Lee Parkin Starkey

Only daughter of Ringo Starr and Maureen Cox. Her middle name, Parkin, was the reintroduction of a former Starkey family name. Lee was born at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London, on 11 November 1970.

After leaving King Alfred’s School in Hampstead at the age of 16 with no qualifications, she worked for a time at Tower Records and enrolled briefly in drama school.

She didn’t like drama school and left before completing the course, next entering a make-up school. Although she received her diploma she said she didn’t like that profession either.

She was to comment: ‘I want to make my mark. I don’t want to make a point of saying who my dad is. I really don’t know much about the Beatles. They had almost split up when I was born.’

Lee next became co-owner with Christian Paris of a boutique, Planet Alice, in Portobello Road, which specialized in 1960s clothes.

Her mother married Isaac Tigrett and moved to Los Angeles, prompting Lee to ask her partner if they could relocate their boutique there, which they did in 1991, when Lee was 20.

At the official opening of the store, situated on Melrose Avenue, Ringo and Barbara and Maureen and Isaac were in attendance.

Lee moved into a house in Beverly Hills which she shared with her brothers, Jason and Zak, but her boutique closed within a year and she moved back to Britain, into the flat next to Warwick Avenue tube station where Ringo used to live in the 1970s.

During 1994 she spent a great deal of time caring for her mother, who died of leukaemia in December. In August 1995, Lee was rushed to a London clinic for an emergency operation to drain fluid from her brain.

Ringo cancelled his All-Starr Band tour of America to be at her bedside. Within three weeks she was undergoing a second operation at Brigham Women’s Hospital, Boston, and this time for a tumour. She was then given radiation treatment.

Lee moved into her stepfather’s house in Mulholland Drive in the San Fernando Valley to recuperate. Her maternal grandmother, Flo Cox, also lived there, together with Lee’s half-sister, Augusta.

She returned to Britain in December 1995 to spend Christmas with the family.

Copyright: Bill Harry, from 'The Beatles Encyclopedia', published by Virgin Publications.

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