Skeleton in Lennon’s cupboard

Feb 5 2007 by Paddy Shennan, Liverpool Echo

Chief feature writer Paddy Shennan talks to John Lennon’s half-sister, Julia Baird who has unearthed an incredible family secret about their Aunt Mimi

IT’S tempting to groan very loudly, mourn the waste of so much paper – and say: “Oh flip, not another Beatles book.”

But, apart from the fact she’s family, there are two good reasons why we should indulge John Lennon’s half-sister, Julia Baird:

Her main aim is to speak up for, and set the record straight about, their late mother, Julia.

She reveals that Aunt Mimi, who began bringing up John in her so-called “House of Correction” from the age of five, after he had been removed from his mother’s so-called “House of Sin” ... had a secret toy boy lover!

It’s a bit like being told Emily Bishop had a passionate fling with Jason Grimshaw.

“I haven’t done it to be horrible to Mimi, but to exonerate my mother,” says Julia, who was six years John’s junior. She was 11 in 1958, when Julia snr was knocked down and killed close to Mimi’s home, Mendips, in Woolton.

Of one of the ultimate family skeletons, she adds: “No one knew. She was living a completely secret life.”

Julia and her sister, Jackie, two years her junior, who grew up in Allerton, were the two daughters born to Julia and her partner, John Albert Dykins (known as Bobby). John’s father, Alfred, was a ship’s waiter who went AWOL, leaving Julia and 18-month-old John penniless.