Simon Halfon

I mean, it was trickier times for them.

Anyway, I have... with the help of a wonderful man called Simon Halfon, who's a graphic designer who worked on Oasis books and Queen books, put together a book where I found out who virtually everybody in the book is and how they relate to Brian.

And I tried to tell his life through contacts.

Oh, what a brilliant idea.

Oh, yeah, I saw this, yeah.

With a guy called Simon Halfon.

Half-on? Half-on.

It's like a hard-on, like a semi.

Got to point out, you did all the research.

Simon Halfon, who we both know, top man, did all the graphics.

Simon

and I have done the book together.

Welcome to My Favourite Beatles Song, the podcast where we celebrate the music of the Beatles with a distinguished guest.

I'm Tim Tucker and with me today is art director and filmmaker Simon Halfon.

Welcome, Simon.

Oh, lovely to be here.

You can see, you know, when... on that fateful weekend August Bank holiday of 67 when Brian passes away and John hears the news he's absolutely ashen absolutely ashen and even afterwards you've heard him say as soon as Brian died I knew we'd fucking had it

Highly recommend this to all our listeners.

It's called 1967, The World of Brian Epstein and the Beatles by Gary Kemp and Simon Halfon, available from HarperCollins.

I'll put the links in the show notes, but how can people best follow you and your work? Is there any way you'd like people to follow you as a website or social?

And of course, I wonder if to this day, Paul isn't really secretly thinking, did I nick that?

So your book, which you've written, or put together with Simon Halfon, you've written the text and Simon's put the images, is that right?

Yeah,

that's right, yeah.

And most of it, no, half of it, I'd say he's typed, and that would have been typed by his secretary.

And then the other half is handwritten 90% by Brian, sometimes by the people who are writing their own names and addresses in, and sometimes by Wendy Kitson, his first secretary, who'd come back in 67 to help them with Sergeant Peppers, and then also Joanne Newfield, who was his current secretary.

And anyway, so about 18 months ago, Simon Halfon came round to my house and I have known Simon Halfon for many, many years.

We go back to the sort of early 90s.

isn't it? So is it a surprise that he's got Keith Moon's parents' number? So basically, this is a book, for those who don't know, I bought about six years ago from Sotheby's, Brian Epstein's address book, dated from 1967.

um there's 404 names in it and uh i've written a book uh about virtually everybody that i could find who was in it and that's maybe i think i missed about 30 and and tell brian's story through all the contacts within the book and explain who they are as much as i can find because some of them are extremely well known as you can imagine and some of them are completely unknown and I would only find in very small places and strange places as it was you know like a local Chicago newspaper from 1965 where someone's accused of arrested for being abroad in the night and such things you know And I put it together with Simon Halfon, who's this great graphics designer who did Style Council and Wham and Oasis and did the Supersonic book and actually produced the Supersonic documentary as well.

So an old friend of both of those.

And Guy, you received yours yesterday, didn't you?