Federal politician Bob Katter has outed himself and several high-profile barristers as the culprits who pelted the Beatles with eggs during their Australian tour in 1964.

Mr Katter's admission ends a 40-year mystery about who threw eggs at the Fab Four as they were greeted by screaming fans in Brisbane in 1964.

The Beatles touched down in Brisbane just after midnight on a chilly June night in 1964.

About 8,000 fans were there to greet them, along with a group of non-fans with eggs in their pockets.

Mr Katter has now revealed he was among that group.

"A bloke called Dave Beattie - a prominent accountant now - was on my shoulders and ... everyone let fly with the eggs," Mr Katter said.

"[The Beatles'] truck sped up and they were hiding behind the piano as all these eggs splatered everywhere.

"The police got me and ran me away and they thought it was screamingly funny. They let me go and both burst out laughing."

Shocked

The egg-throwing shocked the Beatles, who put an ad in the paper and on the radio the next day calling for the throwers to come forward.

A Brisbane girl, Susan, and her two friends owned up even though they were not the culprits.

"We didn't actually have any real interest in the Beatles," Susan explains now.

"It was just that everyone was trying to get in to meet the Beatles and we thought, 'well, we can do it'.

"We were ushered up to the room and [after] a short conversation, we said 'we better be going'.

"They said: 'Oh no, no, no, don't go. Stay and talk to us, because we're bored.

"They wanted just people to talk to because they couldn't go out because their hotel, Lennon's Hotel, was just surrounded by screaming teenagers.

"While we were there, the real egg-throwers arrived."

Real culprits

The real culprits were a group of university students.

Mr Katter, now a veteran stirrer and Independent MP for the federal seat of Kennedy in north Queensland, has only now come forward with the full story.

He says that when his group went to meet the Beatles, "the manager said: 'Would you be game to throw the eggs now?'"

"One of our blokes - a bloke called Peter McHugh, another prominent barrister these days - he shaped up and said 'you want a blue, we'll give you a blue alright' and this is incredible," Mr Katter said.

"I was explaining that it was an intellectual reaction against Beatlemania - I'd thought this story up on the stairs on the way up of course.

"We were having this intellectual argument and Tony Glynn was another one [of us] - he's the deputy chairman of the Bar Association for Australia and president of the Bar Association in Queensland these days - and the manager said 'would you be game to throw the eggs'.

"And McHugh's sort of shaping up ... and Gary Williams, the fifth one, he stepped in between McHugh and Paul McCartney or whoever and he said: 'Hey, settle down. Obviously you can't throw eggs here, we'll have to go and find an oval somewhere.

"It was all taken seriously for awhile.

"John Lennon just sort of sat there saying 'everywhere we go now we're going to have eggs thrown at us'."

Mr Katter says the group managed to make quite a name for themselves.

"Our reputations were made from that point forward," he said.

"We walked around like conquering heroes for the next two or three years."