Walking into his London apartment, I am greeted by the man himself. Pete Best, the drummer that time forgot, trips on a plastic fichus tree, rattling the precious moments figurines in his glass-front china cabinet. He is dressed casually, in a faded polo shirt and khakis, eschewing the coiffed, high-maintenance looks favored by up and coming stars for the comfortable style of someone who has been kicked out of the Beatles and cannot afford anything more appropriate.

His dining room table is piled high with boxes, which he pulls me past, offering me a cup of tea. I arrive at a kitchen in a sad state of disarray. The wallpaper peels at the edges, curling away from the dark, water spots in the ceiling. Unlike the high-end, copper kettles owned by John, Paul, George and Ringo, Mr. Best's teapot is made of a thin plastic and has melted evenly over the burner, filling the kitchen with an unpleasant chemical smell. Mr. Best sucks the tea from the stovetop with a turkey baster and dispenses it into my cup. He motions for me to have a seat and I do, resting in a splintered wicker chair as I pull pieces of congealed plastic from my Earl Grey.

"So," I ask, "The past, the present, or the future. Which would you rather talk about?" He stops for a moment, pausing to sip his tea.

"The future," he says, his eyes twinkling. "Always the future."

For a man with a sad and disappointing past, the future may well be all he has. But his face is that of someone hopeful; someone not ready to accept defeat. The same may be said of his hair, which is parted slightly below his left ear, and combed nearly across his waxy skull in five thin stripes. "It's going to grow back," he tells me, optimistically. "I'm trying this new thing I saw on television." He leads me back to the dining room where he explains to me the plans for his musical comeback. Though not yet picked up by a record label, his most recent CD, "Me, Drumming," has been lauded by his cousins and mother as "ok," and has been hailed by several neighbours as "not too loud." Once the CD gets airtime, Best is fairly sure it will sell off the charts, going platinum within its first two weeks. I watch him as he fiddles uncomfortably with his watch.

"Let's not talk only about the music," he offers. While he misses being on tour, he admits he's hoping his music will take him in another direction.

"I've always wanted to act, you know? And to make money off acting." He sweats unattractively, as he leans toward me with a girlish excitement. "And I could do it, I think, because that girl from Moesha did it-- she started off singing and now she's this huge star. That's my favourite thing about the States." He absent mindedly fingers a loose thread from his polo shirt, enlarging the hole beneath his armpit.

Suddenly, his face lights up like a child's. "Do you want to see my sketches?" he asks. I nod and he opens a large notebook with the word "Skechis" printed across the front in blue crayon. The pages are worn from being turned and observed daily. Many are ripped and have been lovingly taped back together. Best's eyes are like those of a kindergartener, hoping to make his parents proud.

"This is the future," he says. "Right here."

He begins to flip pages, stopping to show me his handwritten correspondences with several major retailers, which he has stapled into the book.

"Marketing," he says. "This is what I'll do once I land my sitcom. I have all these ideas." His enthusiasm takes over as he eagerly shows me his ideas for several board games, Trivial Pursuit, the Pete Best Edition, a letter to Milton Bradley suggesting a Pete Best-opoly. He has been in talks with Ben and Jerry's to produce a new version of their classic flavor: The World's (Pete) Best Vanilla.

"This all stems from the sitcom," he tells me. "The sitcom makes me big, and these games make me known." He picks up sample questions from his Trivial Pursuit proposal. "Where was I born?" he asks.

"Madras, India," I tell him, and he flips the card, nodding affirmatively as his eyes scan the answer. He seems impressed, and I explain that, as an interviewer, it helps to know your subject's background. "Still," he says. "That was for a piece. You go again-- I'll ask. What's my favorite color?"

"I don't know," I concede. "Yellow." Best once again flips the card but shakes his head in the negative.

"No," he says. "Brown. Although that one's not really fair because I like different colors for different things and I might like a shirt that's brown more than a shirt that's yellow, but I'd rather have a banana that's yellow over a banana that's brown." His index finger wanders cautiously into his nasal cavity as he says this. He swats at a fly with a copy of Tiger Beat.

