In 1964 a Melbourne reporter talked her way into meeting The Beatles

BACK in 1964, a reporter from The Sun talked her way into a private audience with The Beatles. How did she do it, and what did she learn about the Fab Four?

WHENEVER Lady Catherine Mancham hears The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand, she thinks of Paul McCartney — with good reason.

He once held her hand in a suite at Melbourne’s Southern Cross Hotel.

Back then, Lady Mancham was Catherine Olsen, a young reporter with The Sun, and she had talked her way into a private audience with the Fab Four at the height of Beatlemania, just hours after they touched down in Melbourne on June 14, 1964 for a series of concerts at Festival Hall as part of their world tour.

Like any great reporter, she came to work on her day off on the off chance she might get the story of the day.

“I think we were all fans of The Beatles. I wasn’t a crazy fan of The Beatles but I thought that they were great, and I wanted to get the story because I was a keen young journalist and I thought it would be a feather in my cap,” Lady Mancham said.

“So I just hung around, met the manager and he got me inside the hotel. He plied me with drinks, he drank a lot himself, but I tipped my drinks into the pot plant and eventually I said, “’Right, where are The Beatles’, and he took me up there.”

The Beatles greet the crowd outside the Southern Cross Hotel on June 4, 1964. Picture: HWT Library

John Lennon and Ringo Starr relax at the Southern Cross Hotel. Picture: HWT Library

The scene outside a reception for The Beatles at the Melbourne Town Hall. Picture: HWT Library

Then Catherine Olsen married Sir James Macham to become Lady Mancham, years after her brush with The Beatles. Picture: HWT library.

More than 50 years later, Lady Mancham says she does not remember the name of the manager she spoke to, but it did the trick.

“He was certainly quite powerful, because he was able to take me straight up to their room, and they were all standing there at the windows, the big windows at the hotel,” she said.

“They were looking down on the street, the throngs of people in the street, and I think that they were slightly amazed themselves to have such an enormous welcome in Australia.”

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Lady Mancham said she spent about half an hour with The Beatles, who were more intent on entertaining their guest than answering questions.

“They didn’t actually say much to me. They didn’t want to be interviewed. They were happy to be very nice and friendly,” she said.

“Paul McCartney held my hand as we looked down on the throngs of people, which I often think of now if I ever hear I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

A mounted policeman tries in vain to control the vast throng outside the Southern Cross Hotel. Picture: HWT Library

The Southern Cross Hotel, with Exhibition Street jam-packed with Beatles fans. Picture: HWT Library

The Beatles spent four days in Melbourne.

Crowds gathered at Essendon Airport, where the band’s chartered Ansett ANA Fokker Friendship arrived on June 14, and lined the route to the Southern Cross in Exhibition street.

There were wild scenes for the band’s public appearances on a balcony at the hotel and at the Melbourne Town Hall.

Melbourne had never seen anything quite like it.

Did you see The Beatles in Melbourne? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

The Beatles played matinee and evening shows at Festival Hall on June 15, 16 and 17, and flew out for Sydney the next day.

Unlike any other city The Beatles ever played, Melbourne had the pleasure of welcoming five Beatles.

Drummer Jimmy Nicol had filled in on the earlier shows in the tour for Ringo Starr, who had suffered tonsillitis and was hospitalised.

Starr rejoined the band in Melbourne.

While the Fab Four stayed on, Nicol cut a lonely figure at Essendon Airport on the morning of June 15, 1964, waiting on his own for a plane home.

Jimmy Nicol, part of the rapturous welcome to Melbourne for The Beatles a day earlier, waits for a plane on his own at Essendon Airport. Picture: HWT Library

1964 June 15th. The Beatles In Melbourne. Front page of 'The Sun' newspaper. Picture: Photo File

A rare candid colour snap of the band at Festival Hall Picture: Glenn A. Baker archives

The Fab Four, especially John Lennon, felt hemmed in by the enormous crowds,

“He was pacing up and down. I think as well as being amazed, I think that they felt a little locked in there because they couldn’t get out,” Lady Mancham said.

George Harrison did slip away, borrowing an MG sports car for a quick trip to the Dandenongs,

Rumour has it he stopped for a sandwich at Olinda before returning.

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Brisbane-born Catherine Olsen went on to see the world.

Her career includes 25 years as a Fleet Street journalist working on newspapers including the Sunday Express, Daily Express, Evening News, Evening Standard and Mail on Sunday.

She is also a novelist.

She married the first president of The Seychelles, Sir James Mancham, who had been deposed in a coup in 1977.

The couple left London in 1992 to live in The Seychelles.

Lady Mancham now divides her time between The Seychelles and Brisbane.

A woman, overcome with excitement at The Beatles arrival, is attended to by police at Essendon Airport. Picture: HWT Library

John Lennon and George Harrison on stage at Festival Hall in Melbourne. Picture: HWT Library

She remembers her brush with The Beatles fondly but does not regard it as a career highlight.

“I’ve interviewed a lot more amazing people. My job in London was profiling famous people, like Margaret Thatcher and Ingrid Bergman and Freddy (Frederick) Forsyth, people who were famous at that time,” she said.

”They (The Beatles) were just nice young chaps. I wasn’t in awe of them or anything like that. I suppose that I wasn’t a crazy fan. I just liked their music and, for me, it was just doing a job properly.

“My editor was very pleased that I got in, and I got on the front page. It was very pleasant, and I was very happy to get in there when no-one else could.”

@jdwritesalot