Sergeant Temple

Inspired by another enigmatic tweet by the excellent @PredictiveBeat I have been perusing my Sgt. Pepper LP cover with fresh eyes, renewed by the potential for synchronicities and curiosities thrown-up by photo overlays.

Do you think they were trying to tell us where "the doors" are, perhaps? #PepperCracked pic.twitter.com/A0iZkFq0eP

— Pepper Cracked (@PredictiveBeat) September 19, 2017

Whilst it certainly does appear that they are trying to tell us where "the doors" are, I also noticed another strange curio. Or two. Or three.

Pepper/Cut-out overlay

Firstly, the Sgt. Pepper Beatles are contained nicely within the frame of Sgt. Pepper/Babington. Secondly, the old, mop-top, wax Beatles are encompassed by the cut-out 'fake' moustache.

But, returning to the fact that the Sergeant stripes appear to point to the divine Miss Dors, they also seem to serve to obscure her and highlight the fact that she is flanked by two of the Shirley Temples.

Accordingly, I googled Sergeant Temple and discovered that Shirley Temple married a guy called John Agar. Agar, it appears, was a sergeant in the United States Army Air Corps.

Sgt. Temple

Agar, thanks to his marriage to Shirley Temple, managed to embark upon an acting career, during which he appeared in a film called Along the Great Divide where he played a character called Billy Shear, who dies, unsuprisingly. 

Coincidence? Probably, but god knows you couldn't make this shit up. However, is it a coincidence that if you overlay the cut-out over the lyrics from the Pepper back-cover it points to the line, from A Day in the Life, naturally; that states "I saw a film today, oh boy. The English army had just won the war".

Lieutenant General James Melvin Babington, the muse for Sgt. Pepper, fought in the 16th Queen’s Lancers in the Second Boer War and the First Calvary Brigade in South Africa.

So, once again, good work by @PredictiveBeat, as Michael Caine once said you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

Babington and his mighty sword

P.S. It is curious that our moustachioed hero should be sitting in front of a pair of twin pillars with a begloved lap.