Alma met up with a young and upcoming musical group called The Beatles during rehearsals for Sunday Night at the London Palladium on January 12th of 1964, and instantly became friends with the young lads who shared her sense of humour. As their bassist Paul McCartney remembers: "We`d sometimes get booked on variety bills... we were still in showbiz. It wasn`t rock - as it`s now offensively named. It wasn`t that, it wasn`t an industry, it was very small time and we were playing cabarets. It was crossover with the old-time showbiz and one of the people who we`d met doing it was Alma Cogan." After the show, Alma invited the band back to the family flat she shared with her mother and sister at 44 Stafford Court in Kensington, but due to them being in danger of getting mobbed by their adoring fans on the way out, they were smuggled out of the building before the final curtain and arrive long before Alma, who hadn`t contacted her family to let them know the lads were arriving. "She invited us round to her mum`s place in Kensington, she and her sister lived with their mum, and her mum was an old Jewish lady." remembers Paul.
The warm family and open house at Stafford Court was very much the style of living that The Beatles were used to back home in Liverpool, and visiting it gave them a chance to relax and socialise away from crowds of hysterical fans and the curious general public. As Sandra recalled "They needed to relax and get away from the crowds. Our flat gave them refuge for many months to come, with Mum - Mrs Macogie, as they called her - making pots of tea and sandwiches, and playing charades." Paul remembers the visits to the family flat as a learning curve for The Beatles about a new way of life. "They were very nice, Alma and her sister Sandra... I saw a documentary about John Betjeman, who said that when he got out of college there was a country house to which he was invited. And he said, `There I learned to be a guest,` and that`s what was happening to us at Alma`s flat. There we learned to play charades, and we started to do it at our own parties. It was just a little learning curve. We`d never seen anything like this but we liked a laugh so we played charades with Stanley Baker and with bruce Forsyth; he was always at those things, Bruce was absolutely great... They were all a little older than us, probably ten, twelve years older than us, but they were great fun, very confident showbiz people who welcomed us into their circle. It was exciting for us, we would hear all the showbizzy gossip and meet people there that we hadn`t met before; Lionel Bart would sometimes be there, Tommy Steele, Lionel Blair would nearly always be there."
Alma had the closest friendship at this time with The Beatles` manager Brian Epstein who was also from a Jewish family, only two years younger than her in contrast to the eight year gap with The Beatles, and both were deeply into the glitzy world of good old-fashioned show business. Brain brought her presents back from all his trips abroad and took her to Liverpool to meet his parents. The two seemed so attached that many people thought that despite Brian`s homosexuality, they were destined to marry. In 1964 when Alma was preparing the single she had penned herself - I Knew Right Away/It`s You, Brian published it under his company JAEP Publishing which had originally been set up to take care of all George Harrison`s compositions after Don`t Bother Me was issued. Paul McCartney reportedly played tambourine on both tracks.
John Lennon had a bit of a thing for Alma which led to the two becomming very close friends during his frequent visits. Her sister remembers that "John always preferred to visit us when there was no one else around." He fondly nicknamed Alma "Sara Sequin" and would spend hours sat politely with her at her home enjoying the company of her family. he`d strangely had a mild fascination with her back in Liverpool when he was in art college, as his friend Helen Anderson recalls: "He used to make horrible jokes against the singer Alma Cogan, impersonating her singing `sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime`. He`d pull crazy expressions on his face to try to imitate her expressions. We all had hysterics."
Nothing could become of John and Alma`s relationship because of John being married with a child, and Alma being very old-fashioned and unable to entertain the idea of getting serious with a married man. But she enjoyed his advances so long as they remained relatively chaste.
Profile Credit: sentstarr.tripod.com/beatgirls/almacog.html
Information Source: sentstarr.tripod.com/beatgirls/almacog.html
| Where/How First Met |
during rehearsals for Sunday Night at the London Palladium on January 12th of 1964 |
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