"So this sitcom-" I begin, but Best takes over enthusiastically. If there is one word to describe his actions over the past few decades, it would be Planning. If there is one to describe the quality of his plans, it would be Lackluster.

"The sitcom is based on my life," he says, "but it's not really a sitcom. It's more of a dramedy, which is a mix of drama and comedy because my life's had a lot of sad parts too. Did you know I got kicked out of the Beatles?"

I begin to answer but am immediately cut off by Best. "Just kidding," he says. "I was never associated with the Beatles. I used to tour with Johnny Cash and Martina Navratilova back when they were still a couple-back when they sang 'Love You Forever' and used to weave flags out of their pubic hair. Do you ever have dreams about paper cuts?"

Hoping to switch gears, I rise and wander anxiously toward the hallway. I notice that the precious moments figurines are arranged in a semi-circle, drawing attention to one in particular. It is a small, angelic boy with blonde hair swept across his forehead, beating on a drum. It reads "God is the beat of my heart." Best picks it up from the cabinet and strokes its ceramic hair, vaguely reminiscent of Lenny, from the Steinbeck classic, "Of Mice and Men."

"Do you want to hear my idea for the Hellman's commercials?" he asks.

"Fine," I tell him, never breaking eye contact.

"Ok," he says, gasping for air. He punctuates many of his sentences with enormous gasps, as if he were an aerobics instructor having finished two hours of cardio. "So their slogan is 'Bring out the Hellman's, and bring out the Best,' right? So I was thinking that they could bring out the Hellman's, and then they could shrink me- not for real, just on the screen- and bring me out on a little silver tray to promote my new dramedy. I told you it's a mix of drama and comedy, right? Sometimes people think it's a type of camel." He punctuates this thought by spitting phlegm into a cocktail napkin and tucking it in his pants pocket.

"Have you been in talks about this show for a while?" I inquire, wandering closer to the front door. Best responds that he has, but that the talks have mainly been with the women who live across the street in the Fairlawn retirement community. One of the women there has a son, Dan, who went to college in the states and now does something with television.

"She's going to call him for me once I get the details set," he says, nodding. "Right now I'm still tweaking it. It stars me as myself, but they'll change my last name for the show. And then Rosanna Arquette is going to play this deli worker I'm in love with. And Ed Harris is going to play her boss- I'm still not sure we can get Ed Harris." For the first time Best sounds worried; unsure of himself. My arm behind my back, I fumble for the door handle.

"Do you want me to escort you to your car?" he asks. I nod politely and he opens the door back onto the path on which I entered. The path is paved with red bits of tile, and is flanked by multiple tombstones bearing inscriptions to dead turtles. Best walks carefully, steering clear of the several raccoon skeletons that litter his front lawn.

"This is so gross," he admits. "One of these days I'm going to get somebody to clean that up." I smile and open my car door. Best grins sheepishly again- his self-effacing manner might make him innocently attractive, were he not so aesthetically unpleasant.

"Do you feel like you got all the information you wanted?" he asks. "Do you want to come back tomorrow?" He looks at me with a pleading face and I do my best to let him down easily, informing him that my flight back to the states leaves tonight out of Heathrow.

"Are you going to Los Angeles?" he asks.

"New York," I tell him.

"That's ok too," he says quietly. "Let them know about me." As he says this he steps back from the car, his face a nervous mass of lines. He is saddled with the look of someone who has been stranded on a deserted island and has come across another human being who cannot take him off the island, but may be able to send help.

His face pleading, he closes my door and tips an imaginary hat to my departure. I put the car in gear and watch his shrinking image through my rear view, his lonely face like a message in a bottle. I watch until he is out of sight, catching his final statement, which he directs weakly toward my speeding vehicle. His lips move slowly, his voiceless message chasing the car as my eyes follow the movement of his mouth.