Alan Clayson writes, their unconvincing role play led to the owner "turn[ing] to Pattie to ask whether Mr Harrison wanted to see the house as well". Inside Apple According to Taylor, following Epstein's death from a drug overdose in August 1967, NEMS was plagued by "dreadful in-fighting", as "everybody – Vic Lewis, Robert Stigwood – struggled to take control of The Beatles". In December 1967, Taylor and his fellow NEMS employees Peter Brown and Terry Doran left the company to work directly for the Beatles. At Lennon's invitation, he became general manager of the band's business empire, Apple Corps. In April 1968, Taylor appeared in a print advertisement to promote Apple and attract new artists to its nascent record label and publishing company. Designed by McCartney, the picture showed Taylor disguised as a one-man band. The heading read, "This man has talent …"; text below it claimed: "This man now owns a Bentley!" The disguise was rented in Soho, and Taylor was singing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" when the shot was taken. The ad resulted in an avalanche of tapes and other submissions after its publication in the New Musical Express and Rolling Stone. In her 2009 autobiography, Apple employee Chris O'Dell writes of Taylor's role in the company: "Alistair was here, there and everywhere at Apple, arranging this and that and always involved, it seemed, in fixing one problem or another." Taylor later said of the excesses that brought about Apple's immediate financial difficulties: "[The Beatles] were handing money out to people like it was going out of fashion. People were being given cars and houses … it just got out of control." An early success for Apple Records was the Welsh folk singer Mary Hopkin, whom Taylor tracked down (at McCartney's suggestion) after she had appeared on the amateur talent show Opportunity Knocks. In Taylor's later recollection, he called the four Beatles together in August 1968 and "told them to bring in a really good businessman" to address Apple's problems. That November, with the release of the band's double album The Beatles, his spoken voice appeared on Lennon's experimental track "Revolution 9". In what author Ian MacDonald describes as "a whimsical control-room exchange", Taylor can be heard apologising to George Martin, the Beatles' producer, asking forgiveness for not bringing him a bottle of claret. The previous year, Taylor and McCartney's random experimentation with musical notes and word