With his trademark pinstripe suit, upper-class accent and ‘perfect English gentleman’ persona, Brian Epstein who died on 27 August, 1967 may have seemed an unlikely candidate to ever manage a pop group in the first place.

And yet without his passion, loyalty and dedication, it is unlikely the world would know the Fab Four in the same way.

Although an exceptionally talented and cunning businessman, it was also his impeccable grace and charm that brought both him and The Beatles respect and success worldwide.

Brian Samuel Epstein was born on 19 September 1934 in Liverpool, UK, to affluent Jewish parents and brought up by a nanny.

He was educated in seven different private schools and did badly at them all until dropping out in 1950, aged 16, to join the family firm as a furniture salesman.

At 18 he was called up for National Service, which he detested for its discipline and was repeatedly reprimanded for refusing to collect his army pay.

He hated his ‘hideous’ uniform so much that he had his tailor run up an elegant officer’s outfit and was promptly discharged in 1952, after just ten months’ service, for impersonating an officer.

After much pleading with his parents, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London, alongside classmates Albert Finney and Peter O’Toole, but soon dropped out after deciding that actors were too narcissistic.

On returning to Liverpool to run the family’s new record and gramophone shop, Mr Epstein became entrenched in the local beatnik music scene and began writing a regular column for the music publication Mersey Beat.

Having hidden his homosexuality from the public all his life, he died from an accidental prescription drug overdose in 1967, aged 32, just a few weeks before the British laws regarding homosexuality were changed.

Mr Epstein also successfully managed several other musical acts including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and The Dakotas, The Fourmost, and Cilla Black.

His official autobiography, A Cellarful of Noise , was re-issued in 1989 and has been turned into a play featuring the music of The Beatles.

Beatles boff Martin Lewis runs the Official Brian Epstein Website, which contains a petition to get Mr Epstein inaugurated into the Non-Performer’s Section of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Speaking about Mr Epstein’s death years later, John Lennon said: “The Beatles were finished when Eppy died. I knew, deep inside me, that that was it. Without him, we’d had it…His power and force were everything.”