Gambier Terrace, Liverpool

When John Lennon as shot he left an estate worth £150-£200 million but 20 years earlier he was a student with almost no money. Here I am at outside the grand 1830's Gambier Terrace in Liverpool where he lived in a flat as a student for about two months. It's convenient for the Liverpool College Of Art which a short walk away. Just across the road is the neo-Gothic Anglican Cathedral - huge enough to dominate the skyline.

John was 20 when he moved in here in 1960 with the former Beatles bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, Rod Murray and his girlfriend. He claimed he was homeless but he was really living with his Aunty Mimi in Woolton. He was courting "Cyn" (Cynthia who'd become his wife when she got pregnant) and they'd snatch moments of passion at the flat when she stayed overnight. Her mum was vehemently against the relationship as John was sarcastic, cocky and sometimes cruel. He turned her respectable, smartly-dressed daughter into a daytime vamp - her hair was bleached blonde, her skirts got shorter, her jumpers got tighter and she started wearing fishnet stockings.

John had almost no money and in lieu of rent gave Rod Murray a pewter tankard and a metal cigarette lighter with "JL" engraved into it. These were later sold at auction along with a typed official letter from estate agents O. Jones Williams & Co. Ltd saying "We have received a number of complaints regarding the late night parties and excessive noise coming from your flat. We regret that if further complaints are made we shall have no alternative but to terminate your tenancy and take possession of the flat."

The sparsely-furnished flat was on the first floor and Paul and George were regular visitors - as were other beatniks and musicians. There were mattresses on the floor, a shared toilet, an empty coffin and a stolen Belisha Beacon. John moved in here as he was bored after living in Aunt Mimi's respectable home for two years. She was dismayed when he left and couldn't understand it.

I stood outside the Doric columns on the porch and had my photograph taken as many already have. Nobody came out. The Magical Mystery Tour bus doesn't stop here whether out of respect of traffic. I suppose the natives are used to the geeks of all creeds and colours arriving there to the look at the door and then up at the windows of the first floor flat. The Beatles band was forming here. The Quarrymen had mutated into The Silver Beatles and they did their first professional engagement backing a singer called Johnny Gentle in Scotland. John, Paul and George would practice together here and later Paul said it was here at Gambier Terrace that John told the rest of the group they should change their name to The Beatles (after Buddy Holly's "Crickets".) They must have been pretty good as by the summer of 1960 the lads left for Hamburg.

This bit of Liverpool is known as the Georgian Quarter and it's not long until its straight lines of handsome buildings make you understand why Merseyside's elite lived here. Oddly John returned to this area with two years and married Cynthia. Just four streets away from Gambier Terrace was Brian Epstein's flat and he offered it to the Lennons when Cynthia was pregnant with Julian.

I walked the full length of the grand frontage and did a circle round the building. Have John’s ex-wife Cynthia and their son Julian walked around here like I did, looking up at the flat where a very-skint John lived? The flat was one of the rare places where John and Cyn could jump on one another bones. Julian was five when his parents divorced and though he didn't like his dad I wondered if he'd visited Gambier Terrace. When his dad was shot he inherited nothing as he wasn’t in the will and it took him 16 years to persuade Yoko to release any money (believed to be £20 million.) Cynthia died in 2015 at her home in Majorca aged 75 with Julian by her side.

Have Stuart Sutcliffe's family called by? From here Stuart was soon off to Hamburg with John, Paul and George but died two years later aged 21 from a bleed on the brain. I did a salute and left.

John outside college...