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It was 1965 and Dawn Swayne, Australian dancer and make-up artist, was working for Granada TV in Manchester where The Beatles, in-between ‘Help‘ and ‘Rubber Soul‘ at the time, were to give a performance on 1 November 1965.

Ms Swayne seized the opportunity and shot a backstage 45-second silent video while the band were getting ready for the show and this is how it went down: ‘I was in the makeup room, and we were having some champagne […] I don’t know if it was John or if it was Ringo, but they took the camera off me and said, “This is no way to use a camera” and they sort of jiggled it upside down and inside out a bit, and everybody was just mucking around. But that was great. I mean they were a nice group of people. They really were’, Ms Swayne said.

The video has been published by the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia to which the video was donated by Melinda Doring, Ms Swayne’s daughter, along with a whole collection of her mother’s home videos including other interesting footage which can be seen below:

Debbie Maliotaki