Starr thought the former Culture Club singer would change the world on the same scale as The Beatles.

Ringo Starr: I thought he was going to be the one

"I honestly thought he was going to be the one," the drummer told music paper NME. "He's still around now but he's lost the power."

The drummer said it is now more difficult to have the same effect on culture as The Beatles did in the 1960s.

He said: "The country was different then, it was a time when people were ready for something new to happen.

It appears that the ravages of time have had their own effect on Starr, whose new album, Vertical Man, scored only 2 out of 10 in the paper's review columns.

The reviewer comments: "It rocks like a pub emptying.

"Like all the recent efforts from the surviving Fabs, Vertical Man is an ultra-thin attempt to emulate his '60s glory days."

Starr, 58, also told the paper that no one was interested in his life when it came to writing biographies - just the eight years he was a member of The Beatles.

"One time I tried to write my life story for myself and I started from my birth to when I was 14 and that was much more exciting to me than The Beatles."