ALWAYS PR-conscious, John Lennon and Yoko Ono took out an advert in the New York Times in May 1979, explaining that their continued absence from the music world was “a silence of love and not of indifference”. Paul McCartney added helpfully: “People call John a recluse because he isn’t doing what they expect him to do. In fact he’s getting on with being a family man.”

The end: Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York, December, 1980

BRENDA CHASE/NEWSMAKERS/GETTY IMAGES

The reality was not quite so edifying. As Kenneth Womack reports in The Last Days In The Life, Lennon’s supposed ‘house husband’ years were spent dithering ineffectually in the couple’s massive Dakota Building apartment, half-heartedly embarking on numerous projects (breadmaking, an audio diary, a John and Yoko musical) and chain-smoking Gitanes while Ono busied herself with business affairs in another room. Both flirted with heroin again. A neighbour, irritated by the noise emanating from Lennon’s seventh-floor bedroom, concluded that “all he did was lie around stoned watching television”.