Beatlemailia: the fan who tried to post herself to The Beatles
When they first emerged in the early 1960s, The Beatles became a phenomenon, unlike very few other musical acts before them. Sure, the likes of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra had lots of die-hard fans during the 1960s, but with the Fab Four, things were a little different. They seemingly had fans all over the globe who were aware of their brilliance and willing to follow their every move.
The phenomenon would quickly become known as Beatlemania, and wherever they travelled to during their jetsetting early years, they would almost undoubtedly be greeted by hordes of screaming fans, often teenage girls. To be perfectly honest, who can blame them? The band were talented musicians and wrote instantly catch pop hooks that people could get on board with, but they were also handsome young men with charming Liverpudlian accents and a little bit of cheekiness about them to boot.
However, there’s a line that ought to be drawn when showing your devotion to a band, and while there’s often talk of how we as fans tend to go overboard in the internet age with establishing parasocial relationships with our idols, there were some pretty outlandish displays of adoration going on during the ‘60s as well. It’s not a new phenomenon for the shrieking at concerts or other public appearances, and it’s also nothing new for fans to start behaving ridiculously inappropriately towards artists, either.
In 1966, when the band were undoubtedly the biggest on the planet, one young fan from Sunderland in the northeast of England would take things a step too far and attempt to grab the attention of the Beatles in the most dangerous way imaginable. Carol Dryden was so desperate to meet the foursome that she decided she wasn’t going to ambush them at a concert but was going to package herself up and be delivered by mail directly to their doorstep.
Alongside a friend, who seemingly didn’t address the safety concerns that go with shipping a human child by mail, Dryden prepared a tea crate for herself to be packaged into and readied herself to be posted to London for the band to receive. However, as you might imagine, very little other consideration for Dryden’s welfare was taken into account, and in the desperate attempt to send her to the capital in a relatively small container, they forgot to add in air holes to provide her with an air supply.
Nevertheless, the package managed to get all the way to Sunderland train station before a conductor on the platform noticed the suspicious parcel and alerted authorities to the fact that a young child was sealed inside and attempting to be posted to her favourite band. His judgement of the situation was considerably measured and matter-of-fact, stating that “she would have soon fainted” due to the lack of air supply, while on the other hand, Dryden believed that she would have fainted after being received in London due to the being overwhelmed by love.
It probably goes without saying that this is one of the most dangerous acts anyone can do to display their love for anyone, and certainly not anything I’d recommend. However, in a way, you almost have to give the pre-teens who devised this plan some credit for how enterprising and original their idea was, no matter how catastrophically wrong it could have gone.
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