John Lennon

This week we marked the anniversary of Lennon's shooting on a sidewalk in New York.

It's been my good and bad fortune to have met, interviewed, worked with and come up against a host of famous folk over the years. But I have never got close to a Beatle. The closest was being in a room in Los Angeles with a woman who was so obsessed with the Fab Four that she had spent her life amassing a huge collection of memorabilia.  Every artifact she could lay her hands on/afford was laid out before us - we were making some films about obsessives - albums, concert bills, tickets, talcum powder that came in John, Paul, George and Ringo figurines with 'pop off' mop-top heads. There were scarves and key rings, everything imaginable and much more than I can remember now - including a small sealed plastic bag, the kind of thing you see on CSI. Nestling at the bottom was a cigarette butt. Something sucked by a Beatle.

She told me the story of how she's gotten into a Beatles press conference in the early 60's. As The Lads exited and the press sloped off she dived for the table and claimed her prize; a cigarette that had been smoked by Lennon and stubbed out in the ashtray. It was her most prized possession. The DNA of JWL.

This woman was no nut, she was an Associate Producer for one of the TV Networks and yet when it came to the four lads from Liverpool the purple mist descended and all logic went out the window. She had spent thousands of dollars amassing her trophies.

 Though the closest I ever got to John Lennon was that cigarette butt my writing partner for much of the 80's and 90's got to meet the man and speak to him. He was a trainee film editor at the time and Lennon was visiting an Art College. As a guitar playing songwriter he made sure he was in the room. After John had made a pithy speech the assembled students were given the chance to ask questions. My partner was busy composing something brilliant to ask the great man as Lennon's gaze fell on him.

Eye contact. This was the moment. The chance to ask one of a million pertinent things that would unlock the secret of the Lennon and McCartney writing partnership.

The crowd turned to him, John's lips parted in apprehension of the brilliant words about to be spoken. The room crackled with the electricity of anticipation and tension.

And in that second my partner's brain turned to mush and out came the only words he could muster:

"I like your group".

I like your group. Not even "great band, man".

"I - like - your - group".

There was no-one there that day from Rolling Stone or The NME to take down that phrase, no-one from BBC radio to record the event. No-one to preserve the moment in aspic. But he knows and I know and now you know that Louis Robinson met - and spoke - to John Lennon.