Call me perverse, but to me Ringo was the greatest Beatle

The heart and soul of the band: Ringo Starr in 1964 – Michael Ochs Archives/Jeff Hochberg/Getty

The news that Sam Mendes is to make four separate films about the members of The Beatles, due in 2025, will be seen by some as exciting and others as overkill. I sit somewhere in between. I’ve no desire to see the life of John Lennon raked over yet again, and feel indifferent about Paul and George – yet the prospect of a Ringo Starr biopic has made me giddy. Why? Because Ringo is the best Beatle.

Ringo was the band’s heart and soul, the one who looked as though he were having fun, capturing the excitement and exuberance of the Swinging ’60s in a way that always eluded the others.

There’s a lovely scene in A Hard Day’s Night (1964) in which a crusty old City gent, played by Richard Vernon, is incandescent about the fact that four mop-topped Liverpudlians have invaded his quiet train-carriage. After some insubordination from John, the man rages: “Don’t take that tone with me, young man. I fought the war for your sort.” Ringo replies, deadpan: “I bet you’re sorry you won.”

While the others often seemed to be posturing, Ringo was natural, quick-witted and never took himself too seriously. It’s irresistible to think that he seemed to be enjoying himself because he had the most to lose. Bob Spitz, one of the many Beatles biographers, described Ringo’s upbringing as “a Dickensian chronicle of misfortune”, one afflicted by tuberculosis and appendicitis and the poverty of his upbringing in Dingle.

Critics often point to the fact that Ringo was a lousy musician, citing the infamous line, “He wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles”, often (erroneously) attributed to Lennon. But while he never had a showy drum solo, Ringo’s quiet competence always enhanced the band’s work: think of the drum rolls in She Loves You, or the wonky backbeat in Tomorrow Never Knows. He always knew how best to serve the song.

The man who made the Beatles human: Ringo Starr in Washington in 1964 – Mirrorpix/Getty

In some ways, he was the true “quiet man” of the band (a term more often used to describe Harrison). And while creative genius is all very well, Mendes’s films may demonstrate that the hotheaded posturing of Paul and John eventually grates.

I’d go further, and say that this is a general truth in the biographical field: that those least fond of the spotlight make the most interesting subjects. Film and TV dramatists are obsessed with real-life stories, but my favourites are those that focus on the unshowy or the forgotten, such as Caroline Catz’s Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, about the mistress of electronica. One of the greatest political memoirs of all, meanwhile, is Chris Mullin’s A View From the Foothills, which details the monotony of life as a backbench Labour MP while elucidating the politics of the Blair years.

So let’s hear it for Richard Starkey, and for a film that will no doubt prove what I’ve always claimed – that it was Ringo who made The Beatles human.

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