‘I was part of the Beatles’ act’: Mike McCartney’s best photograph

‘I call our kid “Rambo Paul” in this one, because he reminds me of Stallone. I have no idea why George is pointing at his nipple’

I didn’t intend to pick up a camera. I’d been practising on drums that had fallen off the back of a lorry into our house on Forthlin Road, Liverpool. But when I was 13, I broke my arm at scout camp, so Pete Best got the job in our kid’s group. That’s when I started taking photos on the family box camera. It was fortuitous, though, because if I had become the Beatles’ drummer, we’d probably have gone the Oasis route.

I would go everywhere with the Beatles. I was part of the act. It’s like if Rembrandt’s kid brother was in the corner with a pad and paper, sketching his older brother. I was lucky – you couldn’t have had a better group to practise on, could you?