‘It was just a hammer,’ she said.

From The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson. Page 96.

Years ago I lived next door to Ringo Starr and for about six months didn’t know it. This was during a comparatively short period in my life when my wife and I lived in a row of old labourers’ cottages in Sunningdale, in Berkshire, and when I say ‘next door’ I mean that our back fence backed on to Ringo’s estate. Ringo’s house was hundreds of yards away up a grassy slope and hidden from view by trees, but it was still in the strict sense next door. I learned that Ringo was the owner of the estate from our neighbour Dougie, who lived, in the more traditional sense, next door.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t seen him around,’ Dougie said. ‘He’s often in the Nag’s Head. Nice chap.’

I went home and said to my wife: ‘Guess who lives in the big house on the hill?’

‘Ringo Starr,’ she said.

‘You knew?’

‘Of course. We see him all the time around here. I stood behind him in the ironmonger’s the other day. He was buying a hammer. Nice man. He said hi.’

‘Ringo Starr said hi to you? A Beatle said hi to you?’

‘He’s not really a Beatle any more.’

I ignored this, of course.

The Beatle Ringo Starr bought a hammer in our local hardware store and said hi to you and you didn’t think to tell me.’

‘It was just a hammer,’ she said.

This is the problem with the British. They all have stories like this. In fact, they all have better stories than this. I have no idea how we got on to the subject of the Beatles, but the next day as we were walking along a forestry track in dense woods, I mentioned my Ringo Starr story. My companions nodded appreciatively. Daniel allowed a suitable pause, out of politeness, and then said: ‘When I was at university I spent an afternoon with John Lennon.’

I could see at once that this was going to out-trump me by about a thousand per cent.