DURING Yoko Ono’s first visit to Liverpool in the 1960s she invited people to snip off her clothing for her performance art work Cut Piece.

In 2004, she hung a giant photograph of a naked breast from St Luke’s “bombed out” Church and suspended images of women’s nude body parts from city centre lamp posts.

Yet her greatest mark on the city was far less controversial – she bought John Lennon’s childhood home and, in 2003, donated it to the National Trust.

“Mendips was so important for me,” said Ono, sitting in her hotel suite ahead of last night’s Museum of Liverpool VIP reception. A scale-model of the Woolton semi is one of many items connected to the world’s most famous couple that features in the displays.

“I felt I had to definitely not let it disappear and make sure people could see how John’s childhood was and what it was like for him to live there.”

The model, which sits in the museum’s Wondrous Place gallery, was created to help return Mendips to the way it would have been when Lennon was living there with his Aunt Mimi in the 1950s.

“It was very important to do it very precisely,” explained Ono.

Another exhibit close to her heart was a bedspread given to her and the ex-Beatle during their famous Bed-In For Peace demonstration at Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel in May 1969.

Part-time designer Christine Kemp, who had emigrated to Canada from Hull two years earlier, had originally created it as a room divider for her workshop but decided it would make an appropriate gift for the protesting couple.

Made of blue felt and decorated with the words “All You Need Is Love” as well as coloured appliqué figures from the Beatles’s Yellow Submarine film, it was bought at auction by National Museums Liverpool in 2005.