Television Shows:  Around The Beatles

     The Beatles recorded the television special Around The Beatles at Studio 5AB at Rediffusion's Wembley Studios, London.

     The hour-long show featured, along with The Beatles, PJ Proby, the Vernons Girls, Long John Baldry, Millie, The Jets, and NEMS artists Cilla Black and Sounds Incorporated. It was first broadcast in the UK on the ITV network in May, 1964, and in the US by ABC, on 15 November.

     The Beatles took part in two segments in the show: a musical set and a spoof of Act V Scene I of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison also mimed a trumpet fanfare at the start of the show, before Ringo Starr appeared with a flag to set off a cannon ball. The group also introduced PJ Proby's performance.

     For the Shakespeare spoof, Lennon took the female role of Thisbe, McCartney played Pyramus, Harrison was Moonshine and Starr played Lion. Incidentally, McCartney later owned a cat he named Thisbe.

     The songs performed by The Beatles in the show were Twist And Shout, Roll Over Beethoven, I Wanna Be Your Man, Long Tall Sally and Can't Buy Me Love, as well as a special medley of their earlier hits - Love Me Do, Please Please Me, From Me To You, She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand - and finally a version of The Isley Brothers' 1959 song Shout.

     The music had been pre-recorded at London's IBC Studios in April 1964, and The Beatles mimed during the show.