The Beatles hadn't been in Taunton for four years – they played their last gig in the Somerset town in September 1963 – but on this Friday afternoon it provided a charmingly odd interlude in a chaotic time for the group. On 27 August manager Brian Epstein had overdosed and died, and Paul McCartney, to prevent a likely split in the band, rushed them into completing the Magical Mystery Tour film. Taking their cue from Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the group, friends and actors piled into a bus and headed for Newquay, Cornwall. At their hotel they met Amy and James Smedley, who invited them to drop by their Taunton chippie. With the group's fondness for acting on "random" events (partly a result of eastern mysticism, partly drug-induced, partly for the hell of it) they phoned up three days later to say that they would indeed be passing by, and could they shoot some film while they were?

"It was marvellous," Amy told a local newspaper. "The Beatles are really very nice people. They chatted away to my husband and I like old friends."

Standing beside John is long-time roadie Mal Evans, who died in a shootout in LA in 1976. Behind Paul is the Scottish surrealist and poet Ivor Cutler. When the party left, after being filmed by Ringo, word had got round and Taunton's teens were out in force to wave them back on the bus.

These scenes never made the final cut of the film, which was shown on BBC1 on Boxing Day 1967. It was the end of the Beatles as appropriate family viewing. Parents hated its rambling, psychedelic style, just as they were soon to disapprove of John's choice of girlfriend and Paul's faddy vegetarianism.

As for Smedleys on Roman Road, it's now the Phoenix, a Chinese takeaway. But you can still get fish and chips.