Freddie Starr Ate My Hampton

Ritchie Blackmore who found worldwide fame with Deep Purple started out playing guitar with a band called the Outlaws. They worked with Joe Meek at his studio in Holloway Road. On one occasion Ritchie was working in the studio with Freddie Starr, who before he was a comedian fronted one of the best bands in Liverpool. According to Ritchie “Chas Hodges, of Chas & Dave fame was sitting there half asleep with his pajamas on underneath his trousers. You could see them sticking out of his trouser legs. Freddie came into the studio and dropped his trousers in the studio as I was playing. He got hold of his thing and tried to put it in my ear as I was doing my guitar solo. Of course, I made a mistake, and in those days Joe Meek didn’t have a see-through screen to watch the studio and so he had to come into the room to see what was going on. He came storming in, ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ He saw us and just went ‘ooohh’". Luckily this was before Freddie discovered hamsters.