Backbeat

Before the year was up, our annual ritual to head to a West End theatre en famille had to be fulfilled. This year we saw Backbeat - a musical uncovering stories from the early days of The Beatles in Hamburg, and in particular the story of the 'lost' Beatle and best friend of John Lennon - the smouldering and achingly cool Stuart Sutcliffe. Lennon persuaded Sutcliffe to join his band instead of pursuing a career as an artist, but Sutcliffe toyed with both music and art before ditching both in favour of German photographer Astrid.

What follows is a rocky rollercoaster, detailing both happy and tragic milestones in their lives - I won't spoil it in case you don't know how the story ends, but Backbeat is absolutely worth seeing. It's on at Duke of York theatre until February and I urge you to go xx