In 1967 the Beatles had a stream of bad reviews and poor audience reaction with the TV film, Magical Mystery Tour. “They wanted me to play the courier but I was in a show in London and couldn’t go on location,” said Vic, “They said, ‘Well, can you do that thing you did in Oh What A Lovely War and I had a small role in uniform. It was berated by the press: ‘How dare they think they can direct a movie?’ Those critics were wrong. That film was years ahead of its time and if they had been at Cambridge, everybody would have said, ‘What wonderful stuff.’”
In 1968, Vic was involved in a stage version of John Lennon’s books, In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works. “This young girl came into my dressing room and said that she had written a play based on John’s book. She had cut out the pages, put them in a different order and pasted them into an exercise book. I said, ‘John has written fantasy and you have to have reality in the middle of all that.’ I went to see Ken Tynan at the National Theatre and he said that we must do it. I rang up John and told him that they wanted to do a play based on the books. He said, ‘I’ll give you the rights, you do it.’ I insisted that we did it together. John said, ‘Hey, Vic, let’s go somewhere warm.’ I thought he meant another room but we ended up in Africa.’ We went to Marrakech and when we came back with the script, Laurence Olivier said to me, ‘My dear baby, you will have to direct it as none of us understand it.’”
But first Olivier wanted to meet John and Yoko. “Olivier was on the steps of the National Theatre and the car arrived with John and Yoko, all white suits, hair and glasses. Olivier said to me, ‘Which one is which, my dear baby? I cannot tell them apart.’ They had tea in his office and he said, ‘My dear Johnny, if this is made into a film, the Theatre will own 60% of the rights.’ John didn’t move. He said, ‘Don’t you have people that you pay to talk about these kind of things with the people that I pay to talk about these kind of things?’ Olivier was livid. When they left, he said to me, ‘What a ridiculous pair, and what is this line in the script, ‘I wandered humbly as a sock.’’ I said, ‘It is John’s version of ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud.’’ He said, ‘Are you telling me that a Beatle has heard of Wordsworth?’ Oh god, yes. They were long haired gits to him.”
Vic was traumatised by John’s murder in 1980. “His death was terrible, still is. Why did he do it? To get his name in the history books. There has even been a film made about this creep. I think that anyone who assassinates a well loved figure should from that moment on be known as Mr X.”
Right from the start, Victor Spinetti was prepared to speak at Beatle conventions and from having seen him backstage, I know that he loved meeting Beatle fans. “Some of them ask me for advice about being an actor, and I say, ‘Remember the 3 R’s: redundancy, rejection and resting. If you can’t handle those, don’t do it.’ You should only do it if you have something to give. If you really want something, give it away. If you want love, give it away. If you want happiness, give it away. That’s what the Beatles did in all their songs. Give it away and it is yours forever.”