RINGO STARR - #59

Ringo and wife refuse acting roles in favour of staying home (and taking drugs).

When they married in 1981, Ringo Starr and second wife Barbara Bach had both pursued successful acting careers with the potential to go much further. But, such was their dedication to drinking and taking drugs together, they decide to only take parts that also had a role for the other. Unsurprisingly, few directors took up this unique double-act of former Beatle and former Bond girl. But they did nab parts in Paul McCartney's terrible film Give My Regards To Broad Street, the terrible TV mini-series Princess Daisy, the really quite bad Caveman, and, well, that's virtually it. They made the most of their free time by laying into the drink and drugs - which, in Ringo's case, included booze, weed and even freebasing cocaine.

After a life-saving bout of rehab in 1988, Ringo recalled how, for years, the couple would "sit around for hours and talk about what we were going to do - and, of course, I'd get so bleeding drunk, I couldn't move. The result was...nothing happened".

JOHN LENNON #56

John Lennon sticks a sanitary pad on his head

On March 12th 1974 former US television comedians The Smothers Brothers were holding a comeback performance at the Troubadour nightclub in LA, their first time in the city since their TV show was cancelled five years earlier.

Unfortunately, their old friend John Lennon and his drinking pal Harry Nillson decided to lend some all-too vocal support. After numerous brandy Alexanders, Lennon shouted out: "Hey, Smothers Brothers! Go f*ck a cow!" Then he visited the toilets, found a Kotex sanitary pad and wandered out with it stuck to his head - causing massive disruption to the hapless comedians' performance. When he continued heckling, a waitress asked him to stop. He asked: "Don't you know who I am?" "Yeah" she replied, "You're an asshole with a Kotex on his head".

Eventually, the crowd turned on him and had him removed. "It wasn't really a good time for him," said Dick Smothers, charitably.

GEORGE HARRISON #53

George Harrison falls for Ringo's wife

George Harrison's early 70s output focused on how best to spread love around the world. He often spread his love around in his private life, too: with his marriage to Pattie Boyd on the rocks, he would hit on almost every woman he met. Even so, no-one expected him to spread it as far as Ringo's wife, Maureen. Yet one night in 1973 when the two couples were round at Ringo's for dinner, George picked up a guitar after the meal, played some love songs, then looked up and muttered quietly: "I'm in love with you, Maureen". As everyone other than George understood, comments like this can ruin a dinner party. Ringo stormed out of the room; Pattie ran and locked herself in the bathroom. Incredibly, the incident sparked a full-blown affair - Pattie returned home weeks later to find George and Maureen lying nonchalantly in bed together. It even contributed to Ringo and Maureen's 1975 divorce. George's excuse for his ungentlemanly behaviour? "Incest, I guess," he shrugged.

PAUL McCARTNEY #52

Paul McCartney gets busted

Japan in renowned in the rock world for taking a harsh line on drugs. The nation had refused Paul McCartney entry on various occasions because of earlier weed busts. Ye the day he packed for Wings' 1980 tour of the country he inexplicably decided to place a 7oz lump of marijuana at the top of his suitcase. Detained at Tokyo's Narita airport on 16th January, the tour was cancelled at a cost of £1 million. McCartney faced seven years in a Japanese jail, but was instead deported after nine days. "Underneath their inscrutable exterior, the guards were quite warm," he said, not at all stereotypically