For many years, Charles Lennon had been John Lennon’s only surviving relation in Liverpool and he was known to residents and Beatle fans alike as “Uncle Charlie”. He would attend Beatle Conventions and, despite his age, he never tired of signing autographs. His visits to the shops around Sefton Park would coincide with the timetable for the Magical Mystery Tour bus so that the guide could say “Oh look, there’s John’s uncle.” The bus would stop and Charlie would pose for photographs and maybe sing a snatch of his own song, “Ships Of The Mersey”. He was full of pride for his nephew and he would say, “He changed the world, didn’t he? A Lennon changed the world.”

Charles Lennon’s father, also called John Lennon, was born in Dublin and raised in Liverpool. He worked in America as a founding member of the Kentucky Minstrels before becoming a Liverpool docker. He and his wife, Polly, had six children including Alfred, known as Freddie, who was born in 1912 and the youngest, Charles, in 1918. When John died in 1921, the family had little money and Charlie recalled, “We didn’t know who Father Christmas was but my mother was wonderful.”

It was standard practice for children without a father to be raised at an orphanage, in this case, the Bluecoat Orphanage and only to have short holidays at home. “I didn’t go myself because I was so young, but Alfred did. He could tap dance and sing, but the headmaster wouldn’t let him join one of the touring shows, Casey’s Court,” Charlie told me.

Alfred left the orphanage when 15 and worked as an office boy. He met a schoolgirl, Julia Stanley, whose father worked for the Liverpool Salvage Company. Stanley’s parents, a middle class family, considered themselves a cut above the Lennons and never approved of the romance. Alfred became a steward on passenger ships for the White Star Line and, against her family’s wishes, he married Julia on 3 December 1938. Their son, John, was born while he was at sea on 9 October 1940. “Julia had ginger hair and I used to call them Fred and Ginger,” said Charlie, “He was an entertainer on the ships and could sing opera in Italian. A lot of the Beatle books make him out to be uneducated but that is not true.”

Charlie had fond memories of the young John Lennon: “I remember going out with Julia, Alfred and myself, both in uniform, during the War. Alfred and Julia went into a fish and chip shop in Smithdown Road. I was outside with John and we looked in a window of a toy shop. I said, ‘Look at that lovely bus’ and while I am buying him the bus, he is walking out with a Donald Duck under his arm. The shopkeeper said, ‘And so much for the Donald Duck’ and I said, ‘What Donald Duck?’ I felt embarrassed but I paid for it, although he broke it on the way home. Years later, when I went to see him at his home in Surrey, he said, ‘I’ve still got that bus, Charlie, it’s in the music room.’”

Charlie witnessed the tensions between the two families, which came to a head when Alfred received a letter telling him that Julia was having an affair with a Gunner Williams. Alfred jumped ship to return home and Julia claimed her pregnancy was a result of being raped. Charlie was despatched to see the soldier and discovered that they had been having an affair, condoned by Julia’s father. “They called it quits,” said Charlie, “but Alfred had no intention of divorcing her. He worshipped her and he even offered to bring up the child as his own.” The child was adopted and it is only in recent years that her identity has been made public. John was raised by Julia’s sister, Mimi, and Julia was killed in a road accident in 1958.

After seven years in the Royal Artillery, Charlie returned to civilian life in 1946. His mother died in 1948 and as his brothers wanted to sell the house, he moved to Warwickshire and qualified as a chef. He lost touch with the young John Lennon until 1963: “People would say to me, ‘There is someone who looks like you in the Beatles.’ I said, ‘There can’t be anyone who looks like me,” but sure enough it was John.” He contacted Alfred and, unknown to John Lennon, they went to one of the Beatles’ Christmas Shows at Finsbury Park Empire.

Alfred wanted to contact his son but John slammed the door in the his face. “He had been painted as the black sheep of the family,” said Charlie, still angry about the event 40 years later, “Mimi, whom I call the Wicked Witch of Woolton, had poisoned him about the Lennons. I wrote John a stinking letter telling him that he shouldn’t believe all he had been told. There was another side to the story. He was reconciled with his father and he invited me round to the house. He said, ‘Charlie, you’re just like me, you’ve got two left feet in your mouth.’”

Charlie Lennon continued to work in restuarants: “People used to say to me, ‘You’re John Lennon’s uncle, what are you working here for? I used to say, Look, I was working before John was born and I will keep on working. He is the working class hero but I am the working class Lennon.”

John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 and when Charlie returned to Liverpool on his retirement in 1982, he was astonished by all the interest in his nephew. He loved the annual Beatle conventions but he was disappointed when he read books about the Beatles. “It was as if Mimi was behind them all,” he said, “I decided to help Ray Coleman and his is the first book to get it right. But what good did it do? The next year we had that filthy, disgusting book by Albert Goldman.”

When Charlie met John’s son, Julian, at a concert at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool in the 1980s, he took exception to what he said, “Julian told me, ‘You’re the fan of the Beatles, not me. I’m just the son of John Lennon.’” For all that, Charlie kept posters of John and Julian in his Liverpool flat and when people asked him if he would like a little bit of the Lennon millions, he would say, “I’m okay. I’m happy in my own little way.”

SPENCER LEIGH

Charles Lennon, chef: b Liverpool 21 November 1918; d Liverpool 26 May 2002