Eric Clapton - the musician, a living icon, talked about his music, his memories of John Lennon, his influences and a lot more in candid chat with TOI. Excerpts:

What inspired you creatively to cut this new album?
I think when I was making this album I wanted to have everything that belonged to an era when I was a kid, until now. I wanted to get the memories back through the songs. Moreover I wanted this album to have songs dedicated to my family. So all these thoughts actually led to the way this album was cut out and nothing related to any specific creative planning.

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A KEY piece of Beatles memorabilia has been discovered in the garage of an Ascot house.

John Lennon’s 1967 Sgt Pepper’s Gypsy Caravan has been hidden from public view for more than 40 years.

But the Ascot News can exclusively reveal that the remains of the legendary caravan - which was bought by Lennon in 1967 for his then, four year-old son Julian’s birthday - has been acquired by Alan Carr, a well-known Ascot

resident and charity fundraiser.

He is hoping the caravan can be restored to its former glory.

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Hunter Davies, the prolific British writer whose 1968 biography of the Beatles – “The Beatles: The Authorized Biography” – offered a close-up and detailed, if somewhat sanitized, portrait of the group while it was still together and at the height of its power, has donated a handful of Beatles song manuscripts and John Lennon letters to the British Library

The handwritten lyrics to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “She Said She Said” and “In My Life,” three of Lennon’s most deeply personal songs, are working copies, complete with crossings-out and revised word choices. They will be on display, along with other Beatles lyrics already in the library’s collection – some loaned by Mr. Davies soon after his Beatles biography was published – in the Treasures Gallery, where Shakespeare folios, the Magna Carta, correspondence from British monarchs and manuscripts of Beethoven and Maimonides are also on display.

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New ‘free school’ opened with links to Sir Paul McCartney

Pupils will be taught at a state school run by Sir Paul McCartney’s performing arts institute under a radical expansion of one of the Coalition’s flagship education reforms.

The school is among more than 100 new “free schools” approved by the Government to open from next year as part of a 50 per cent increase in the controversial programme.

Under plans, the new primary school will be run by the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts – established by Sir Paul in 1996 – and will focus on the creative arts alongside traditional literacy and numeracy.

It also emerged that a new “Jane Austen College” – a secondary school – will be opened in Norwich with a focus on English, special classes on cultural education and the compulsory study of languages such as Latin.

In a further announcement, Will Kennard – the DJ who forms half of the chart-topping act Chase & Status – will help to lead the opening of the East London Academy of Music for 16- to 19-year-olds. Its governing body will include Sir Nick Williams, the former principal of the BRIT School, which lists Adele, Kate Nash, Leona Lewis and Amy Whitehouse among its alumni.

The disclosure was made as the Government approved 102 new free school projects to open in September 2014 and beyond – delivering around 50,000 new places.

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Yes, I posted this a little late, I barely got time to do it but anyways, I wish Astrid a very happy birthday.
Just wanna say that she is a very gorgeous and wonderful woman. She helped our beloved Beatles a lot throughout their lived specially in their Hamburg day’s. She took care of them and they took care of her. I love the friendship she had/has with the boys AND I absolutely adore her photography and her amazing talent in art in general.

Love you Astrid.

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Maria Alyokhina, today announced a hunger strike after being refused the right to attend her own parole hearing. Paul hopes that Russian officials will grant Maria the right to be present in court in the city of Berezniki.

Paul wrote handwritten letters to Russian officials in support of both Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who was last month denied parole, asking them to consider release on parole.

In his letter regarding Maria, Paul wrote:

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This afternoon Prince Harry showed his grandparents The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh around the B&Q Sentable Forget-Me-Not showgarden, designed by Jinny Blom, at the Royal Hospital Chelsea show ground.

Her garden represents the mountainous landscape, with a tribal house and roundhouse, but although the planting around the edge was absolutely beautiful the overall impression was quite bleak – which could have been deliberate. After all, children living in poverty as victims of HIV or AIDS is pretty bleak.

So it was all the more uplifting to visit the Artisan Gardens section where Garden For WaterAid was a blaze of colour and interest while still managing to tell the story of the need for rain water harvesting and communal taps in India.

And as uplifting as ever was veteran RHS Chelsea visitor Ringo Star, who officially launched the garden with the comment: “I’d like to congratulate the RHS on its 100 years. I was here the first year! (Not really).”

Surrounded by marigolds, roses and jasmine – the three most important flowers in Indian culture because they are used for making garlands and extracting natural oils – he happily admitted he was “more of a great pointer than a great gardener” because he just points to things and tells his gardener what he wants. 

“My gnomes are very busy tidying up right now,” he joked, with a refernce to the RHS allowing garden gnomes into Chelsea for the first time ever.

Ringo, the Beatles’ drummer, has been visiting RHS Chelsea for around 15 years, and said: “I was introduced to Chelsea by my friend George Harrison, a crazy gardener. I picked it up from him.

“Where I grew up, we didn’t have a garden, so I’ve only been interested in the years since I first bought a house in 1965.”

His biggest thrill, he said, was “when we dug up the first potatoes. It was one of the best memories. Potatoes are my favourite vegetable – for George it would have been something exotic”.

Dressed in black with a garland of tagetes around his neck, he was also keen to talk about his passion for WaterAid: “I truly believe that everybody should have drinkable water. Thousands of children die every year because they don’t have clean water. Children don’t deserve that. They can’t protect themselves. Their parents are doing their best and now WaterAid is trying to help.”

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John Lennon, known for his activism around the world, regretted getting too political according to his childhood friend Joe Flannery.

81-year-old Flannery was one of the last people to have talked to ‘Beatles’ founder shortly before he was killed in December 1980, reported Daily Express.

Flannery used to handle the band’s bookings. His book contains insights into the state of mind of Lennon shortly before he was murdered in the lobby of the New York apartment where he lived with his wife Yoko Ono.

“We enjoyed a lengthy conversation. We talked a lot of rubbish of course. He was very well and happy but he missed Liverpool, he missed the others and he missed London but he told me at one stage that he regretted ‘getting too political’,” Flannery said.

“John launched into a diatribe against the former president. He was convinced that even out of office Nixon carried power and wanted him dead. He felt some kind of curse was hanging over him,” Flannery added.

Flannery said Lennon believed that his thoughts on peace and lyrical barbs had made him a government target.

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Long story short, the musician is asking that people join Cruelty FreeInternational in their fight against the cosmetics industry, and demand that the practice of testing cosmetics on animals be banned worldwide.

Ecorazzi says that, according to said organization, as many as 80% of the world’s countries still allow companies to torture animals for this purpose.

Interestingly enough, ongoing legislations in China even say that testing cosmetics on animals is mandatory prior to their being made available to

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