"Don't take away our portable Rome..."

"...where we can all have our houses and our cars, and our lovers and our wives, and our office girls and parties and drink and drugs." That's how John Lennon described the attitude of the circle that surrounded the Beatles -- why they never told their tales or showed the photographs they had:

"If you couldn't get groupies, we had whores," he claimed. "Whatever was going.

"There were photos of me crawling round on my knees coming out of whorehouses in Amsterdam with people saying: 'Good morning, John.'"

The BBC airs the 1970 interview today.