Just watched Beatles at the BBC on IPlayer which featured a very unusual edition of Grandstand. Lou Reed may not have rated the British invasion, but when the Beatles returned from launching it on the Ed Sullivan show watched by 73 million, the BBC packed David Coleman, the presenter of Grandstand, off to Heathrow to interview them. Just think about that, the BBC’s main weekend sports programme being disrupted in such a way to present live coverage of a band returning from a trip abroad. That’s what I meant when I said the Beatles didn’t just influence music, they influenced life. They were lucky that they came to fame at a time when the country was crying out for something different, but we won’t see their like again.