New York
Thirty-five years or so ago, William Buckley received an unexpected telephone call from one John Lennon. Intrigued, Bill listened while the John Lennon himself — with his Japanese wife blabbering away in the background — pleaded with him for help in remaining in the Land of the Free. Lennon had had a drug bust in his past, and some eagle-eyed Yankee immigration officer wanted him deported. The reason Bill was rung up by the Beatle was that Bill’s younger brother James was the junior senator from New York.
Now I’m not sure about the dates, or even what happened, and all I know is that Bill referred Lennon to the right place and left it at that. The Vietnam war was raging at the time, Buckley was in favour of it, as was I, and Lennon was getting a lot of cheap publicity by staging naked bed-ins with his wife.
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