Well, now you can, thanks to a new video game which allows you to sing, strum and drum along to your favourite Beatles tracks – and Octopus’s Garden.

The Beatles: Rock Band was officially launched by Sir Paul McCartney and Starr at the start of E3 in Los Angeles and will be released in September.

They were even joined by Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the wives of the dead half of the Fab Four, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Macca said: “It’s a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.”

For those of you who have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it is basically a game where you and your mates can pretend you are actually musically gifted by hitting buttons on plastic guitars and drums.

The Beatles: Rockband

Ever modest, Starr announced: “The game is good and we were great.” ‘Were’ being the important word there.

McCartney showed just how much he was involved in the making of the game, by adding: “Whoever would have thought we would have ended up as androids?”

Mind you, having seen the game played on stage, it does look pretty good. Thankfully, Yoko did not feel the need to have a go.

The remaining Beatles’ surprise appearance came at the start of a formidable line-up for the Xbox 360.

Trailers for Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Joyride and Halo 3 ODST, among others, all looked pretty impressive, but the star of the show for us was Modern Warfare 2, which is due to be released on October 11 and simply looks brilliant.

Even more exciting was the news that Metal Gear Solid is coming to the Xbox. However, there is no release date for Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

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There’s nothing more we love then seeing a band reunite so they can relive former glories.

Of course, it would be cynical of us to see it as a money making money opportunity, but what do we know? Perhaps in fifty years time, the current writing staff of hecklerspray will get together in a grotty boozer to relive the past.

Plenty of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Take That and – despite no one wanting them – Crowded House have reformed for gigs and spanking new material. Now one of the world’s finest bands have come back together, just minus a couple of key band members.

The Beatles were comprised of George, John, Ringo and Paul. Sadly, George died in hospital and John got a psycho Japanese lady on his case as well as being shot in New York. Taking these two core ingredients away is kind of like baking a yummy loaf of bread without yeast and flour. It results in a dull, lifeless and overhyped product. Something like Razorlight, Kasabian or The Enemy.

With half of The Beatles gone, it still didn’t deter nutjob fans from gathering in New York of all places for a special charity show for the David Lynch foundation. With the band being formally out of action, we have since known Paul McCartney as the man who took on crazy pegleg vegan Heather Mills in a divorce settlement. This all comes whilst Ringo Starr continues his transformation into a miserable bastard who refuses to sign autographs and stars in appallingly bad insurance adverts.

However, it may be worth crediting the two performers with knowing more about the wider world then we actually thought they would. During the gig, Paul McCartney also dedicated the song Blackbird to US president Barack Obama. So what does this mean? Well using military technology from the 1940s, we can deduce the following:

A) Paul and Ringo have magic powers which they are slowly going to unleash on the world. Their next big performance is to paint every building brown to show their support to PM Gordon Brown.

B) They are supporting Barack Obama because he’s, um, black like a blackbird.

C) They wanted to look popular in America, just like Monty Python, pork scratchings and ocean blue paint.

For Beatles nerds, it would have been ace seeing their heroes performing briefly together on the same stage. Let’s face it, we know that the full band line up is going to be pretty hard to sustain.

That’s unless John Lennon has been pulling a massive joke on us all along! Ho ho ho, the cheeky Scouse scamp.

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However, some crazy old idiots got upset at Ringo Starr’s recent request for his fans to stop sending him stuff, so he’s decided to clarify his confusing little outburst. You see, Ringo Starr only wants you to stop sending him stuff because it hurts the environment and objects he signs only end up being hawked on eBay anyway.

Ringo’s quick decision to clear up the mess he made should be applauded – now we know that he doesn’t hate his fans, just the fans who like buying his autographs on the internet. And now we can also be sure that it really was Ringo Starr in that video earlier this week, rather than the melted underpowered robot of a kestrel in sunglasses that we assumed we were watching.

Ringo Starr might just be having the worst year of his life. Firstly Ringo Starr released a song to commemorate Liverpool’s status as the European city of culture, but the problems with it were twofold – firstly the song actually sounded like it was slagging Liverpool off a bit, and secondly he sung it in the style of a sad wounded ox.

To make matters worse, Ringo Starr then decided to promote the song by storming off an American TV show, telling Jonathan Ross that he didn’t really like Liverpool anyway and just generally infuriating people enough to behead topiary representations of him.

But Ringo’s worst moment came this week when, for reasons that we don’t even think he knows himself, he decided to post a video on his website asking fans to stop sending him fanmail all the bloody time.

