Ringo Starr’s Early Attempts at Flirting Often Had Girls Telling Him to ‘Piss Off’

Before The Beatles, Ringo Starr’s career ambitions had a lot to do with what would look good to girls. After recovering from an illness, Starr took a job on a boat with hopes of earning a position at deep sea. He also hoped the position would win him popularity with women. His attempts at flirting didn’t often go well, though.

Ringo Starr tried to use a fake job to flirt with girls

Starr was sick for much of his childhood. Once he began to recover, he took a job on a local boat, hoping it would launch a career for him.

“Then I worked on the St. Tudno, a pleasure steamer that went from Liverpool to Menai in North Wales,” he said in The Beatles Anthology. “I wanted to go deep sea, and this was an easy way to get my ticket. If you did three months on the local boats, it was easier to get on the big liners. I got as far as the day boats, but that was it.”

Starr also used the job as a way to impress women. He pretended he was in the Merchant Navy, but this method of impressing never got him far.

“It was great for picking up chicks in the pub, because I pretended I was in the Merchant Navy,” he said. “I’d say, ‘Yeah, just got back from Menai.’ They would say, ‘Oh yeah, when did you leave?’ and I would say, ‘Ten o’clock this morning.’ And then they would tell me to piss off.”

Ringo Starr eventually lost the job he used to flirt with girls

While Starr had hoped this job would launch a larger career for him, he did not end up moving up in the ranks. He reportedly only kept his position on the St. Tudno for six weeks.

After a night out, Starr stumbled into work still drunk and confronted his boss. As a result, he lost the job, and had to rush to find a new one.

He picked up a variety of odd jobs to avoid the military

Though picking up women was an added bonus of the job, Starr wanted to work in order to avoid military service.

“I was terrified about conscription and the thought of being called up to the army,” he said. “That’s why I became an apprentice engineer, because the army weren’t taking apprentices in 1956 or ’57. It got down to, ‘If you’ve got a real job, we won’t take you.’ It seemed the best way out for me. The last place I wanted to go was in the army.”

This was his last job before throwing himself fully into music, and he stumbled into an engineer position.

“I went there to be a joiner, but they put me on the delivery bike for about six weeks,” he said. “I got fed up and I went to complain: ‘Come on, I’m here to be a joiner, not on the bike.’ The man said, ‘Well, there’s no places for joiners — would you like to be an engineer?’ So I became an apprentice engineer, going to school one day a week and working with the guys the rest.”