George: It's all fun until someone gets a jelly baby in the eye

The Times has a great story today, recounting the Fabs' fears of getting injured by jelly baby-hurling fans back in their touring heyday.

Tom Jones is pelted with ladies' underwear. Punk rockers The Sex Pistols and The Clash had to dodge gobs of phlegm. But in the innocent days of 1963, the Beatles, the world’s first supergroup, were worried about flying jelly babies.

The Beatles’ fear of being injured by the “dangerous” sweets that were lobbed at them by adoring fans has been revealed for the first time in a letter which has spent the last 46 years in a shoebox.

It was written by George Harrison in response to Lynn Smith, a devoted Beatles fan, then a 15-year-old schoolgirl, who wrote to him with a list of questions. As a postscript, Harrison, who died in 2001, begged her and her friends not to bombard the band with sweets, claiming he had been struck in the eye during a concert and “it’s not funny”.