Who's better, who's bitter, who's Best?

Pete Best is the drummer with The Beatles. Not, of course, The Beatles, who have split up and spent the last thirty-five years trying to squeeze as much cash out of record companies as they can for each new format which trickles out along, but Pete Best's Beatles, the slightly undignified attempt to trade on his having been in the band before Epstein turfed him out to make room on the drumstool for Ringo. Pete Best's Beatles always had the air of being a tribute act for something Best had had cruelly snatched from him, akin to pornography written by a eunuch.

Best has seethed and muttered and grumbled this last forty years. Now, though, he says it's time to let bygones be bygones:

In an interview with the Daily Mail he said that after the years of shock, disgruntlement and a suicide attempt, he now bears no grudges. "Some people expect me to be bitter and twisted, but I'm not. I feel very fortunate in my life. God knows what strains and stresses the Beatles must have been under.

Indeed, now Best wants to shake hands with Macca:

"We're not getting any younger," he said. "We know what we've done and we're not going to think any worse of each other if we had a chat now. God bless us all: it was all 40-odd years ago."

Of course, the cash he's picked up from the Anthology recordings may have helped him mellow a little, but as Jim McCabe observed when he sent us the link:

Presumably, they'll have a lot to talk about like, ooh, the cheese sandwiches in the Cavern, jolly japes in Hamburg, that sort of thing. I like the way Best stresses he's not "bitter or twisted". If I were McCartney, I'd feel safer in the company of Mark Chapman & Heather Mills than in a room with Best.