Forgotten Beatle to Sir Paul: let's talk

After more than 40 years of silence between them, the forgotten Beatle, Pete Best, wants to bury the hatchet with Paul McCartney and chat about the old times.

The 65-year-old drummer, who was sacked just as the group were achieving fame, ended up doing shifts in a bread factory, stacking loaves in a delivery van. He could only look on as his bandmates become "bigger than Jesus".

His sacking in manager Brian Epstein's Liverpool office, which deprived him of millions and global fame of the right sort, is all in the past, he believes.

"We're not getting any younger," he said. "We know what we've done and we're not going to think any worse of each other if we had a chat now. God bless us all: it was all 40-odd years ago."

The drummer, whose family owned the Casbah Club in Liverpool which occasionally played host to Beatles shows in their infancy, has never been given an explanation about why he was sacked, although many theories abound.

Some have speculated that his musicianship was not up to scratch, that his hairstyle didn't fit, that he was too popular with the fans for Lennon to bear, that he turned down Epstein's advances, or that he was unreliable. Mr Best has dismissed all of these suggestions over the years.

In an interview with the Daily Mail he said that after the years of shock, disgruntlement and a suicide attempt, he now bears no grudges. "Some people expect me to be bitter and twisted, but I'm not. I feel very fortunate in my life. God knows what strains and stresses the Beatles must have been under.

"When I got kicked out of the Beatles, none of us knew what was going to happen. I know we went about saying we were going to be 'bigger than Elvis', but I didn't believe it and I don't think the others did either."

The drummer left his group, the Blackjacks, to join the Beatles in August 1960 in order for them to fulfil a series of dates in Hamburg. Playing venues such as the Indra Club and the Kaiserkeller, they spent hours onstage honing their skills during a period in their career that was captured in the film Backbeat.

But after playing for two years - including on their first recordings for their Parlophone audition, an early version of "Love Me Do", and the track "Besame Mucho" - he was dropped from the line-up and replaced by Ringo Starr.

Yet Mr Best now finds himself making money from the band after all these years. A number of the recordings he made with them featured on Anthology 1. They are said to have brought him more than £1m.

He also plays with the Pete Best Band, performing 90-minute sets of early Beatles tracks such as "Love Me Do" and "My Bonnie", which the group released with singer Tony Sheridan.

Sir Paul was unavailable for comment about any potential reunions yesterday.