Imagine that - my cousin John was one of the Beatles

THERE will be massive memorial concerts, the release of incredibly expensive CD box sets, and the burying of time capsules, yet in one small corner of Edinburgh, the day which would have seen John Lennon turn 70 will pass by unmarked.

At a Craigleith sandstone terraced home, there's nothing to show that this is the place where the Beatle spent many a childhood holiday.

Yet according to his elder cousin, Stan Parkes, Edinburgh was a special place to Lennon, and his family home at 15 Ormidale Terrace in leafy Murrayfield was on the star's list of properties to buy.

"We moved away from Liverpool and so from about the age of nine till he was 17 he used to come to Edinburgh during the summer," recalls Stan.

"I was seven years older, so I would go down on the bus to get him and we'd travel back together, or when he was a bit older Aunt Mimi would put him on the bus in Liverpool and I'd collect him in St Andrew Square.

"He loved coming here, and he loved going up north to Durness in Sutherland where my step-father came from and where we had a croft.

"There's a plaque there now to commemorate him, and a beautiful garden built by the Beechgrove Garden in his memory, but there's nothing in Edinburgh.

"A plaque at Ormidale Terrace would be nice, but I'm not sure that the people who live there now would want to be bothered with people coming to look at the place."

While there's no marker in Murrayfield, there is a public monument to Lennon in the heart of the city - a bench in Princes Street Gardens, paid for by the Edinburgh Beatles Appreciation Society.

Stan adds: "He loved Edinburgh and used to like visiting the Castle and walking up Arthur's Seat. I remember taking him to the Military Tattoo - I think it might have been the second one they had held - and he just loved it. He was thrilled by the music and the dancing.

"I remember one time he got off the bus after coming up from Liverpool, when he was about 14, and he had been playing a harmonica and driving everyone mad, but the bus driver had enjoyed it and told him to come back the next day as he had a top-of-the-range mouth organ which had been left on the bus. John couldn't believe it, he played it all the time."

When Lennon returned to Edinburgh ten years later, when Beatlemania was at its height, it was the same harmonica he played in the opening bars of the band's first hit, Love Me Do.

That was April 29, 1964 when Edinburgh was in the grip of full-blown Beatle hysteria. By this time there was no bus for Lennon, but a chartered flight from Northolt to Turnhouse for the two half-hour concerts at the ABC on Lothian Road.

Before they took to the stage, the Beatles were introduced to Edinburgh's then Lord Provost, Duncan Weatherstone, who asked Lennon for a 100,000 donation for the Festival. With typical scouring wit he answered "why don't you pawn your gold chain?"

The concerts themselves were bedlam, covered at the time by the News's John Gibson, who wrote: "You think it looked bad outside the ABC last night? You should have been INSIDE! With your earplugs, tranquillisers and sedatives, for this was Edinburgh's craziest, noisiest audience ever.

"Midway through, the makeshift casualty station took on a quite realistic look as four first-aid women and a man pinned down one weeping, hysterical girl. The ambulance men handed over to the police two girls who couldn't be calmed. They were taken to a restaurant for coffee. When the father of one of the girls turned up to collect his daughter, both girls locked themselves in the restaurant toilet.

"Midway through the Beatles' second performance, two elderly ladies left their seats 16 rows from the front and walked out. Said one: 'The Beatles seem nice boys but we couldn't hear them. They'd have been as well miming to their records. We couldn't fathom the girls' behaviour at all.'"

It's said that they escaped the screaming hordes afterwards via an underground passage to Castle Terrace, where their limo was waiting.

Despite it all, Lennon had his feet on the ground, says Stan. "We knew when he had made a record in 1962. He had not really talked much about The Beatles until then, but he arrived at Ormidale Terrace one day saying that they'd made a record. John was so excited. He told me they were doing this TV interview.

"We never thought much of it, and of course we were amazed at how it all took off, but the night they played Edinburgh, he came back to my house in Currie and stayed there rather than going off to a hotel with the rest of the lads."

In the morning, Lennon went to buy cigarettes at the local RS McColl newsagents, causing the shop girl to faint.

By now, Stan was running his own motor business in McDonald Road, and occasionally Lennon would leave his Ferrari and Rolls-Royce with his cousin for a tune up while he was visiting Edinburgh.

In 1969 Lennon also brought his new wife Yoko Ono, her daughter Kyoko and his son Julian to visit. "He drove up here because he wanted to show Yoko where he spent so much time. She made him drive, though he was a terrible driver as he was always chauffeured everywhere. That's the time they had the crash up north and ended up in Golspie hospital. Before that though they'd stayed with me, and that was really the last time I saw him."

Lennon and Ono were snapped in Shandwick Place during that holiday by Bob Webb, then manager of Lizars. They had been in to buy a pair of binoculars for his aunt and the quick-thinking photographer had dashed out to catch them striding down the West End pavement.

Stan continued to write intermittently to Lennon when he was in New York, until he was killed by Mark Chapman in 1980, three months after his 40th birthday. The 77-year-old, who now lives in Largs, says: "In one of his last letters he said he wanted to buy 15 Ormidale Terrace because he had such good memories of his time there. But he left it too late.

"He would have been 70 on Saturday and it's still amazing to think that the young lad I grew up with became such a huge star. It changed all our lives. Even now I'm invited to places because of my connection. In fact I'm going to Washington to the stamp museum as they're putting on show John's stamp collection which they paid 30,000 for. I gave him my stamp album years ago to get him interested so they want to hear about how I turned him into a stamp collector. It's amazing."

WITH LOVE FROM HERE TO STU

JOHN Lennon's childhood holidays are not the only connection Edinburgh had with The Beatles. Stuart Sutcliffe, the fifth Beatle and the man behind the band's name and image, was born in the Capital on June 23, 1940.

His parents lived in a spacious Georgian villa in Claremont Crescent, 15 minutes' walk from the east end of Princes Street. The family moved to Merseyside when Stuart was a few years old.

It was there that Stuart met John Lennon at art college. He joined his band Johnny and the Moondogs, and played with Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

It was bass guitarist Stuart's idea to rename the band Silver Beatles.

Their first tour was to Scotland and later, almost penniless, The Beatles made a trip to Hamburg. There Stuart fell in love with photographer Astrid Kirchherr, and the image of mop-top hairdos and collarless suits was created.

After arguments with McCartney, Stuart stayed behind. Tragically, he died six months before the Fab Four cut their first record in 1962.