He had a short 20-minute meeting with John and then was shown out. He tried to see him again, by just arriving at his house one day, but had the door slammed in his face. He’s surprisingly small, but almost dapper. He has thick greying hair, which is swept back lushly at the sides, like an ex-theatrical. He’s 55 but very cheerful and young-looking. ‘I can still get the girls, you know. If they think I’m smashing, I must be OK. I know John has a horror of old age. But tell him this from me. I’m younger than he is.’
He has watched John’s progress very carefully. ‘He’s only let me down twice. Once was accepting that MBE. I wouldn’t have done it. Royalty can’t buy me. The other time was not speaking at the Foyles literary lunch. I would definitely have given them a speech, and a song too.’
Since 1964 he said that his ambition was to meet John properly. ‘Just to let him see what sort of bloke I really am.’ And he wouldn’t say no to any help. ‘If John happened to offer it.’
When John heard that Fred Lennon was so full of memories of Julia and John’s childhood, the great reconciliation took place. They met and became friends, much to Fred’s delight. Since early 1968 he has stopped washing dishes and is now living in a smart flat, subsidized by John.
Mimi today lives alone in a luxury bungalow near Bournemouth, with her cat Tim, a stray that John brought home many years ago. The house is very white and sunny, with a magnificent setting, right beside the sea. It has its own little steps at the bottom of the garden, leading down to the sea. It cost £25,000.
The front and the back of the house are completely un-over-looked. Only in the summer, when steamers go up and down across Poole Bay, can she be in any way interrupted. As they go past the house, she can hear a megaphone on board announcing: ‘And that is John Lennon’s house with the striped blinds. That will be Mimi sitting there.’ The first time she heard it, she was so furious that she ran down to the bottom of the garden, stood on her sea steps and shouted ‘Shut up!’ Everybody on the boat just laughed.
Apart from that, her life is fairly uninterrupted. A few lamps from the front of the house have been stolen by fans. Now and again, she’s seen them snatching photographs of her and the house, but nothing much. She says she keeps her telephone number and address secret.
Most of the furniture is reproduction antique. It all looks very new, but most of it was brought from her old home in Liverpool. She did have some nice things there, she says. When a reporter came to see her once in her old house in Liverpool, he looked round at everything and said how nice it all was — ‘Wasn’t John good to buy it all for her.’ She threw him out immediately.
There are lots of books around, mainly classics and biographies. She’s just been reading Max by Lord David Cecil. She doesn’t care for novels.
On the TV set she has John’s MBE medal, though she is a bit worried some people might think it a slight on royalty. John had arrived one day and pinned it on her, saying she deserved it more than him.
In the hall and on the walls of the bedrooms she has some of their gold discs, although not as many as the other parents. She has a large plaque, which John presented to her. Engraved on it is the phrase she used at him almost every day of his adolescent life: ‘The guitar’s all right as a hobby, John, but you’ll never make a living with it.’
She had no strong desire to leave her house in Liverpool. ‘I was very happy. It was a very comfortable house. I’d spent hundreds on it. But John went on at me for about two years, then he said OK, stay.
‘Then he started again, when the other parents began to move into their new houses. “You silly little sausage,” I said to him. “There’s no need to lift me out of the mire.”
‘I was staying in London with him after the premiere of the first film. He came down to breakfast and said “OK, I’m going to find you a house. Where would you like it?”
‘I said Bournemouth, just for something to say. He picked up the phone and called Anthony, his chauffeur. He told him to get the maps out for Bournemouth, we’re leaving now.
‘Well, I thought, it would be a run. We came down and got a list of houses from Rumsey’s. We went round a lot, but I wanted one by the sea and there wasn’t one. So I thought, that’ll be it, now we can go home. Then the man suddenly remembered one that had just come up.
‘The people were still living in it and I didn’t want to go in, especially the way John was dressed. He had old jeans with holes in them and an old suede jacket I’d bought him years ago, which was miles too small for him. He had a silly yachting cap on as well.
‘I said we shouldn’t go in and just to land on them like this. John told me it was just a tuppenny ha’penny little bourgeois home. If I wasn’t careful, I’d get a mind to match.
‘He marched in and said how do you do, mind if I look round. The man and his wife just gaped at him. John said, “Do you like it, Mimi? If you don’t, I’ll have it.” So he rang his accountant and bought it.’
Mimi moved in in October 1965. She sold her old house in Liverpool for £6,000, a good price, though, as she says, it was a good house in a good area.
The Bournemouth house is still in John’s name, but it is Mimi’s for as long as she wants it. He pays all the bills. He told her just to spend her £6,000, but she told him not to be so stupid.
‘It’s lovely down here. I had always vaguely thought of moving to the south coast when George retired. I haven’t felt a winter since I arrived. I’ve had drinks with people, but that’s about all. I’ve never tended to make many friends outside the family. I do a lot of walking and reading. The days are too short really.’
All the Beatle parents have had their material lives completely changed by their sons, and all of them have reacted to it in slightly different ways. But Mimi is probably the only one whose relationship has not really changed. She still, in many ways, treats John as she’s always done, whereas with the others there is a hint of hero worship, almost reverence. Mimi still criticizes John’s clothes and how he looks, as she did when he was a teenager. She tells him when he’s looking fat and not to spend too much. ‘He’s too soft over money. He’s an easy touch. Generous beyond belief. I’m always telling him.’ The other parents never voice any criticism of their sons.
Mimi doesn’t care for the way John speaks. She says he won’t speak properly, never finishing sentences. ‘And he’s getting worse all the time. I often can’t understand what he’s talking about. His mind’s jumping all over the place.’
She doesn’t see him very regularly, but he always sends her funny letters when he’s abroad, with a little drawing on the envelope, specially for her. She keeps them all carefully arranged in a bureau. When John visits her, he rakes through all her belongings, just to see what she’s been doing while he’s been away. She still has the old childhood books he used to write. She reads them now and again.
‘It’s just the same stuff that he’s had published. Just his scribble, as I call it, which he’s been doing for years. I think the first book was better, but I still burst out laughing at some of his poems.’
Her way of life isn’t that different, despite the luxury of her setting. She says she would give up everything, her house and all their success, just to have John as her little boy again.
‘I’d give up £2 million to be back again. It’s very selfish, I know. I always think of him as a little boy. I know it’s stupid. But nothing could compensate for the pleasure he gave me as a boy.’