John Lennon, right, from a scene in the fantastically funny film, "A Hard Day's Night" (1965). Traveling on a train, Lennon sits next to Wilfrid Brambell, who plays Paul McCartney's grandfather. John is "sniffing coke." Paul's grandfather is constantly referred to as "a clean old man." In fact, he is not, and is the source of great trouble to the Beatles, in particular, Ringo, in this pseudo rock documentary.
Beatle John Lennon (1940-1980) had a witty sense of humor. During live performances of “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” Lennon often changed the words to “I want to hold your gland,” because of the difficulty hearing the vocals above the noise of screaming audiences in the grip of Beatlemania.
At the Royal Variety Show in 1963—in the presence of members of the British royalty, including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, and Lord Snowdon —Lennon quipped to the largely upper-crust audience:
“For our next song, I’d like to ask for your help. For the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands … and the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.”
A clip from this London performance is shown below, with the Beatles singing, “With Love From Me to You,” “Until There Was You,” and “Twist and Shout.” Paul makes a joke before “Until There Was You,” referring to American singer Sophie Tucker as a group (she was large). John makes his jewelry comment before playing my all-time favorite “Twist and Shout.” Enjoy.
Lisa's History Room 
Apparently the joke in the repeated references to Wilfrid Brambell as “a clean old man” is that he was well-known in England as the slovenly Steptoe in “Steptoe and Son”–the junk-yard comedy that was adapted in the US as “Sanford and Son.”
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Hi, John. I watched a video clip of the scene with John and Paul’s grandfather. Brambell looks like a bird. He was so deadpan. Thanks for giving me the background info on the line, “clean old man.” In one scene, some men peek into the Beatles’ train cabin and see Brambell. One asks, “Who’s that little old man?” Someone says, “He belongs to Paul.” Then another comments, “He’s very clean, isn’t he?” So ridiculous but funny.
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Yes, Brambell is brilliant! He’s got a huge amount of screen time in a movie that’s really about the four charismatic boys, yet he plays the role so mean and straight that the hilarity doubles. The only time I think I can feel him laughing inside is during the few seconds he actually curls back his lip, sneers and growls–still playing straight, but somehow just over the top enough that you know he’s having an enormous amount of fun.
Because this post is about John Lennon’s humor, I’d like to mention his books “In His Own Write” and “A Spaniard in the Works”–collections of wordplay and schoolboyish doodles that always have me rolling.
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Hi, John. Thanks for sharing the book titles. I need to check them out and so do the readers. John was so bright. Didn’t he and Cyn meet in art school? I need to check back through my libros.
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The Beatles are my all time favorite band. John is so funny. I love how he says the “rattle your jewelry thing” Paul’s funny when he gets thumped in the back of the head, too.
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To compose that beautiful music, they had to have very unique brains.
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