Interview for ITN

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On July 5, 1966, The Beatles left Manila after being physically threatened because they didn’t join an invitation by the Philippines’ First Lady, Imelda Marcos. In the early morning of July 6, after a brief refuelling stop in Bangkok, they arrived in New Delhi, India, for a two-days stop. They left New Delhi on the evening of July 7.

They arrived at London Airport at 6 am on July 8, where a brief press conference was held. They were also interviewed by the ITN network and by Reuters, where they discuss their troubled time in the Philippines.

Q: At the airport, did they come up and start physically threatening you?

Paul McCartney: We got to the airport and our road managers had a lot of trouble trying to get the equipment in because the escalators had been turned off, and things. So we got there, and we got put into the transit lounge. And we got pushed around from one corner of the lounge to another, you know.

John Lennon: ‘You’re treated like ordinary passenger! Ordinary passenger!’ Ordinary passenger, what, he doesn’t get kicked, does he?

McCartney: And so they started knocking over our road managers and things, and everyone was falling all over the place.

Q: That started worrying you, when the road manager got knocked over.

McCartney: Yeah, and I swear there were 30 of ’em.

Q: What do you say there were?

John Lennon:  Well, I saw sort of five in sort of outfits, you know, that were doing the actual kicking and booing and shouting.

Q: Did you get kicked any?

John Lennon: No, I was very delicate and moved every time they touched me. But I was petrified. I could have been kicked and not known it, you know. We’ll just never go to any nuthouses again.

Q: Would you go to Manila again, George?

George Harrison: No, I didn’t even want to go that time.

John Lennon: Me too.

George Harrison: Because we’d heard that it was a terrible place anyway, and when we got there. It was proved.

Going further

• https://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1966.0708.beatles.html