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IF the Noone family of Huyton, Liverpool, aren't the most excited brood in Britain today I shall be surprised.
For, coinciding with the fact that 38-year-old Mrs. Joan Noone is expecting her fourth child this week, she has just learned that her 18-year-old son, Peter, is likely to become a millionaire soon.
Peter, better known as Herman of the Hermits, heads the group that beat the Beatles to gain first place in the 1965 American popularity poll.
They sold £13,000,000 worth of discs in 18 months, which included the biggest selling record of 1965 in America, Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.
Peter is also in the final stages of negotiating a three-year contract with a top Hollywood film company.
Which one? I promised not to reveal it until the contract is signed. But it will guarantee him, he says, a million in the bank - apart from what his Hermits will earn.
I knew better than to ask if he was getting ready for a great spending spree.
Mrs. Noone's popular son is not renowned for flinging his money around.
But as he told me while waiting to find out if he was going to have a baby brother or sister: "My money's going into the bank. There are plenty of so-called millionaires. I want to keep most of my earnings and be a millionaire for truth."
Money
I suggested that money is only worth what it can buy.
"Oh don't worry," said Peter. "I'll buy the things I want.
"My ambition ever since I was a drama student at Manchester School of Music was to own a Rolls-Royce by the time I was 19.
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"But if I bought one it would be because I could always afford one.
"There are people who buy a Rolls while they're on the crest of a wave, then they don't do so good and have to flog it and buy something else.
"Anything else has got to be inferior and that's not for me. That's why I haven't got one yet. It needs a lot of money in the bank to guarantee a Rolls for the rest of your life."
I asked about the whisper I heard on a recent trip to Hollywood that there were plans to take Herman away from the Hermits and make him into a star film actor under his own name of Peter Blair Noone. After all, he used to be famous under that name in Coronation Street.
"Only half right," he replied. "I wouldn't desert the Hermits under any circumstances. Partly because of loyalty, but mainly because I get a kick out of playing our kind of music to the kids.
Acting
"On the other hand, perhaps because of my earlier experience as an actor I showed up well in the two films I've already made in Hollywood." (Where The Boys Meet The Girls and Hold On, yet to be released here.)
"Consequently, acting roles away from the beat scene are being offered me.
"But what's wrong with having two careers - Herman of the Hermits on disc, and Peter Blair Noone in films?"
I can think of a million reasons why there's no answer to that one.
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