DAVE Peterson has packed a lifetime's worth of memories into his time playing Paul McCartney in the tribute group Beatlemania.

The group, which plays Glasgow Pavilion this Friday, has played for such celebrities as Gordon Ramsay and Sir Richard Branson - and Victoria and David Beckham.

"We did Victoria's father's 60th birthday party at their old house, Beckingham Palace, in Hertfordshire," says Dave, a founding member of Beatlemania.

"She made us our tea - vegetarian lasagne and everything. She even lent us an iron to get the creases out of our suits. They were lovely people."

Beatlemania was launched in the summer of 1992 ("there's been a few line-up changes since then," says Dave) and they have played a huge list of dates at theatres, music festivals, cruises, colleges and universities, to say nothing of many corporate and private functions. They've played Europe, Russia, the States, China and the Middle East, too.

The current line-up is David, as McCartney; Paul McDonough, as John Lennon; Nick Bold as George Harrison and Dave Gee as Ringo Starr.

"It started accidentally, really," says Dave. "We were all based in the [English] north-east and we used to go busking in Durham.

"We were offered a couple of proper gigs by the universities there, and it ended up snowballing from that. It became a local thing, and then it went national, and it grew to the stage it's at today."

The band has mastered huge numbers of Beatles songs, but their appeal is much more than that. Their costumes, for example, are modelled on those worn by the original Fabs at various stages of their glorious career.

"We've got the black suits, and then we've got the Shea Stadium look for when the second time the Beatles really became big in America, in 1965.

"We do the Sgt Pepper costumes for that psychedelic period, then we have the Abbey Road look at the end."

As to how authentic the tribute band actually sounds - well, buy a ticket for Friday night's show. The website has some samples of them doing such Beatles hits as Can't Buy Me Love, Penny Lane and Hard Day's Night, and they all sound uncannily like the originals.

"The main thing, really, is the vocals," says Dave. "That's what attracted me to the Beatles when I was a kid - the vocals, the harmonies. That's the one thing you have to really work at.

"You can hear the same songs on different stereos, and it's remarkable what you can hear, especially in the case of the earlier songs, which were just recorded on two-track or four-track tapes.

"You can hear little things and you think, wait a minute - we don't do that! You're learning all the time, really.

"It's a bit like taking a painting apart if you wanted to check if it's a forgery or not - just taking it off layer by layer, and colour by colour, and you might find something else that's in there that you hadn't noticed before."

The Beatles' eight-year-long hit-making career - they had their first hit single, Love Me Do, in late 1962, and they broke up in 1970 - has left a colossal legacy of influential songs.

So large is the catalogue of hits, says Dave, "that it's the only show where we could have a one-hour break at the end, then come back on for another two-hour show and fill it with a completely different set of songs. Everyone will know them anyway, of course."

Dave is intimately acquainted with the Beatles songs and knows why they are universally popular, even now. "The songs make everybody smile," he says.

"I think the Beatles have a lot of seasonal songs as well. There are certain songs that would be great at a garden party in blazing sunshine, with rose wine on the go.

"But then there are other songs ... when you're depressed in January and there's two feet of snow on the ground, but you listen to Beatles songs and you cheer yourself up.

"McCartney himself has said that a lot of the songs are just about love. It's never about [dark subjects] like going and shooting your granny, that kind of thing - the songs are about I love you, she loves you, with love from me to you.

"There are lots of happy songs. They were a good, fun band. But there are some deep songs, too, especially with the Lennon stuff, and lyrically. But again, you just think - that's a fantastic lyric.

"They had throwaway, party songs like Yellow Submarine and Ob-la-Di-Ob-La-Da, which are still brilliant in their own right.

"Put that alongside like something like Come Together, or some of the songs on Abbey Road, or A Day in the Life. It's incredible that they could just switch their thinking and think, right, today we're going to write really happy songs that kids will love, and now we're going to do something a lot deeper."

* Beatlemania, Pavilion, Friday March 27, 7:30pm. Box office 0141-332 1846. Band website: www.ukbeatlemania.co.uk