WIFE OF HUNTER DAVIES "THREATENED TO DIVORCE" THE BEATLES BIOGRAPHER WHEN HE SAID HE WAS GOING TO ACCEPT HIS OBE

Queen's birthday honours: Hunter Davies says wife was far from impressed with award.

Hunter Davies, the writer and Beatles biographer, said his wife was far from impressed with the news he is to receive an OBE for services to literature.

Mr Davies, who wrote the only authorised biography of the Beatles in 1968, said Margaret Forster, the novelist, had even threatened to divorce him over the issue.

Hunter Davies holds a copy of In My Life (1965)

He said: "I told my wife and she said 'You're not going to accept it'. Well I thought it was worth 1,000 words. I can get two columns out of this. She said that if it had been a knighthood she would have divorced me".

But Mr Davies said he was "honoured" by the award, adding: "I'm the last person my wife and family associate with literature, I'm just a hack that got lucky. She probably won't come with me but maybe the children or grandchildren will come, it will amuse them".

The 78-year-old Scottish-born writer, who grew up in Carlisle, is the author of more than 70 books including novels, travel writing and The Glory Game which is based on a season he spent behind the scenes at Tottenham Hotspur. 

Mr Davies said he was looking forward to visiting the palace to pick up his OBE, having posed as a chauffeur to take his brother-in-law there when he was honoured 20 years ago.

"I have been to the palace once before. My brother-in-law Roger Priestley got an OBE, he was a senior civil servant but had MS and had trouble getting around so he was allowed a driver and so I dressed up as a chauffeur and drove him in, then went and sat in a little hut with all the famous people's drivers," he said.