Ringo Starr Was Rude and ‘so Angry’ on a Talk Show, Making Him a Host’s Least Favorite Guest
Though Ringo Starr has the reputation as “the Funny Beatle” and is frequently photographed flashing a peace sign, he has admitted that he gets angry just like everyone else. He said that he was furious for years after The Beatles broke up. He also admitted that he didn’t like answering questions about The Beatles in interviews. Sometimes, he could get prickly even anticipating that line of questioning. A talk show host said Starr was her least favorite guest because of how angry he was.
Ringo Starr admitted he dealt with anger after The Beatles broke up
After The Beatles broke up, John Lennon and George Harrison spoke openly about how relieved they were to be done with the group. Starr and Paul McCartney were left reeling, though. Starr admitted that it took him decades to process the split.
“I was mad,” he said, per the New York Daily News. “For 20 years. I had breaks in between of not being.”
He began drinking to cope, blurring the edges of many of his experiences after the band broke up.
“I was drunk,” he said. “I didn’t notice … some of those years are absolutely gone.”
Ringo Starr was angry during an interview, according to a talk show host
Starr and his wife, Barbara Bach, went to rehab together in 1988. According to Sherrie Hewson, though, he dealt with anger long after that.
Starr was a guest on her talk show Loose Women, which featured a rotating panel of hosts. When discussing her least favorite guests, Hewson said Starr took the top spot. She said he seemed irritable from the moment he sat down in 2012.
“Ringo Starr came on and he just sat down, said, ‘OK then, girls, what are we doing here? Shall we just get Paul McCartney out of the way?’ This was live, by the way,” she said, per Yahoo. “Anyway, he carries on, ‘Let’s get Paul McCartney out the way. You want to talk about Paul McCartney?’ I said, ‘Well, no, you’re here.’ And he said, ‘No you don’t. You want to talk about Paul McCartney.'”
Starr’s obvious anger baffled Hewson.
“He was so angry,” she said. “It was just so weird, I thought why? Why, why, why? It was just a really weird thing. And then, he said to the audience: ‘Can I tell you all, if anyone wants an autograph, you can’t have one because I don’t do things like that.'”
His mood didn’t improve after the interview
Hewson said that after the interview, a producer brought her young daughter over and asked for Starr’s autograph despite his announcement. Starr stopped signing autographs altogether in 2008.
“At the end of it, one of the producers came up with one of her little children, who was only four, and said that she knew he didn’t do autographs, but told him that her daughter was only four, and she really loves the Beatles,” Hewson recalled. “He just said, ‘really?’ And then he said: ‘Did you not hear what I just said? I don’t sign autographs.'”
Hewson admitted that it was disappointing to meet a Beatle and have him behave so unpleasantly.
“The reason I am telling this story is because, I think, I was so angry that I got to meet the Beatles and one of them was like that,” she said. “Isn’t it sad that you have to grow into that?”
