How The Beatles found Ringo Starr at a Lincolnshire Butlin’s

Starr later recalled the conversation in an interview. “The boys would like you to join The Beatles. What do you say?

“I said, ‘no, I’d love to, when?’ And he said, ‘oh, tonight’. I said, ‘I can’t’, this was Wednesday, ‘I can’t come tonight. I’m in a band, I’ll come Saturday’.”

Thomson said that during the call with Epstein the drummer was told to lose his facial hair.

“He didn’t want to shave his beard off,” Thomson said laughing.

“So the beard came off and he got the haircut to match.”

Madeline Morrison, who worked as a Redcoat at the Clacton camp, said people were surprised when the rumours of Starr joining The Beatles soon started to spread throughout Butlin’s.

“Rory Storm was a big, big name,” she said.

“I’ve got playbills where Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were above The Beatles.”

She added people said he had been taken to the hairdresser: “He’s got the Beatle haircut, he’s joining them.

“You know, all this sort of stuff would jump round all the camps because we were all villages.”

After Starr’s departure Rory Storm and the Hurricanes recruited another drummer for the remaining two weeks of the summer season.