Sunderland date announced for ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris’ Beatles night

It was announced earlier in June that the former Whistle Test presenter was to deliver the talk, called The Songs The Beatles Gave Away, at 17Ninteeen in the East End but that the date was yet to be confirmed.

It has now been announced that it takes place at 7pm on Saturday, October 28.

Anyone who thinks they know about The Beatles might be surprised. The show is about the incredible catalogue of songs written by the band, but never recorded by them except as demos. However, many were hits for other artists.

Some are quite well known. Bad to Me and World Without Love were Lennon & McCartney songs which made number one for Billy J Kramer and Peter & Gordon respectively.

But other acts to have hits with songs most people don’t realise The Beatles wrote include The Fourmost, Cilla Black, PJ Proby, Mary Hopkin and the Applejacks.

There are 29 such songs; enough to make The Beatles respected songwriters even if they hadn’t done anything else. Even Bob Harris hadn’t heard some and recordings of most of them feature in the show. The show is part of a UK tour alongside and has contributions from Fab Four expert Colin Hall.

Bob told the Echo: “I truly believe there’s nobody in the world who has the knowledge that Colin has got.

“We were talking, 15 years ago, about the day that John met Paul, which was 6th July 1957. I decided I would pitch to Radio 2 the idea of making a documentary about that moment, because at the time nobody realised the significance of this meeting.

“So we made a beautiful programme, it’s award-winning actually. Afterwards Colin and I sat down and said we’d like to do something else. What else can we do?

“Colin said he had this idea for The Songs The Beatles Gave Away.”

This will not be “Whispering” Bob’s first visit to Sunderland. One of his previous trips was alongside Marc Bolan on a T Rex tour.

Tickets for The Songs The Beatles Gave Away are £22.38 at www.eventbrite.co.uk.