Following his usual practice, Epstein placed them with recording manager George Martin, but they found they had no original material strong enough for them to record. Owie asked John Lennon if he had a number he could give them and John told him he had one that he’d written while sitting on the toilet. When they appeared with the Beatles at the Queen’s Theatre, Blackpool on 4 August 1963, John told them that the number they could have was called ‘Hello Little Girl’, which he’d penned in his teens and had included in the group’s repertoire since 1958. The Beatles had also recorded it at their Decca and Parlophone recording auditions.

John was to say: “This was one of the first songs I ever finished. I was then about 18 and we gave it to the Fourmost. I think it was the first song of my own that I ever attempted to do with the group.”

He also commented that it was loosely based on a couple of old standards which his mother used to sing to him when he was a small child and was an attempt to capture the mood of those songs written in the 1930s.

Billy Hatton told ‘Mersey Beat’: “We arranged to go to John Lennon’s house, and they gave us a copy of the words. We hadn’t heard the number before, and George and John gave us a rough idea of it by taping the tune. We received the tape at 4 o’clock on Monday morning.

“As we had to record on the following Wednesday, we had two days in which to make an arrangement good enough to put on disc. As a matter of fact, when we were recording, we were just learning the song as we went along and were tremendously encouraged by A&R man George Martin.”

‘Hello Little Girl’ reached No. 9 in the British charts. Their next release was unusual in that it was a Lennon and McCartney number that the Beatles hadn’t used on an album and was written specifically for the Fourmost. A romantic number called ‘I’m In Love’, it reached No. 17 in the British charts.

They appeared in The Beatles Christmas Show at the Finsbury Park Astoria in north London in December 1963, during which they performed ‘Hello Little Girl’.

The group was arguably the very first Beat group to perform impressions. Dave Lovelady was to comment: “We did them long before the Barron Knights and the Rockin’ Berries.”

The Finsbury Park audience were given an opportunity to see this side of the Fourmost as Brian O’Hara sang ‘White Christmas’, during which he did impressions of Elvis Presley, Gracie Fields, Adam Faith, Dean Martin – and the Beatles. They issued an EP called ‘The Fourmost Sound’ and appeared in the film ‘Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey’, with their NEMS stablemates Gerry & the Pacemakers and Cilla Black.

Their biggest hit, ‘A Little Loving’, which reached No.6 in the charts, wasn’t by Lennon and McCartney. The Fourmost had gone to Dick James to ask him if he had a number for them to record and he played them several tracks that didn’t excite them. Then James remembered a song that had come in that morning’s post. He played them the demo of ‘A Little Loving’, written by Juliet Mills’ husband, Russell Alquist, and although Owie hated it, the others liked the number enough to vote it in as their next single.

They had three remaining hits in their career, ‘How Can I Tell Her?’ ‘Baby I Need Your Lovin’’ and ‘Girls Girls Girls’, but they were never to have a hit in America.

From 13 May 1964 they were booked to appear for a four-month season at the London Palladium on a bill with Frankie Vaughan, Cilla Black and Tommy Cooper. It was so popular that the run was extended until December.

Sadly, just before the Palladium season began, Mike Millward became seriously ill with leukaemia and needed radium treatment. He had to enter Clattterbridge Hospital in the Wirral, where he died. A special show, ‘A Night for Mike’, was presented at Liverpool’s Grafton Ballroom on Tuesday 5 April 1966.

Mike’s place was filled by a number of different Liverpool musicians over a period of time, including George Peckham, Ian Edwards and Frank Bowen. Eventually, Joey Bower, an original founder member of the band, returned to the fold.

Paul McCartney discovered a song called ‘Rosetta’, which he felt would be suitable for the group, and offered to produce it for them, which he did.

Dave Lovelady commented: “Paul liked the way we could mimic instruments with our voices, our ‘mouth music’ if you like. Brian O’Hara was a trumpet and we were the trombones. We used it on ‘Rosetta’ and the Beatles did the same thing on ‘Lady Madonna’. There were proper instruments on our record as well. I was playing piano at the session, but Brian O’ Hara told me to play it badly. I soon found out why, Paul said, “Look, I’ll do the piano bit,” and so he ended up playing on our record.”

The number was released by CBS on Friday 21 February 1969, but failed to reach the charts.

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