A Hard Day's Night

In 1959 Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers and Richard Lester mucked about with a cine camera and made a short film called 'Running, Jumping, Standing Still'. Spin on four years and The Beatles stand astride the globe at the peak of their powers. When some bright spark came up with the idea of exploiting the Fab Four's popularity with a film they asked the band who they'd like to direct it, and they suggested Lester.

'A Hard Day's Night' was only ever meant to be a quick cash-in, but when the film hit the screens - purporting to be a day in the life of the band - the critics were falling over themselves in praise. Although perhaps not as much as the horde of screaming girls that chase the Beatles down a train platform at the start of the film.

At the time it was assumed that most of the dialogue had been ad-libbed by the boys, but in fact screenwriter Alun Owen deliberately restricted each line they spoke to only six words to give them a conversational style.

In a strange quirk of fate Peter Sellers went on to record a cover version of the title song...but in the style of Richard III.