At the time, Ringo’s justification for this was that he had “too much to do” to reply to fanmail. Oh really Ringo? You’re a 68-year-old millionaire who hits things for a living. What could you possibly have to do, apart from wait for the nice Meals On Wheels lady to bring you some more toad in the hole? You’re not trying to write the long-awaited follow-up to Octopus’s Garden, are you? Are you? Because, if you are, you really don’t need to. Really.

However, possibly because he was spooked by the hip young whippersnapper giving him hell on Sky News on Tuesday night, Ringo Starr has decided to hone his argument a little bit more. Rolling Stone reports:

The ban on fan mail was “in direct response to an inordinate amount of items which have recently appeared for sale on e-bay, and to those that repeatedly send cards and items to be signed.” Starr also felt all the mail was “a waste of paper and we all should be mindful of our carbon footprint… Please read this in a mellow way. Peace and love, Ringo.”

Thank goodness Ringo Starr reminded us to read the statement in a mellow way. Up until that point we were shouting it furiously in a dense Hungarian accent, so it hardly made any sense to us.

Anyway, let’s hope that this new statement clears up all the misconceptions about Ringo Starr’s original video. We’re sure that it hasn’t affected his real fans’ opinions of him at all, because we get the feeling that Ringo Starr’s fans are either dead or too stupid to work out that computers aren’t just sealed-shut microwaves.

And we say that with peace and love, which we think means you’re not allowed to get shitty about it.

Ringo is a translator, reaching up into the heavens, jotting what he finds there for all of humanity to hear. His mind is a seed from which entire musical forests spring forth. He possibly has the most vital job that has ever been.

That’s why it’s essential that everyone finally leave him alone once and for all, and for Pete’s sake stop sending him stamped envelopes pleading for things like autographs and 40-year-old rusty Beatles memorabilia. He’s far too busy to respond, he’s fed up.

He’s basically said as much on a new video his website is hosting. No really, he has.

If you’re a fan, Ringo Starr has nothing against you. Sure, sometimes he thinks of you and all the ways you impede on his time, but really he doesn’t completely hate you.

Yet.

But if you don’t stop acting so dumb really, really soon, he probably will hate you. And you don’t want that. Seriously, imagine him writing a song with the same melody as Octopus’s Garden, but all the lyrics are about maggots eating your flesh as it falls to the floor after you spring a trap he ingeniously set to splash you all over with Drano, Lime-Away and broken glass from your Mama’s back door.

Like we said – you don’t want that.

Keep that in mind – especially now that he’s given fair warning. According to the online version of the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Former Beatle Ringo Starr has posted a bizarre video of “peace and love” on his website saying he has had enough of fan mail and people seeking autographs. The Fab Four drummer’s 44-second rant pleaded for fans to leave him alone and said he doesn’t have time to sort through his mail box anymore. “This is a serious message. I want to tell you please, after the 20th of October do not send fan mail to any address you have. Nothing will be signed. If that has a date on the envelope it’s gonna be tossed, I’m warning you with peace and love,” he said in the video titled Sorry, No More Signing Stuff.”

From what we heard the last straw was when he received a fake leg in the mail with a Sharpie and a request to make the calf-signature out to one H. Mills. Well we can relate to that completely. So far we have an entire attic full of Heather Mills hobble-wear, and apparently she keeps thinking that maybe we’ll sign the next one if she can just get it to us via an overnight shipper with a reliable package-tracking service.

Sorry Mills, after what you did to all those innocent baby seals, no can do.

For the record, we really don’t remember what she did to those little white seals – we just seem to recall her name loosely associated with them.

Watch Ringo’s weird video right here:

Which is a shame, because that’s what Ringo Starr wanted to happen. Yesterday, you see, was Ringo Starr’s 68th birthday, and he wanted to use the occasion to initiate an annual Peace And Love Day, where at the stroke of noon everyone would stop what they were doing and… yeah, you get the idea.

As you’ve probably noticed, Ringo Starr’s Peace And Love Day pretty much fell flat on its arse without question, causing Ringo Starr to scale down his plans a little. Next year Ringo Starr will initiate a Nurse, I Think I’ve Just Wet Myself Again day where, at the stroke of noon, Ringo Starr and Ringo Starr alone will shout that very phrase at one of his care workers. For the fifteenth time that day.

It’d be quite easy to feel sorry for Ringo Starr if he didn’t seem like such a git, wouldn’t it? All the other Beatles are just streaking past him in terms of legacy. Paul McCartney is an award-winning classical composer, John Lennon will be remembered forever thanks to the giant tower of light beamed into space in his name – but Ringo? He’s the man who got his head chopped off because not even people from Liverpool like him very much.

