchie to

sleep on this pillowcase

and then send it back to me

and get him to sign it?"

I must have known that he was going to

be home for three days,

so I just threw that in the bag

and took it to his house

and said, "Will you sleep on that tonight

and sign it then?"

And I remember saying to Elsie...

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