The mansion, set in 75 acres of garden, woodland and fields, belongs to two geniuses. I know they are geniuses because they told me. John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono live there. It is a large household, busy with people. Secretaries, a housekeeper, sundry workmen in the garden, John's assistant and his assistant's assistant. John, Yoko and I sit in the kitchen.
"It's the quietest place" said John, drinking tea from mugs and eating cherries from a large teak bowl set on an enormous natural pine table. John has mellowed. Gone is the Jesus hairstyle, the long beard, the four-letter words, the arrogant, prickly young man. In his place is a cleanshaven, reasonably short-haired man of 30. He studies you through yellow tinted spectacles and says he swears only occasionally. He is fond of recounting that he and Yoko met over a hammer and nail.
"From that moment (you all know the one)," says John tweaking Yoko's nose, "it was love, love, love all the way." He pooh-poohs the idea that Yoko was responsible for the break-up of his marriage. "You don't get divorced and then look 'round, so Cynthia and I hung on. We were carrying on with a non-violent marriage that was slowly dying. There was nothing in it, no spark. When I met Yoko, I came face to face with reality and realized I had been living in a vacuum."
They are a very pleasant couple. I had expected them to be brash, slightly contemptuous, difficult to talk to. John could not understand this.
"We are people. As near normal as we can be. I suppose in a way our lives have been unnatural because of the Beatles. People tended to think we were special. But that is over. We have nothing to hide. We like to communicate. Apart from the fact that we are famous people and make the front pages we are perfectly normal." He turned the tables on me. "Okay, so we have a responsibility because of our position. I think you, as a journalist, have even more responsibility. If I say I am mad, people might think I am joking. If you say you have interviewed me and find me mad, then people will believe you." I saw his point which he immediately spoiled by laughing and saying, "Anyway, I probably am mad. All geniuses are mad. Genius is pretty close to madness, and we are a damned mad couple, so perhaps we are mad geniuses."
About fame: "When you get famous you need even more space,so now I have my own pad. If we didn't have the money, we'd try to find a big loft." Though they love the wide open spaces (of their 75 acres), they occasionally get into very claustrophobic situations. There is the bag event. It began, says Yoko, when she was very shy and was afraid to meet a certain professor. So she turned a sheet into a bag, got inside, and then talked to the professor. "Everybody thought it was a very good idea and we have done it often since. It means that you don't judge a person just by their appearance, but how they think and talk."
It would have been a waste for Yoko to have been inside a bag when we met. She is much prettier than her photographs portray - delicately featured and tiny. They say they stimulate each other, give each other ideas for their wor, but are not above kidding each other.
"We are like most happily married couples," John said. "I tell her she's a rotten artist and she tells me I'm a stinking musician. It's all part of the joy of being married to the right person."
Yoko has had two miscarriages and says she has not given up hope that she and John will have a child.
It was time to go. We had almost talked ourselves hoarse. Before I went, John and Yoko insisted I went over their art gallery. There was John and Yoko's "smile box." You had to lift the lid to see a smile. There was a clock without any hands entitled "the timeless clock." There was a chess set with all the squares painted white, all the chessmen painted white. "Try playing with that," laughed John. I told you he had an offbeat sense of humor.