But we should at least credit Ringo Starr with having the wherewithal to try and correct that. Yesterday was Ringo Starr’s 68th birthday and, modest man that he is, Ringo didn’t ask for material gifts from his fans.

Instead Ringo requested something far more humble – that every man, woman and child on the face of God’s green Earth raised their mouths to the sky at the stroke of noon and shouted “Peace and Love!” as loudly as possibly no matter what they were doing, so that subconsciously they’d think about Ringo Starr, remember he has an album out, go and buy the album and give Ringo the royalties needed to buy all the material gifts for himself that he’s clearly too modest to ask for. The Chicago Tribune reports:

“It’s a fantasy, and it’s a dream I have,” Starr said Monday, “that one minute, one day, one month, one year, everyone will go peace and love.” … He got it Monday from about 300 fans who lined an entire city block to sing “Happy Birthday” to the ex-Beatles drummer and flash peace signs in the air. “What a great birthday gift!” said Starr, surrounded by television cameras. “If you could pan around, you could see Chicago is full of peace and lovers.”

Well, one city block was full of about 300 peace and lovers, which works out at about 1/10,000th of Chicago’s population. Multiply that by all the cities in America and all the countries in the world and, well, it’s not exactly impressive, is it?

But then again, getting everyone to shout “Peace and Love!” into the air probably isn’t the best way to actually accomplish peace and love, is it? If you could achieve anything you wanted by shouting it out loud then Konnie Huq would be sitting on our knee right now and we’d have a proper job.

Let’s just hope that Ringo Starr’s stupid idea passes quickly and this silly game of Beatle one-upmanship can be put to bed. Honestly, first John Lennon wants a Peace Day, then Ringo Starr wants a Peace And Love day. The only logical conclusion to this sort of madness is Paul McCartney requesting a Peace And Love And Snuggles day, and we can all agree that’s just a step too bloody far.

No. Ringo Starr, the only thing you’ll be remembered for is this. It’s no more than you deserve.

Because if you do end up saying something bad about people from Liverpool, people from Liverpool will literally cut your head off. It’s true – they’ve just cut Ringo Starr’s head off.

Alright, at this point we should probably point out that it was only the topiary head of a topiary Ringo Starr that was chopped off, thanks to some vaguely anti-Liverpool comments Ringo made in January. But it’s still a shock, because the topiary Ringo Starr was about five or six times better at singing and drumming than the flesh and blood one.

Ringo Starr has always been the second-class Beatle – just look at the treatment he gets. John Lennon, for example, was shot in the back four times by a maniac, while George Harrison was stabbed in the chest several times by a maniac who believed he was on a mission from God. But Ringo Starr?

Ringo Starr has been aggressively pruned by what we can assume to be a fairly overenthusiastic horticulturalist. Hardly matches up, does it? The New York Times reports on the shock topiary Ringo Starr beheading:

A vandal chopped off the head of Ringo Starr from a life-size topiary of that former Beatle over the weekend in Liverpool, England, above, while leaving his band mates untouched, The Liverpool Daily Post reported. The attack occurred a few weeks after the topiary figures, created by the Italian sculptor Franco Covill, were unveiled at the South Parkway train station. “This is a huge disappointment for us,” said an unidentified spokesman for Merseytravel. “Public art is important, and the topiary was put there to bring a bit of life and soul to the public-transport network.”

It’s thought that the Ringo beheading was a direct result of some comments he made about the city back in January. You see, Liverpool is the European City Of Culture this year, and Ringo Starr was chosen to open the celebrations. After all, along with Dereck Acorah, Tom O’Connor from Crosswits and one of Atomic Kitten, Ringo Starr is probably one of history’s most famous Liverpudlians.

Not content with just opening a ceremony, Ringo Starr also wrote a special song for the occasion, entitled Liverpool 8. Probably the worst song that’s ever been written, Liverpool 8 was all about how Ringo Starr wanted to stay in Liverpool but he couldn’t because he was famous and Liverpool was a bit of a shithole but it doesn’t matter because he got famous so everyone should be proud of him. Thematically you could call it a bit confused.

So Ringo Starr went on TV and told everyone that he wouldn’t ever live in Liverpool again because there was nothing he missed about it at all, just to make it completely clear. And now he’s had his head cut off for it, French revolution-style.

If anything, this should serve as a warning to Ringo Starr to have more respect for his hometown, because the people there are easily upset by everything. First Richard And Judy left them, and now Ringo Starr too? How are they supposed to cope with such a succession of bodyblows?

So be warned, Ringo. This time they just got your topiary head, but next time it’ll be your hubcaps.

