OK. Let’s see if you can handle some ‘truth’ shall we?

I’m a strong enough person to go against the grain of ‘society.’ I’m not going to live up to what ‘the man’ wants me to believe.

I’m going to put words in ‘quotation marks’ to make my point more important and middle class. (Although I will stop now because I find people who do that are usually hiding inadequacies.) Get your ‘heads’ around ‘this!’

My name is Ben and I don’t like The Beatles.

There. I said it. I feel good pretty good actually. Although, I’m okay with the fact I don’t like The Beatles.

Its other ‘people’ (I’ll stop now) who don’t like it. For some reason the Beatles represent one of the many things in the country that we are all supposed to like. Champagne, Ant and Dec, family members; these are all things we are supposed to like and God help you if you tell someone you don’t.

Most of my friends, or any stranger that happens to over-hear me in the pub, are not okay with my ‘Beatle-unmania.’ (Last one I promise.)

As soon as they get a whiff that I might be ambivalent towards John, Paul, George and Tessa they immediately want to list how brilliant they are, the contribution they made to the world and how Paul died 20 years ago and was replaced by a double. But I’m not denying any of that.

I don’t really know anything about music, apart from the music that I like so I probably wouldn’t know a good pop band if it came up to me in the street and rammed me in the face with a Les Paul.

But I know what I do like. I just don’t think the Beatles are that good. Sorry.

I have three Beatles albums. The Best of the Beatles one and two and The Beatles Anthology.

I am assuming that, because of the title, these three albums represent ‘the best’ of them. When I finally got round to listening to them it was one of those ‘is that it”?’ moments.

The times when something has been built up to be so amazing that when you actually get round to doing it, you stand there and just think “is that it?”

Like the first time you have a drink or the first time you read The DaVinci Code. You realise it’s nothing special, destroys your brain cells and induces vomit. Drinking is pretty bad too.

I do know many of the Beatles songs and I’m not above a drunken ‘na na na na na na na’ when Hey Jude bursts through the pub juke box.

I will never achieve anything like the contribution they have made to the world through music, vegetarian food and blue plastic trains.

But I am allowed not to like their songs and I am allowed to be able to not like their songs without the endless lectures about their brilliance.

Subjectivity seems to go out of the window because everyone likes the Beatles. If it was The Killers, you would find someone who doesn’t like them. Opinions are never divided about the fab four, and I have to listen to them a lot.

I’m all for sharing, except colds and stuff that’s mine, but after at least 20 years of being told how amazing they are and what an idiot I am for not liking them I’m getting pretty tired of it.

I don’t need to hear how great Yellow Submarine is or how someone walked down the aisle to Yesterday.

Actually, I concede that Yesterday is a beautiful song. I also like Ticket to Ride and my foot has tapped along to Help! occasionally.

But Octopus’s Garden? When I’m Sixty Four? Maxwell’s Silver Hammer? If any other band brought out these songs their mickey-taking pretentious behinds would be kicked out of the musicians’ circle.

Because it’s the Beatles though, we let it go. Paul McCartney could do anything and we’ll let it slide, some of us have even forgotten about the Frog Song; that bizarre Mills business will probably never go anywhere though.

I accept that in life, there are some things everyone should like. The smell of freshly-cut grass, Fern Britton, Ricky from EastEnders, but only because we should be grateful we’re not him.

But the next time I say I don’t like The Beatles, I don’t need to be told how great they are and what a fool I am. In the words of the sufficiently OK pop band The Beatles, ‘Let It Be.’