While cute Paul McCartney and rugged John Lennon were the objects of desire for most female fans, George Harrison impressed the girls with his shy, boyish charm.

But as the junior member of the band, he was less worldly wise than the others during their early wild days in Hamburg.

He lost his virginity in the German city while the band were there for their residencies at the Indra club and Kaiserkeller.

"Paul and John and Pete Best (early Beatles drummer) were all watching," he recalled.

"We were in bunkbeds. They couldn't really see anything because I was under the covers, but after I'd finished they all applauded and cheered. At least they kept quiet whilst I was doing it."

Harrison met first wife Pattie Boyd - a year his junior - when she appeared in the first Beatles movie, A Hard Day's Night.

As a model she had appeared in TV ads for Smith's Crisps which were produced by Dick Lester, the director of the film. She and a number of other models played schoolgirls who met the band on a train journey.

"They were just like pictures of themselves coming to life," she said of her encounter with the band.

Harrison barely spoke but she felt him staring at her. When she plucked up the courage for an autograph for her and her sisters, Boyd was rewarded with seven kisses under her own name.

He asked her out but his advances were turned down as she already had a boyfriend. But days later he asked again, she dumped her beau and they soon became an item with Harrison comparing her to Brigitte Bardot.

A holiday in Ireland together with John Lennon and his wife Cynthia followed shortly afterwards and just weeks later they were living together in a cottage in Esher, Surrey.

Life on the arm of a Beatle was not easy, and she would suffer verbal lashings, nasty letters and occasional physical attacks from jealous fans.

Taking a Beatle permanently out of circulation could have had a disastrous effect on fans and Harrison even asked the band's manager Brian Epstein for permission.

They wed at Epsom register office, with McCartney among those in attendance.

It was Boyd who originally turned Harrison on to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi which helped shape his spiritual quest, and she was the muse for one of his most beautiful songs, Something.

Their relationship became strained when they struggled to have a child and when Boyd wanted to return to modelling against her husband's wishes.

One of Harrison's best friends Eric Clapton also fell in love with her and his obsession was thought to be one of the reasons why he turned to hard drugs.

And like his friend, Clapton even wrote a song for the object of his desire which went on to become one of his biggest hits, Layla.

Boyd had an affair with The Faces' (and later Rolling Stones') Ronnie Wood, then eventually left Harrison for Clapton who was touring in the US.

Some time later the former Beatle was reputed to have incited Clapton and Boyd to his Oxfordshire mansion, Friar Park, where the two guitarists "duelled" on their instruments.

They divorced in 1977 and she married Clapton two years later.

Harrison met his second wife, Olivia Trinidad Arias, while he was on tour in the US in 1974 and she was working in the Los Angeles office of his record company Dark Horse.

"I fell for her straight away," he later disclosed.

The dark-haired beauty's grandparents were Mexican, but she was brought up in Los Angeles, moving to Britain shortly after the couple began their relationship.

"It took me a long time to settle down. I was lonely and it was a very different way to live," she once recalled of her relocation. "England is a tough egg to crack."

They also spent time in Los Angeles at his Beverly Hills mansion, but eventually settled at Friar Park.

She gave birth to their first and only child Dhani on August 1, 1978, making Harrison the last of The Beatles to become a dad. The youngster was named after the notes "dha" and "ni" in the Indian musical scale, although his name also means "wealthy" in Sanskrit.

Some four weeks later the couple married at Henley Register Office.

If George Harrison has been enigmatic in his avoidance of publicity over the years, Olivia has been even more so.

Both have tried to live their lives in private, concentrating on the family, and she has barely been seen over the years.

However, she broke her silence in 1990 when she was moved to join a high-profile campaign trying to relieve the conditions for many of Romania's orphans, who had been kept in primitive, pitiful conditions.

"First and foremost I'm a housewife and a mother and as a mother I'm devastated to see what is happening in Romania," she said in an interview at the time.

"A child is like one of your arms and when I had a baby of my own I wanted to a be a mother who was always there."

She added: "George is a very wise person. I love him very much. He is a strict father and I'm a demanding mother."

Olivia has helped raise millions for the plight of the Romanian youngsters and it was her involvement which led to some of the profits from

The Beatles Anthology being donated.

She also saved her husband's life during the 1999 attack at their home when she smashed a table lamp over the head of his attacker.