Beatle's Japanese tea set to be shown in museum

The Beatle was stuck in his hotel when he bought the tea set in 1966

A Japanese tea service bought by George Harrison when Beatlemania confined him to a hotel room has gone on display.

It is one of three bought by Harrison when the band was on tour in Japan in 1966.

Roag Best, who runs the Liverpool Beatles Museum, said: "Beatlemania had truly hit Japan [and] they couldn't go out."

The tea service is on display at the museum, in Liverpool's Mathew Street.

Mr Best, the half-brother of the band's original drummer Pete Best, and son of tour manager Neil Aspinall, said: "The Beatles had gone to play the Budokan.

"They played five shows in a three-day period and were playing to in excess of 10,000 people a show."

Harrison gave the tea set to the band's tour manager

He said his and John Lennon had had to leave their Tokyo hotel in disguise, and Paul McCartney had done the same.

But Ringo Starr and Harrison stayed confined to their rooms.

"They liked buying stuff when they were touring but because they couldn't go out they were having people bringing their wares up to their rooms to sell," Mr Best said.

"George bought three really ornate Japanese tea services, which he then had shipped back to England.

"He kept one and gave my dad the choice of the other two, then the third he gave to his mother."

The crockery made its way back to Liverpool and was put in a display cabinet in the house of Mr Best's mother Mona Best, who owned the Casbah Club in West Derby.

But, Mr Best said it had not been a complete set since his mother asked him to clean it when he was 15.

He said: "I carried it all very carefully through to the kitchen and washed it but once I'd finished, I was in a rush to go and play out with my mates, so I stacked it all on top of each other to carry it back in.

"My mum said to me, 'Don't take it back like that, you'll drop it'.

"I said, 'No, I won't', and as I uttered those words the pile buckled and three cups smashed on the floor.

"I just bolted out of the door then before she could kill me."

Visiting fans

Mr Best said his father, who went on to be the boss of Beatles' company Apple Corps, did not often talk about his time touring with the band.

He said: "I asked him about it once and he told me to close my eyes and imagine how it was.

"When I opened them, I said, 'It must have been brilliant', and he said, 'Oh, lad, it was so much better than that'."

Mr Best said he hoped the tea service would be of particular interest to Beatles fans visiting Liverpool from Japan.

He added: "The Japanese Beatles fan club has one of the biggest memberships, it is about 40,000 strong.

"I think they're going to love this."

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