YOU’RE SITTING AROUND WITH AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR, JUST for your own fun, and then you get a little idea, and sometimes it’s enough to finish up as a ‘big’ song. ‘Her Majesty’ was just a little fragment really, and I didn’t know what to do with it. It’s tongue-in-cheek, treating the queen as if she were just a nice girl and not bothering with the fact that she would become the longest-reigning monarch ever in the UK, or that she was queen of the nation. It’s just being cheeky. ‘Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl / But she doesn’t have a lot to say’ – that seemed to be true. She doesn’t say much – only the annual Queen’s Speech at Christmas and the opening of Parliament.

However slight the song might be, I liked it, so I brought it to the session. I think it was the second side of what would become Abbey Road, and we didn’t know where to place it. It was just by accident that it found its way onto the end of something, and we thought, ‘Well, actually, that’s a good idea.’ It would be a nice little afterthought, a little irreverent look at the monarchy by a young man in his late twenties.

As it turns out, I have had the pleasure of meeting the queen over the years. I think part of the secret behind her popularity, at least for my generation, was that she was quite a babe. I was ten in 1953 when she was crowned, which made her twenty-seven or something. And so, in our boyish ways, we rather fancied her. She was a good-looking woman, like a Hollywood film star.

Later, when we became The Beatles, we met her in a line-up somewhere; I think it would have been the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium in 1963. They tell you that if she stops, you can talk, but if she doesn’t stop, don’t try and stop her. You’re supposed to call her ‘ma’am’. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ So she stopped and said, ‘Where are you playing next?’ I said, ‘Slough, ma’am.’ She said, ‘Oh, that’s just near us.’ She made a little joke like that. It’s near Windsor Castle.

Later, she came up to officially open LIPA – the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts – which is the performing-arts school I’d helped set up in my old grammar school. She very kindly cut the ribbon. So, when I meet her nowadays, she asks me about that. ‘How’s your school in Liverpool?’ And I say, ‘It’s doing rather well, ma’am.’

I think she’s great. I have a lot of admiration for her. I think she’s sensible, intelligent. Unlike some of the monarchs you read about in history, she’s fairly straightforward. And she’s got a good sense of fun too. The Olympics opening ceremony with the Bond thing was great. Daniel Craig picks her up at the palace, they get in a car, then a helicopter, and then, live at the Olympics, you see this person dressed in the same outfit come hurtling out in a parachute. It was funny. She loves a bit of showbiz.

Receiving the Companion of Honour from Queen Elizabeth II. Buckingham Palace, London, 4 May 2018

I think she’s the glue that often holds the nation together. The Commonwealth is not the empire anymore, but it’s a gathering of people, and they all like her. I was very happy when she became the longest-reigning British monarch. She’s an excellent role model, holding down the job, being sensible. Loads of challenges, but she seems to manage.

I did once perform this song for the queen. I don’t know how to break this to you, but she didn’t have a lot to say.