Q: What’s it like being a photographer to so many famous people? A: It’s only now that I’ve slowed down a bit do I realise how many great people I’ve photographed, you don’t realise along the way, you just take them, and suddenly you look at what you’ve done and it’s quite impressive. Q: Did you ever get star struck? A: No, when I first started I photographed people and I didn’t know who they were, or they were supposed to be somebody, and then when I got a job on a newspaper the first people who I photographed were the Beatles funnily enough, and that took three months to publish, and once it published it caused such a furore, it was the first pop picture to be used in a newspaper, so that started the use of pop pictures in newspapers …They’d just made a record and it was just before it came out. Q: So you were one of the first people to photograph the Beatles? A: Yeah, well I used to be a Jazz musician and that's how, so they sort off knew everything about music and rock and roll had just came in and they really had a different sound so it was quite easy. Q: Did you meet the Beatles many times? A: Oh yeah ,we used to go to a club called the Adlib club and we used to sit there and we used to make jokes about Mick Jagger saying can you imagine him singing like this at 40, let alone doing it at 60 odd or whatever he is now! And we all just used to sit around talking about what job we were going to do when all this was over. Because everyone thought it was just going to be a thing and everyone would have to go back to working in a bank or whatever job you were gonna do. It was only when I went to Hollywood when I was 24 that I saw that people like Fred Astaire threw dinner parties for us, and that all they wanted to talk about were the Beatles, Stones, Mary Quant, Jean Shrimpton. And I suddenly realised that, you know this was gonna last. So then I started keeping all the negatives because I didn’t keep any negatives or anything. I suddenly realised well this is a proper job and it could last, and if someone like Fred Astaire is interested in these people they must be for real. Q: What do you think it is that makes your work special? A: I mean when I started my advantage was that I used 35 mm which was a small portable camera, because everyone else used 5 4’s or 2 1/4’s and I sort of started a new style you know, and when I went to Hollywood they loved this little camera - you know you’d could take 36 pictures on a roll and you know I just came along at the right time actually, that was the luck of it! Q: Do you it would be harder to get into this type of photography now, do you think it's more more rigid nowadays? A: Well that’s what’s killing it now, that’s what’s absolutely killing it and also there’s so much media attention now that the celebrities only last a couple of minutes, they’re not really celebrities, I mean these people in this show - well I should have called it superstars, I mean I did a book called Legends once so I had to pick another title. I mean these are the really true celebrities and stars they’re not all these quick, here in some TV show…..I mean it’s just terrible, I think it’s terrible. Q: Do you have best piece of work, that you think 'I’ve taken that so well I couldn’t get it any better'? A: Actually when you take the picture you’re never really satisfied, I mean when I look at them now I’m really happy but at the time you always think ‘one little thing’, ‘if only this and only that’ or something or other but it’s all in your mind - I mean it’s just being a perfectionist actually. But when it’s all done and all over it’s all fine…. I like them all for different reasons I mean they all bring back good memories. Q: Which photographers have influenced you - and do you have a favourite photographer? A: Well when I started it was a bloke called Eugene Smith, who was a great documentary photographer, and I got to like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Annie Leibovitz and that’s about all, there’s a good few photographers now. | 
