‘We were just knocking about in the park. Then the Beatles turned up’

Ian Whittington remembers posing for Don McCullin with the Fab Four, 28 July 1968

In July 1968, the well-known war photographer Don McCullin was commissioned to photograph the Beatles in different locations around London, for a& session known as the Mad Day Out. It was for Life magazine. I think they moved around a lot to avoid big crowds gathering.

This is St Pancras Old Church and gardens, in north London, where some of the best-known pictures were taken. My grandad, Jack, was the head gardener. He was visiting family in Derbyshire that day: he always said if he had been there, he wouldn’t have allowed the Beatles in, because they were the sort of “long-haired layabouts” he disapproved of. He was upright and Victorian, dressed in corduroy trousers, waistcoat, jacket and tie, even when he was working.

Related: ‘Quiffs were a must’: teddy boys and girls in London, 1955