Keith Topping describes A Mod's Odyssey

There’s no point in writing if you can’t annoy someone with it.

Kingsley Amis

It’s October 1966: My third birthday. Among my presents is a 45 on the Parlaphone label. Black with silver writing. The Beatles. ‘We all live in a yellow Submarine.’ It still plays.

I’ve wanted to write a book about The Beatles since I was old enough to formulate ambitions. The rest of my childhood dreams (playing on the left wing for my beloved Magpies at Wembley; owning my own yacht; marrying Jenny Agutter) soon went to the wall but I did, eventually, become a writer. And that one burning passion to add my name to the 285,000 previous writers of books on the Fab Four kept me going through many a long night as I worked on innumerable programme guides to US television series’.

The Beatles formed a soundtrack to my life. At an early age – due to raiding older brothers’ record collections’ - I was exposed to the soundscapes of Rubber Soul and Revolver.

It’s May 1975: Mick Lovell, the hippest teacher at Walker Comprehensive loans me his precious copy of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band because I, a somewhat pretentious child with vague literary aspirations, expressed an interest. ‘This is better than Slade,’ he notes. He’s right.

It’s June 1991: I’m working for the civil service and, as a hobby, writing articles about TV shows (particularly Doctor Who) for fan magazines when a friend, working at Guinness, manages to sell them a co-written encyclopaedia about British telly. It’s the first of - to date - 37 books I’ve had published.

Every few months, to editors at various publishing companies, I’d suggest a book on The Beatles (‘a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might’ve heard of them?’) and always the response was the same. ‘It’s been done. Next...’

It’s November 2001: I’ve been off work for five months with a back complaint when I decide, impulsively, to quit the day-job and see if I can make it as a writer full-time. Some regular magazine work follows, as do a string of books for Virgin.

‘Can I do a Beatles book?’ I ask that every six months. Finally, in 2004, my editor, probably to shut me up more than anything, agrees. A mod’s odyssey has ended.

Do You Want to Know a Secret? represents a lifetime of hoarding inane trivia about a band I think are pretty untrivial. I hope every Beatles fan buys it, but I think the reader that I most have in mind is some 15 year old Eminem fan who saw McCartney on Live8 and thought “that old guy doing ‘Helter Skelter’ is pretty good ...”

Talking to Tony Snell on BBC Merseyside recently, I had a moment of clarity and wondered what Liverpudlians must make of this Geordie who thinks he knows The Beatles better than they do. The Beatles, however, are a universal phenomena. Many of the great friendships I’ve formed when attending writers conventions in the US, for instance, have come from conversations in the bar with other writers where we’ve discovered that we have the same record collections – a love of the Beatles and the Who and their various acolytes.

Mostly, I just wanted to tell that remarkable story, again. About four lads who shook the Wirral. And then, the world. It’s July 2005: Do You Want to Know a Secret?: A Fab Anthology of Beatles Facts is available from all good books shops (and some rubbish ones as well). I really hope somebody gets it for their birthday and is still reading it in 38 years time. That’d be gear.