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How The Beatles found their drummer at Butlin's
Karl Bird
In Skegness
BBC
October 17 2026
Michael Ochs Archive
Bobby Thompson (second left) played bass for Rory Storm and the Hurricanes alongside a young Ringo Starr (far right)
A Lincolnshire holiday camp played a little-known but crucial part in the birth of The Beatles.
A young, bearded Ringo Starr was playing drums with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes at the Butlins in Skegness in the summer 1962 when Paul McCartney and John Lennon arrived to try and recruit him to the band.
Bobby Thomson, who was bassist in the Hurricanes, recalls the duo arriving early one morning after driving all night from Liverpool.
"I think that was the whole idea, to invite him to join the Beatles," he said.
"Because I was with Ringo they didn't come out with it. They could have, it wouldn't have bothered me."
He said that a few weeks later in mid August the band were having breakfast when an announcement over the speaker system asked Starr to report to reception.
He asked Thomson to come with him and the pair arrived to find a phone call from Beatles manager Brian Epstein asking if Starr would like to join the group.
Keystone via Getty Images
Starr later recalled the conversation in an interview. "The boys would like you to join The Beatles. What do you say?
"I said, 'no, I'd love to, when?' And he said, 'oh, tonight'. I said, 'I can't', this was Wednesday, 'I can't come tonight. I'm in a band, I'll come Saturday'."
Thomson said that during the call with Epstein the drummer was told to lose his facial hair.
"He didn't want to shave his beard off," Thomson said laughing.
"So the beard came off and he got the haircut to match."
Madeline Morrison, who worked as a Redcoat at the Clacton camp, said people were surprised when the rumours of Starr joining The Beatles soon started to spread throughout Butlin's.
"Rory Storm was a big, big name," she said.
"I've got playbills where Rory Storm and the Hurricanes were above The Beatles."
She added people said he had been taken to the hairdresser: "He's got the Beatle haircut, he's joining them.
"You know, all this sort of stuff would jump round all the camps because we were all villages."
After Starr's departure Rory Storm and the Hurricanes recruited another drummer for the remaining two weeks of the summer season.
Peter Nicholls via Getty
Another celebrity whose career began as a Butlin's Redcoat remembered occasionally sitting in on the drums for Starr.
Think of a Number TV presenter Johnny Ball said he would often play the first part of the Hurricanes' Sunday night performances.
"He [Starr] could flinch an extra hour on his day off if I stood in for him and played his first half of the gig," he said.
Soon after Starr joined the Fab Four, they had a UK hit with their first single Love Me Do and went on to make musical history around the globe.
Thomson described his former bandmate as "a smashing bloke"
"His personality and everything was spot on," he said.
Thomson added that in joining the Beatles "He actually made the whole team, the full set".
"We just knew that they were going to be absolutely huge."
"You were waiting for the talent to take the world over, which they did the following year."
Starr's only return to Lincolnshire with his new group would be their performance at the ABC cinema in Lincoln in November 1963.
Photographer Ken James remembered the experience as "absolute bedlam".
"The fans were screaming it was unbelievable," he said.
"The second they came on they were screaming, quite hysterical some of them."
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