Flashback: Peter paints the Beatles

Half a century ago, I was fortunate enough to meet, and paint portraits of The Beatles. Quite an amazing experience for a young lad. Amongst one of the photos which appear in a book called “The Beatles In Australia” was the one of George Harrison, Ernie Sigley (compare from Channel 9) and myself.

Ernie was trying to do an interview with George, who was intently chatting to me about who made the Beatles shirts. He then went on to tell me that his Mum ironed them all. Ernie was glaring at me, as if to say say “bugger off mate I want to do this interview!”.

Bob Francis, who organized the 85,000 plus names on a partition to bring the Beatles to Adelaide, was in an adjoining room recording a radio show. Someone had an incredibly phony, black plastic Beatle wig which I put on, and stuck my head out of the window. The 300,000 kids below went ballistic, thinking it was one of the fab four.

Bob wanted some of the action, so he put the wig on and was caught in the act of sticking his head out too, by Ken Brodziak, who was the big kahoona of the Beatles coming to Aust. He really told poor old Bob off for getting the kids too excited, saying that they wouldn’t have enough enthusiasm left for when the Beatles finally did appear. Boy! Was he wrong...

On my way out, I was stopped by a young, very excited girl, waving her autograph book at me. Asking why she wanted my autograph, she replied ” You must be famous ‘cos you’re up here with the Beatles”. She went ape when I signed ‘Peter Harrison’, not knowing then that George, in fact did have a brother Peter.