November 12, 1963 – The Beatles postpone both of their performances in Portsmouth due to Paul being sick with with gastric flu.

Local doctor John Langmaid was called to the Guildhall theatre after The Beatles had finished a brief two-and-a-half-minute interview with Jeremy James for Day By Day. Shortly thereafter press officer Charles Gillet announced the shows had been cancelled.

Dr. John Langmaid’s account of that day:

“I was a family doctor in Southsea having joined my father’s previously single-handed practice in 1962. On the morning of 12 November I had been called to visit a young girl patient of mine who had had a bad attack of asthma - I think she was 12 years old, or thereabouts. She had a ticket for the Beatles concert that evening and there were floods of tears when I said that she wasn’t well enough to go. Later in the day I was told by my secretary that there had been a phone call from the Guildhall requesting me to go there as soon as possible to see one of the Beatles. When I arrived, I was taken in via a back entrance and thence upstairs to a room where Paul McCartney was lying down on what I think was a settee. The other members of the group were in the same room and I remember John Lennon pacing up and down looking rather anxious. I examined Paul and prescribed some medicine. It was quite clear to me that there was no way that the poor chap would be able to perform that evening, so the show was cancelled - much, as I imagine, to the relief of all of them! The following morning, I visited him again at the Royal Beach Hotel and found him looking and feeling much better. I remember saying that it would be OK for them to travel onward that day. I was thanked politely and then fought my way out through a barrage of press reporters in the hotel lobby. I then visited the girl I had seen the previous morning. I was greeted by a beaming child who thanked me for cancelling the Beatles’ concert and wanted to know whether the stethoscope I used to examine her was the one I had used for Paul!

— From The Beatles 1963 by Dafydd Rees (2022)