‘I call our kid “Rambo Paul” in this one, because he reminds me of Stallone. I have no idea why George is pointing at his nipple’
![‘I was part of the Beatles’ act’: Mike McCartney’s best photograph](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d85a8a139e3525d8bc2c04e9288c6a682251998e/144_1051_3874_2325/master/3874.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=550a8a410e4624f4b37d942ccb7b1058)
I didn’t intend to pick up a camera. I’d been practising on drums that had fallen off the back of a lorry into our house on Forthlin Road,
Liverpool. But when I was 13, I broke my arm at scout camp, so Pete Best got the
Job in our kid’s group. That’s when I started taking photos on the family box camera. It was fortuitous, though, because if I had become the Beatles’ drummer, we’d probably have gone the Oasis route.
I would go everywhere with the Beatles. I was part of the act. It’s like if Rembrandt’s kid brother was in the corner with a pad and paper, sketching his older brother. I was lucky – you couldn’t have had a better group to practise on, could you?