Armed with tracks like 'Love Me Do', Macca believes The Fab Four would blow the competition out of the water.

"I think we'd have won it. Seriously,” he told the Daily Star. “Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh would have been all over us like a wet washcloth.

"If you're talking of The Beatles on 'Love Me Do' - there's doubt. But if you're talking of when we'd developed some of our better songs ...we'd cream 'em"

The 67-year-old's views differ vastly to X Factor mogul Simon Cowell who said in September last year The Beatles would flop.

Cowell said: “We would have said, 'we'll take those three but probably lose the drummer'. Ringo, I'm afraid, we would have said is 'bad news'."

(by Scott Colothan)