“I am the custodian of the graveyard,” remarked Neil Aspinall later in a life which, several decades earlier, had regularly found him toiling up and down the A5 in a van whose heater was often inadequate to the task of warming the four musicians he ferried about the country.

Such was his long-established affinity with them that he perhaps had the best claim to fill that role to which many aspired — “the Fifth Beatle”. What is more, he, rather than George Harrison, could have been dubbed “the quiet one”, for he shunned the publicity which he could so easily have courted when he progressed from dealing with the white Commer van’s spark-plugs and lugging amplifiers on stage to taking over the running of the Beatles’ company, Apple, after its wayward start.

As an intermediary between a group at loggerheads, he salvaged the company and turned it into a highly efficient one. If this was rather different from the “Western Communism” which John Lennon and Paul McCartney had envisaged, a hothouse for fresh talent, it ensured that the group received a considerable boost from the gradual unveiling of all the scattered film and alternate takes from an incredible, pell-mell, six-year stint in the studio and around the world.

All this worldwide activity owed as much to Aspinall’s correspondence course as an accountant as it did his hefting the equipment. He was born in 1942 in Prestatyn, North Wales, to where his mother had been evacuated during the German raids on Liverpool while her husband was serving in the Navy. After attending West Derby school, he joined the Liverpool Institute, where, for some lessons, he was in the same class as McCartney, both of them being a year ahead of Harrison, whom Paul had met on the bus. They all smoked together behind the air-raid shelter in the playground.

Aspinall recalled: “People were into skiffle then, and would go round to each other’s houses and play instruments — there were no bands formed, as I recall. I remember this: getting off at Penny Lane and we’re all waiting there and I ask, ‘Who are we waiting for?’ A bus stops and a guy gets off with his arm around an old man that he is talking to — and walks off down the road. He was back in a few moments and somebody asked him, ‘Who was that?’. . . ‘I don’t know, never seen him before.’ That was my first impression of John. ‘What’s he doing with his arm round some old guy he’s never met before?’ That was John Lennon.”

Unlike Lennon, Aspinall left school with a good haul of examination successes, and — reckoning that he was not one of nature’s musicians — settled for a job as a trainee accountant in 1959. He was also friendly with Pete Best, at whose parents’ home he lodged. In due course, Best joined the group to fill the often-vacant spot of drummer, a problem encountered by many a local group. Best’s position had been further strengthened by his mother Mona’s turning over a basement into the Casbah club. This had provided a venue in which the group could hone its talents, a preamble to appearances elsewhere in the vicinity, a hard-working apprenticeship which eventually brought them a first stint in Hamburg. This immersion in the rough-and-tumble of a demanding audience tightened their act and heightened their inherent wit: they gave as good as they got.

It is a story told many times, a fabulous progression which can easily overlook the hard slog involved. Back in Liverpool, and in greater demand, the band was now above carrying their instruments to far-flung gigs. Aspinall became their driver. For £1 a night, he drove them around the North West in the evenings, which every week amounted to rather more than the £2.50 he earned at the accountancy firm. These evening stints required him to nip home and put in some more work on a correspondence course before returning to collect the group.

The group’s lunchtime sessions at the Cavern increased the local fervour and brought them to the attention of Brian Epstein, but they struggled to get a recording contract. On a snowy New Year’s Eve, 1961, Aspinall drove them to the failed audition at Decca.

“All of us were broke and it was snowing and very cold,” he said. “We went down Shaftesbury Avenue and around there, amazing things to buy. The bootshop Anello & Davide was on one corner, then Cecil Gee, the clothes store. We went into a club up by St Giles Circus. We didn’t stay long because it was boring. Some of the women had an after-eight shadow. We were starving and we went into a restaurant. All that we could afford was the soup, so they threw us out and we went into Soho and got something there. London was all very exciting and new.”

After a seeming eternity and a last-minute bout of great good luck, Epstein got them a contract with Parlophone’s George Martin, who was not enamoured of the drummer’s work (as the Decca tapes show, Best’s was not a style best suited to disc).

This could have also been the end for Neil Aspinall who, after Best emerged from Epstein’s office with news of his sacking in 1962, went with the forlorn drummer to a pub. There, the good-natured Best told him not to quit, the group was going places.

In all that followed, Aspinall — in a lesser-known twist to the Beatles story — was perforce to remain in contact with him. During the absences of Best’s father from the house on travels for his work, Aspinall had begun an affair with Mona who, in her forties, became pregnant by him. The boy — Vincent Roag — was to be brought up by the Bests while Aspinall, who had become road manager for the group, went around the world.