Ringo Starr and George Harrison on Aspel & Company on March 5, 1988. Photo: AP Wirephoto.
Some excerpts from the interview:
George: “Just at Christmas I saw some kids, about 18 years old, in Los Angeles, and they saw me walk in a shop, and they looked at each other and said, ‘Ooh, there’s that singer!’ Which I thought was pretty good.”
Michael Aspel: “If it’d all never happened, what would you be doing now?”
George: “I think I probably would’ve been a guitar — probably a better guitar player than I am now, because, you know —“
Ringo: “Impossible.”
George: “— because, uh, you know, the famous bit sort of made… we ended up playing just the same old stuff for years. But, um, I started playing the guitar when I was about thirteen, and that’s the only thing I really wanted to do. I didn’t wanna be a, a Thomas The Tank Engine or —“
Ringo: “Thanks a lot!”
[laughter]
George: “— or a train… you know, a fireman or anything like that.”
Michael Aspel: “Would you have been happier men?”
Ringo: “I always feel I was born happy. […]”
George: “I’m quite happy, yeah, I’m happy. But you can’t say, you know, it’s all… this is our lives, you know. This is the only life I can remember, and I’m happy enough doing it. It’s been up and down, good and bad, and in the end I think I come — all of us — have come out of it reasonably sane and quite happy.”
George: “I don’t go discothequeing and things like that were people hang out with their cameras. so they presumed I was Howard Hughes. But I wasn’t like that at all. I go out a lot of the time, see friends, have dinner, go to parties. I’m even more normal than, you know, normal people.” (x)