Read more:

Ringo Loses Leafy Head – NYT

Yes, we know we've already used the video to Ringo Starr's new single Liverpool 8 in another post, but it's so awful we've become obsessed with it. Actually obsessed, like that bloke from Zodiac.

Seriously, just watch Liverpool 8. It's so completely, utterly, unspeakably terrible that we're not even sure a human being could be responsible for it, let alone Ringo Starr. Everything about Liverpool 8 is horrific, from the tune to the vocals to the preposterously banal lyrics. Liverpool 8 is so bad that past civilisations would have put Ringo Starr to death for making it.

You get a sense of just how woeful Liverpool 8's going to be from the moment that Ringo blathers "I was a sailor first/ I sailed the sea," just to clarify what sailors actually do for those who maybe thought they varnished fossils for a living.

And then it gets worse. Liverpool 8, you see, is basically The History Of The Beatles By Ringo Starr. And what insights do we get from one of the two remaining people on Earth with first-hand experience of what it was like to be in the biggest band in history? "We were number one/ Man it was fun," that's what. So that's that cleared up for eternity, then.

Liverpool 8 might make Octopus's Garden look like Dostoevsky, but once you've listened to it 20 times in a row just to get a handle on precisely how moronic it is, something odd happens. Liverpool 8 stops being horrible and becomes… well, not good – we aren't idiots – but touching.

It's like listening to a song by Forrest Gump looking back on his life – yes, it's so simplistic that a six-year-old would be kept back a few years at school for writing it, but the knowledge that Ringo Starr probably spent months coming up with the line "The red lights were on/ with George and Paul and my friend John", coupled with the unintentionally plaintive way he sings it, makes it all a little bit heartbreaking.

Then you realise that Liverpool 8's main sentiment is "Hey Liverpool, I fucked you over but look at me! I'm Ringo Starr! Woo-hooo!" and it dawns on you that Ringo Starr is probably a bit of a dick.

But, hey, fun while it lasted, right?

OK, it goes without saying that you wouldn't really want to be Ringo Starr at any moment, unless you're into being recovering Scouse alcoholics who hit things for a living and sing songs about boning 16-year-olds.

But, seriously, you wouldn't want to be Ringo Starr right now. He's stropped off Live With Regis & Kelly right before he was supposed to appear, you see.

Ringo Starr hasn't had the best of years. He's watched Paul McCartney sign a clever new record deal and get lauded as a visionary. He's seen John Lennon get commemorated in a monolithic tower of light that will outlast us all. And he's seen George Harrison get crowned as the fourth-richest dead man alive. And what about Ringo?

Well, Ringo Starr was lucky enough to open Liverpool's tenure as European capital of culture last week, but that couldn't have backfired more spectacularly. Yes, Ringo Starr may have called his new album Liverpool8 and, yes, Ringo Starr may have told the thousands of fans watching him that he was going to move back to Liverpool.

But thanks to a subsequent TV appearance where he basically just went "Pffft – live in Liverpool? Fuck off, have you actually been there? It's shit, and I'm Ringo Starr. I'm Ringo fucking Starr!" he's just about the most hated man in Merseyside at the moment.

And things aren't going particularly well for Ringo in America at the moment. Yesterday Ringo was set to appear on Live With Kelly And Regis to perform his song Liverpool 8, but the song didn't fit with the show's strict 'two and a half minute performances only' policy. And then it all kicked off. The New York Daily News reports:

When he did a run-through yesterday morning, the song took nearly five minutes. "Live" producer Michael Gelman was willing to go 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Starr's camp said it couldn't be cut, and he was gone. "They refused to keep the performance and the interview commitment," said the spokeswoman. "We offered to cut back our chat time and asked them to fade or go to commercial," Starr's spokeswoman told The Associated Press. "They were not willing to do that and Ringo was not willing to cut it further, so without a compromise we were not able to stay. Ringo left saying, 'God bless and goodbye. We still love Regis.'"

It's clear that Ringo Starr obviously took the cutback request as a personal affront because if, say, Paul McCartney phoned up Regis tomorrow and asked to perform all of the Sgt Pepper album on the show, they'd agree immediately. But because it's boring old Ringo Starr he has to live by the same rules as everyone else.

Having said that, it was wrong of Live With Kelly And Regis to ask Ringo Starr to limit his performance to 150 seconds. They should have tried to limit it to zero seconds because – shitting Christ – the song's horrific.

It's like Ringo asked a sensory-deprived toddler to write down the history of The Beatles and then just wailed them in the first tune that popped into his head. Frankly we're wondering if Ringo Starr would be better protesting by never appearing in public ever again. Look…

Read more:

Ringo Starr bolts from 'Regis' gig – New York Daily News