Stanley, perhaps you'd like to start by setting the scene. Tell us about the girls and the family, and a little bit about your early life.

We were quite an extended family. There were our grandparents and our great grandparents of course. Our grandparents had five daughters. They did have a little boy and a little girl, but they died in infancy, then they had five healthy girls. There was Mary known as Mimi, the eldest, my mother Elizabeth known as Mater, Anne known as Nanny, there was Julia known as Judy and there was Harriet known as Harrie. How these nicknames came about was because when I was a toddler I couldn't pronounce their full names properly, so it was me that called Mary - Mimi, my mother - Mater and Nanny … and it went on right through the whole rest of the family. Everyone called them by these nicknames. It went on right up until the day they died. They always just did that.

We lived in a nice part of Liverpool, out in the countryside surrounding the village of Woolton, Hailwood and Speke. Everyone had their own houses and our grandparents had the house at 9 Newcastle Road, Penny Lane.

We had a very, very happy childhood. I happened to be the first boy born in the family - I was born in 1933. Liela our cousin was born in 1937, four years younger than me, and John was born in 1940, seven years younger than me. So we were very close. We grew up together until 1947/48 when the other younger cousins came along, which were Jackie and Julia and Michael and David. Then we all continued to live in contact with one another through one another's houses, spending all our childhood school holidays at each of our relatives houses and this went on right throughout our lives.

What was your relationship like with John and what did you, Liela and John get up to as children?

I was very close to John because of course I was there from the time he was born and he was with his mother at 9 Newcastle Road. I was actually involved in the likes of making up his Cow & Gate milk bottle and feeding it to him. As we grew up I was a sort of chaperone to him, and held his hand and took him round to the 'pictures' and to the park. We did everything together. Little Liela, John and myself would go to Mimi's and play in the garden there and then go round to Aunt Harriet's cottage which was half of Uncle George's farm. Mimi owned half of the farmhouse, which was known as The Cottage to us, and we'd sit there and we'd play records - all kinds of records. Harriet had one of the old-fashioned wind-up HMV gramophones and she had a vast collection of records and we'd spend hours playing them. Christmas time, because it was during the war, you couldn't buy Christmas decorations, so we made up all our own Christmas decorations. And we'd draw, go cycling. We were all very keen on cycling. I got a cycle first, then Liela got one and then John got his, and we'd cycle right out to Speke Airport to watch the aeroplanes come in - landing and taking off. But we were never allowed to cycle out or into the city of Liverpool, we always had to stay in the area of Penny Lane, Woolton, Hailwood and that area there. We had an ideal childhood.

Mimi was quite strict, but I mean she was all right in some ways because she had an orchard in the back of her garden with apple trees and pear trees and she would bake lovely apple pies for us and we'd have picnics. She had a garden shed in the back garden and as I say, being strict, she was very strict on our table manners, but she said "Alright you can go and eat out in the garden shed". To us it was a great adventure going out into this shed, and just to be naughty we would eat with our hands with no knives and forks. Just devilment you know. But little did we know that the aunts had been peeking round the corner watching us to see what we were getting up to. Liela had a lovely little doll's pram and one time she was walking round the garden with this doll's pram and John and I climbed up on the top of this garden shed and John said "Watch this!", and he jumped off the shed clean through the bottom of Liela's pram! She was mortified over that. So that was a bit of his devilment in his early days!

Mimi would get fed up with us and say "Oh away you go round to Harrie's and have a visit with her." So off we'd go to The Cottage. Now Harriet had certain chores that we had to do, like go into Woolton village for the messages (groceries), go to the local radio shop to get an accumulator for the radio - because it worked on batteries then - and polish the lino in her long hall. After we'd done all that she said "You can do what you like", so after that we were free to do what we liked. And we had even more freedom at John's mother's - Judy's house. She was very free and easy - we could do just what we liked there.

Seven years is still quite a big age different between you and John, I mean he must have really looked up to you?

Yes that's true. John did look up to me then. I remember because I had letters from Aunt Mimi when I went up to live in Edinburgh that said "John thinks of you as his hero and is missing you and all the things you did together. He's just off to post a letter because he loves to go out to the post box at the end of the road and post the letters himself." So as I say I was a sort of chaperone to him, and then he more or less took over where I left off and he acted as a chaperone to Jackie and Julia and David and Michael. Although we still all saw one another as a full group of families, because I still went down to Liverpool during the holidays and vacations to visit all the aunts and visit all the family homes, and they all came up to Edinburgh of course during their vacations.

How did you feel when your little cousin, who used to hero-worship you, became famous?

The fact that this 'John Lennon' became a world icon is truly amazing. I just can't take it in at times because here is this little boy I used to drag around by the hand with his short trousers playing cowboys and Indians and going to all the 'pictures', and then suddenly what you have is a world famous pop star in this world famous group. It's fabulous to me. I always did see him - even when he was famous - as 'Cousin John' and I still couldn't take it in when I heard that this was 'John Lennon, the Beatle'. I'm really proud of what he's done.

Were there times when the fame and adulation went to John's head?

Yes. But if he did tend to become the big pop star, you know, I could always bring him down to level ground because I would say to him, "Oh yes well that's all very well John, but remember when I used to drag you round and you had your little short trousers with the holes in the back and I acted as chaperone for you?" And he said "Oh aye, oh aye, oh aye, alright."

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