‘I don’t mind staying up for him. I might change the furniture round, to put the hours in. I just mess around really. I spent two hours the other night deciding where to move a lamp. I might make things, curtains or clothes. I put sequins on an old lampshade the other day.’
She spends a lot of time answering correspondence. Maureen takes great interest in all Ringo’s fan mail. Perhaps through having been a fan herself, she knows how much it means. Apart from Mrs Harrison, George’s mother, she is the only one in the Beatle circle who bothers. She doesn’t do as much as Mrs Harrison, as she has a large house and two young children to look after.
When people send birthday cards, she still drops a little note saying thank you, adding that Ritchie is too busy working to write himself. She always calls him Ritchie, never Ringo, even writing to people who only know him as Ringo. ‘I don’t know why, really, Ringo just seems funny. His name is Ritchie.’
In odd moments she gets him to sign big batches of autographs. She doesn’t send them to everyone who writes, because that would take too long. She just drops in his autograph, with her little letter of reply, when people seem really nice and polite.
‘I like answering the letters. I’ve been doing it for five years now. I get some lovely replies back from the parents.
‘I do get behind sometimes. When I was having Jason I got behind for a few weeks and had three shopping bags full of them.
‘I don’t do it just because people are polite. I know that if I liked someone enough to write a nice letter to them I would like some sort of reply. I’ve had letters from fans saying this is their 15th letter. They must feel awful. What they’ve been doing is writing to the office. The office gets thousands and just can’t cope. Not that I want any more sent to me than I get now, thank you.’
She makes quite a lot of clothes, when she is filling in the hours waiting. ‘I like instamatic things. I’m in such a hurry that I never use patterns. I might start off making a dress, but keep going wrong, cutting it down and down, till I’ve ended up making a handkerchief.’
When she knows she’s just going to have a go at something, she always buys cheap remnants, so there won’t be much waste. She’s very careful, when it comes to money. All her shopping is done at a Weybridge supermarket. She always gets Pink Shield trading stamps with everything she buys, which appears rather pointless, when she could buy anything she wanted anyway. She likes sticking the stamps in the pages. She gets out her little book now and again to see how much she’s got.
Ringo thinks it’s a bit of a joke, but he’s proud of the way she manages the house and looks after him. He’s also very pleased by things she’s made, such as the sequined Sergeant Pepper design.
They haven’t started thinking about Zak’s or Jason’s education, as they’re so young. Like John, Ringo would like them to go to an ordinary council school. ‘But Zak’s not ordinary, is he? They wouldn’t let him alone. It’s eased off now a bit, but he’d still get picked upon. If the only way to get him a bit of peace is to pay for it, then we’ll have to. If they want to go to a boarding school, then I’ll let them. But I’d rather have them at home. I just want them to be as free as possible and love one another.
‘I say all those sort of things, of course, but I don’t know how I’ll turn out when they get older. But I don’t want them to have the restrictions I had, you know, your mother telling you not to play near the window, or watch you don’t break anything. You never know, do you, when it’s your turn to be a parent.’
But he wouldn’t like them to have the sort of education he had, or, at least, lack of education. Those lost years of illness have had some effect on him, not in any serious way, at least not what he would call serious. His spelling, for example, is non-existent, but it doesn’t worry him. His knowledge of where towns and places are is also very strange.
‘I know I can’t spell, but I can read anything you want to give me. English is hard for anybody to spell. My maths aren’t bad. But I’m best really with my hands. I can do most little jobs, if I’m just left on my own. I can eventually work things out on my own. It’s when things are written down I’m no good.’
Ringo came into the group last, long after all the others were settled in their positions and personalities. He felt it was all a marvellous stroke of luck. He moved in with them at the second they took off. The others never looked upon it as luck for one minute. They all knew they could be a success.
When they are all together, he does tend to be the withdrawn one, stuck out on drums while the rest crowd the microphone. He’s always said he wasn’t the talking one. But his jokes and observations were as wise and witty as theirs. The difference is that he doesn’t keep up the patter, the way Paul can, or the way George does when he’s on his hobby horse, or the way John can make daft jokes and observations all the time. Ringo keeps quiet, until he’s spoken to.
In repose he does look withdrawn and worried. His grey streak is now greyer than it used to be. Apart from the left side of the front of his hair, it has now affected his right eyebrow as well. Some doctors think there might be psychological reasons for premature greyness, but most agree it is meaningless.
His nose isn’t as big as it can look in photographs, or, of course, in caricatures. It has been taken by many people as a sign that he must be Jewish. ‘I never realized I had a big nose till I was famous. I never even thought people were thinking I was Jewish, till one day a bloke from the Jewish Chronicle rang me up. I had to tell him I wasn’t.
‘I’m beginning to see now that I am what I am because of the sort of upbringing I had, with no father and with my mother always out at work. It did make me very quiet and introverted. I’m only figuring myself out now, though I was very happy at the time. I saw a programme on TV the other day about the effect a long period in hospital can have on a child. It can make them very withdrawn.’
Ringo isn’t withdrawn. He is completely open and friendly, the sweetest of them all really. He is not self-centred in any way. His wife Maureen thinks he could make more of himself, if he wanted to.
‘It was his idea to do it with sequins, didn’t he tell you? I know it’s rubbish really, but he never takes credit for things.
‘I think he often underestimates himself. He does forget what good ideas he has had, because he thinks he’s not creative. He says it’s for the others to have the good ideas. But he is good at many things. He’s a good painter. I think films will be very good for him, so I hope they come off. He’s great at all things. He’s a lovely dancer.’
Ringo is a much stronger personality than he has appeared. He’s also much handsomer in real life, with rich blue eyes. He is in no sense the buffoon of the group, or even their pet mascot. His opinions are as valid as theirs. But in the light of Paul and John’s more obvious talents, he has kept himself even quieter than he is. But they rely on him a great deal. He is a vital part of the four, contributing elements that they need — that old sentimentality again, but also a strong common sense, the ordinary human touch. He has some good ideas and opinions about the Beatles, and about himself.
‘I think four of us together, all sort of equal, made us one whole. We’re different from each other, yet alike.
‘When you have a single star, or a leader and a backing group, you either take him or leave him. With four, you can associate with one of us, yet still like the rest of us. If you didn’t like Elvis, that was that. With four of us, there’s more to go on.