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These days, Sue Johnstone is most recognised for her television breakthrough in Channel 4's gritty soap Brookside and her comedic performance as long-suffering wife Barbara in The Royle Family.

However, in her younger years, while employed at a Liverpool tax office, she developed a close friendship with an emerging Merseyside group called The Beatles, and unknowingly destroyed what would now be considered a priceless piece of music history.

Speaking to former Coronation Street star Sally Lindsay on the latest episode of her podcast A Night In with Sally Lindsay, Sue revealed that, despite always dreaming of becoming an actress, she found herself working for the Inland Revenue after leaving school in the late 1950s.

"I hated every minute of it," she told Sally, "but the joy of it was it was on North John Street in Liverpool, right by Matthew Street... which of course is where the Cavern was. On the first day the girls in the office said, 'Come on, we always go to the Cavern at lunchtime'."

That invitation would prove to be a defining moment in Sue's life. She became a regular visitor to the famous venue and grew fascinated by the skiffle groups performing there, including a band called The Quarrymen - the group that would later evolve into The Beatles.

"They were a skiffle group," Sue recalled. "But they changed... the Beatles changed, they were obviously influenced very highly by Bobby Darin and so they dropped the skiffle and became this band which was riveting."

Sue, who grew up in Warrington, said she "practically lived" at the Cavern during her spare time. She went on to form friendships with some of the biggest names in Liverpool's music scene.

"I met and became friends with Gerry Marsden and got friendly with his wife Pauline. Then I became the girlfriend of the drummer in the Swinging Blue Jeans and I was a great friend of Paul McCartney's and in fact he got me out of the tax office into NEMS."

While working at Brian Epstein's NEMS organisation, Sue was able to hear some of the latest records being imported from America before they were widely available in the UK.

Consequently, she discovered the Dee Dee Warwick hit You're No Good: "They used to import all these wonderful American records and in fact I suggested this record to the Swinging Blue Jeans. They recorded it and it got Number One!".

Yet even while she was dating Swinging Blue Jeans drummer Norman Kuhlke, Sue maintained a close friendship with Beatles bassist Paul McCartney: "Paul wrote to me from the Star Club when they were in Hamburg and told me all the gossip," she recalled. "I was right in the middle of it all.

"Then Paul brought me a tape recording from when they'd been in the garage recording Love Me Do. He gave me a reel-to-reel tape of it, and I taped over it because I wanted to hear something on the radio. I had no idea how valuable that would have been.

"You didn't [think about the future]," Sue added. "We were all the same, young and so wrapped up in music and the scene and everything."

Indeed, had Sue taken greater care to preserve the tape instead of recording over it with an episode of The Max Miller Show, it would likely fetch a sum comparable to that of a three-bedroom Liverpool property today.

Though their lives have taken vastly different paths since those extraordinary times, Sue remains on friendly terms with Paul - or Sir Paul McCartney, as he is known today.

"Well, he did a lovely message to me for when I got my freedom of the city. He sent this beautiful video message which was lovely."