And then in 1971 John left for New York…

When he did go to New York we thought "Oh well he's off to New York now - he's lost ." But that wasn't the case. He did keep in contact, both regularly by phone and with letters to Jan and I. He was doing his own thing, and there was a period when we weren't hearing from him. Then he got homesick and he wanted contact with the family. Cousin Liela sent letters to him, wanted to explain to his new son all about the background to his family. And Julia and Jackie and I, we sent family photographs to him. There was a period where quite possibly he was going to be kicked out of America because of his revolutionary ideas on drugs, and Nixon was all for having him ousted out of America, but he got lawyers on to the case and he had to portray himself as an upstanding good living citizen, so he sent home to Aunt Mimi "Please send me my old school tie, my old school blazer and Uncle George's family clock." So he hung that on the wall in his New York apartment and he dressed up in his blazer and tie, white shirt and a short haircut and presented himself to the lawyers to try and stay in America. But I think the fact that his son was a New York citizen, and I take it Yoko, although Japanese, would be considered to be a New York citizen, he was allowed to stay in New York, which made him happy.

What did you and John talk about on the phone?

He talked about what he was doing, you know, and what we were doing and he remembered all of the holidays we had together as children and he missed all that and he said "I actually miss Scotland more than England." After my parents died 15 Ormidale Terrace was sold and put in my stepfather's estate I had a letter from him. "Sorry about the death of Uncle Bertie. I would have bought Ormidale Terrace." Wish, wish, wish. Again typical John, he left everything too late and it had all been sealed up with the solicitors and everything and I said, "Well why didn't you let me know you wanted the house?"

Do you have a favourite Beatles or John Lennon song?

I like all Beatles records, but one particular one I do like very much is 'Help!' because I happened to be down staying with him at his Weybridge home when he'd finished the film. He came in from the studio one night "God", he said "they've changed the title of the film - it's going to be called 'Help!' now. So I've had to write a new song with the title called 'Help!'." And he said he had the demo disc, "This is it. I'll put it on." He put it on his gramophone. " What do you think of this then?" I said, "Oh, that's great, I like that, that's great." And it has been one of my favourites ever since.

Do you have any memento or memorabilia and what do you treasure the most?

As regards mementoes of John's, I did have quite a lot. When I first started off he said to me, "Here Stanley nobody's keeping a record of anything we're doing. Will you start a scrapbook?" I said, "Well, OK. John, OK." And I thought to myself 'Ah, give it six months and this will be done, finished, played out.' Well, here I am forty years later still cutting out articles, sticking in scraps!

I was mad keen on having a motorbike one time, but my mother would never allow me to have it, but John gave me his original leather jacket that he wore when they were playing in the Hamburg club. You'll have seen the famous photograph, him with Stuart Sutcliffe. So I had that for a while and I passed it on to my nephew who also formed a pop group in Scotland and he kept it and wore it for luck.

And I had various little things … like Cynthia and John gave me a little transistor radio and clock, travelling clock, made out of pony skin and I still have that as a memento. And I had quite a few, I still have signed photographs, you know, with John's signature - and various little things that I wouldn't part with.

I parted with some of it because I wanted to gather a fair sum of money to get the best type of video camera I could and a top 35mm camera because I've always been keen on photography. I'm glad I did because I've done seven years of family research. I've gone right back to the 1600s to the very beginning and I have films, records of the interior of the homes, exterior of the homes, places where there were members of the family. It's been wonderful. So sometime I hope to get a record of all that out in some sort of way. I hope to write a book about the family history, but as you know it all takes time. I don't think I'd be capable of writing it myself, I'm thinking about doing it in conjunction with Bill Harry, John's old school/ art college friend.

Now that Uncle Charlie Lennon, who was the oldest surviving Lennon member, has died I've now become the oldest living member of John Lennon's family, or the Stanley family. So I suppose I'm the - what shall we say? - the heritage keeper of the Lennon history. I'm the only one who can go right back to the year dot with the history of the family. And a lot has been written and spoken about and published which has been really a lot of bunkum - not the true story of our family whatsoever. So I hope to put the record straight. And now Julian is putting the record straight, which I'm very pleased about. It's being done with this website, which probably people now know is the Liverpool Lennon website, the Liverpool Lennons, the real Lennon family.

© 2004 Lennon by Lennon Ltd. All rights reserved