HE was one of the biggest names in Beatle boss Brian Epstein’s Merseybeat stable.

Now Billy J Kramer is making a long-awaited UK comeback with a tour which includes the south coast.

The New York based Liverpool pop legend, whose hits included Do You Want To Know a Secret? and Little Children, is celebrating 50 years in the music business by returning home for the first time in 17 years.

He is headlining the Solid Silver 60s show which this year marks its 30th anniversary and promises to be most sensational line-up ever.

Sharing the bill are the Searchers’ Mike Pender, Solid Silver favourite Chris Farlowe of Handbags and Gladrags fame, UK soul pioneer PP Arnold, The New Amen Corner and the Merseybeats.

The Solid Silver 60s show stops off at the Bournemouth Pavilion on April 10 as part of its 30-date tour.

And it will be a sentimental return to the south coast town for Billy who 51 years ago celebrated his 20th birthday there.

He recalled: “I remember doing a show in Bournemouth on my 20th birthday. John Lennon was watching backstage and after the show he said he had a great song for me.

“It was Bad To Me but he would not tell me what the song was at the time.”

It was his first number one UK hit. He was born William Howard Ashton, but his stage name Kramer was picked out of the telephone directory.

With a group called The Coasters he played in Legion halls.

Beatle John Lennon suggested adding the initial J to Billy’s name would give it more of a ring.

With his backing group The Dakotas and a series of songs specially written by Lennon and McCartney, the boy from Bootle became a pop idol followed by hordes of screaming fans.

In the mid ’60s the Daily Echo interviewed Billy who was appearing in the Time For Blackburn show, which was hosted by DJ Tony Blackburn and produced from the Southern Television studios in Northam, Southampton.

It was five years after Billy’s star studded career took off. The ’60s pop bubble was beginning to burst and when the hits dried up he carved out a career on the cabaret club circuit.

He later appeared at Southampton’s Silhouette Club in St Michael’s Square where the soccer loving pop star hit the local headlines when he said he could manage the Saints better than anyone else.

Before he tasted pop fame Billy was an engineering apprentice with British Railways and ironically his last big hit was Trains and Boats and Planes.

The star, who also has a home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, moved to America in 1983 where he narrated children’s books before continuing to record.

Today he still keeps busy on the rock ’n’ roll circuit and has released his first album in 30 years which includes a track called To Liverpool With Love.

He says the sixties was the greatest part in the history of pop music and he was proud to have played a major role. One of his ambitions is to write a sixties stage play.

With fellow sixties stars he recently took part in the British Invasion 50th anniversary tour of the states.

Now Billy J is set to conquer the UK again.

Solid Silver Sixties Show, Bournemouth Pavilion, Westover Road on April 10. Ticket office 08445 763000.