Hello Goodbye to the Beatles scoop that never was

The key "revelation" in a new book expected to earn the three surviving Beatles and Yoko Ono £1bn is in fact no revelation at all.

Newspapers and press agencies around the world carried stories at the weekend that Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had written their official story, and whetted the appetite by saying it would reveal that it was John Lennon - not Paul McCartney - who disbanded the group.

The Sunday Telegraph broke the story about the book at the weekend, saying: "Many Beatles fans will be most fascinated about how the band split up... the book tells how Lennon was the first to walk away."

But the story must go down as one of the biggest pieces of publisher hype ever. The truth has been known, and not just by Beatles fans, for nearly 30 years. Paul McCartney's own authorised biography, Many Years From Now, published in 1997, tells the story. On page 562 it says: "In fact it was John who broke up the Beatles, as he often said in print."

But more than two decades earlier, Lennon's role had been fully admitted by the man himself. In an interview in 1971 Lennon said: "I told people long ago, 'I'm not going to be singing She Loves You when I'm 30'. I was 30 last year, and it was then when I broke up the band." In an autobiographical essay written in the Seventies, Lennon went further, saying: "I started the band. I disbanded it. It's as simple as that."

Geoff Baker, Mr McCartney's spokesman, said yesterday: "OK, those in the know did know. But many people don't know and there has been a myth that it was Paul who broke up the Beatles. Even ... The Sunday Telegraph didn't seem to know..."

The book, to be published this autumn, is likely to cost £50. It has taken the three surviving Beatles six years to write.