Yes, I lost John to another woman... but it WASN'T Yoko
For almost 50 years she kept an astonishing secret, refusing to attack the woman who ruined her life. When Cynthia Lennon died aged 75 from cancer last week, the world believed her marriage to Beatles star John had been destroyed by Yoko Ono.
Yet the truth about John and his relationships with women is infinitely more complex, and vastly more revealing of his real character, than the enduring myth.
I know this because Cynthia told me herself. In a rare and never before published interview, she revealed that her former husband believed the true love of his life was not Yoko Ono, but Alma Cogan, a fading female singing star eight years older than himself.
Extraordinarily, he believed Alma to be the reincarnation of his mother Julia.
It was Cogan’s death in 1966 that threw him into the arms of Japanese artist Yoko.
‘John thought I didn’t know anything about him and Alma, and I never let on,’ confided Cynthia.
‘Now that I think about it, with all the emotion gone out of it, I can see the attraction. Alma was about eight years older than John and very much the Auntie figure.’
John had a soft spot for older women – possibly linked to the death of his mother when he was just 17.
‘Don’t forget that Yoko was also older than John by about seven years,’ said Cynthia.
‘Like Yoko in so many ways, Alma was a very compelling woman. You couldn’t really say that either of them was beautiful, could you, not in the conventional sense.’
She admitted: ‘When Alma died from ovarian cancer, aged only 34, John was inconsolable.
By: Lesley Ann Jones
Source: The Daily Mail
