What Is A Beatle Project?

Thursday night dressed to kill, to the launch of the new Cumbria Film Office at Rheged, near Penrith. The occasion was graced by the usual combination of arts bureaucrats, soap-opera starlets and The Great & The Good (the Renaissance Man & the Cineaste among them). I was about to narrow my eyes & pour myself a stiff canape when something quite unexpected happened. A rather blowsy presence of great power in that world emerged from the crowd and breathed 'Are you with the Beatles Project?' What, I wondered in my best Judge Cockle-Cantley, is a Beatles Project? And should I be with it/them? For a moment it rather looked as if I should be. I demured, which was obviously the wrong answer. The blowsy presence wafted elsewhere. But it kept on happening. People wanted to know was I with the Beatles Project? Now I should point out that I'm not in appearance a lovable 20-something Scouse moptop with a collarless suit, so heaven knows what delusion the assembled throng were labouring under. My mission that night was to press the flesh and press the charms of the local film festival I'm involved with, so this bizarre obsession with a popular beat combo of the 1960s was rather counter-productive. The Renaissance Man, for reasons unexplained, thought that I'd probably been mistaken for Fairport Convention's bass-player. And no, I can't see the resemblance either. By the end of the evening I was none the wiser . . .