Schoolboy cashes in on Beatles gig
Chris Hill was one of those who has vivid memories of the Fab Four’s concert in the Ritz Cinema 50 years ago today – memories which are immortalised thanks to an east European camera which he got for his birthday.
Then aged 16, the south Belfast youngster took a string of snaps of the group on stage, which he went on to sell to fellow schoolchildren across the city. Although he said none had ever been published before now, he estimated he sold as many as 800 of the prints, which he produced in his own dark room, netting him a sum worth about £3,000 today – but spent so much time doing so that he performed poorly in his mock O-level exams. About four weeks before the gig, he had got up at about 2am to cycle three miles from his Malone home to queue for the best seats in the house. “1963 was the year they broke through,” he said. “It was the biggest thing that ever happened in the life of a teenager.”
Source: Belfast Newsletter
