It's no laughing matter, obviously, but you couldn't help chuckling just a little when George Harrison revealed his unique verbal anti-burglar device to a court this week. Faced with a knife-wielding intruder at his mansion in England almost a year ago, Harrison began chanting "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna" at Liverpudlian Michael Abram, who was this week found not guilty by reason of insanity of attempting to murder the 57-year-old ex-Beatle and his wife, Olivia.

Don't try this at home. The chant is thought to have had the effect of confirming to schizophrenic Abram that Harrison should die, and the horrific struggle that ensued resulted in the musician receiving a stab wound which left him with a collapsed lung. Olivia probably saved her husband's life by clobbering Abram over the head with a brass table lamp.

When the news broke of the attack last year, flowers were placed, Diana-like, at the gates of Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, and we marvelled at the realisation that Harrison had cultivated a relatively reclusive existence despite his former status as lead guitarist for the biggest band in popular music history.

We learned about his Fort Knox-like home, surrounded by razor-tipped walls and patrolling dogs. We discovered the place was stuffed with gargoyles and a statue of George and the Dragon. Friar Park had three lakes, one of which reportedly had stones near the surface so Harrison could know what it felt like to walk on water like Jesus.

It was revealed that Harrison enjoyed an occasional drink at some of the village's local pubs. He had a son, Dhani (the Hindu for "rich man"), now aged 21 and a ringer for his Daddy. A fun-size Beatle in the mould of Julian Lennon. (Wouldn't it be great if they got together with Paul McCartney's musician son James and set up a Beatles tribute band?)

Although he was said to have disliked the tag of "Quiet Beatle" - he preferred to call himself and Ringo Starr "economy-class Beatles" - we realised that was exactly what he had become. While Paul and Linda (and more recently Paul and new girlfriend Heather) regularly feature in celebrity magazines, George and Olivia shunned the showbiz limelight.

THE attack came exactly 19 years after Mark Chapman gunned down John Lennon in Manhattan. "After what happened to John I'm absolutely terrified," Harrison has said. Before John's death the gates to his mock-gothic folly were always open: afterwards they were closed. But he has denied living a Howard Hughes existence: Citizen Kane might be nearer the mark given the gargoyles.

"I just don't go to discos where gossip columnists hang out. I didn't do TV chat shows or things like that. So they keep thinking I am some Howard Hughes. But I was going out all the time. I go out with friends, go to dinner, go to parties. It's all a joke," he has said. The message got across, and more recently he smilingly lamented that "the press don't see me as weird any more".

Another tag was Sad Beatle, largely because it was acknowledged that during his time with the group from 1958 to 1970 he was overshadowed by the songwriting genius of Lennon and McCartney. His contribution to their work was about quality, not quantity.

Frank Sinatra described the Harrison-penned ballad Something as "the greatest love song of the last 50 years". It features on the newly released Beatles album, a collection of their No 1 singles. While My Guitar Gently Weeps, I Want To Tell You and Taxman were other Harrison gems.

In Spice Girls parlance, Harrison was Baby Beatle. He was only 14 when Paul McCartney introduced him to John Lennon. Lennon was horrified at the thought of having someone so young in the band. He soon relented when he heard his guitar-playing, but Harrison was always said to harbour resentment at his lower Beatle status.

His relationship with his Beatle buddies, particularly Lennon, deteriorated in the 1970s, because of Harrison's intense irritation at the amount of time Yoko Ono spent in the studio during the last years of the Beatles. Lennon was reportedly miffed that in Harrison's autobiography, I Me Mine, he was mentioned a mere 11 times. Still, this was twice as much recognition as he gave Paul McCartney in the same book.

His reaction to Lennon's death at the time was quoted almost as much as McCartney's. "It's a drag, man," said Macca. Harrison is reported to have said: "I heard the news and went back to sleep and in the morning it was still true."

George Harold Harrison was born in Liverpool to working-class parents in 1943 and was a fiercely independent child. As a teenager he was a determined Teddy Boy who modelled his guitar style on Carl Perkins.

While George had his fans during the Beatlemania years he sometimes exuded a kind of restrained melancholy which was in stark contrast to the mischievous outgoing banter of John and Paul.

And though John Lennon is credited as the most experimental Beatle, George was the first of the group to take hallucinogenic drugs. He described the experience: "I had such an incredible feeling of well-being that there was a God and I could see him in every blade of grass. It's like gaining hundreds of years' experience within 12 hours. It changed me, and there was no going back to what I was before."

That was in 1964. By this stage he had developed a firm friendship with sitar legend Ravi Shankar and would later travel to India with the other Beatles to meet the Transcendental Meditation guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, another life-altering experience.

He had heard of the guru through Patti Boyd, his first wife. A musically incestuous love triangle ensued when Harrison's best friend, Eric Clapton, confessed he was in love with Boyd, a passion which inspired his song Layla. Harrison's response was typically laid back: "Do whatever you like, man." Clapton did, and after Boyd and Harrison were divorced, he married her.

Although the Clapton-Boyd union didn't last, the two musicians remain friends. Harrison wed Mexican-American Olivia Arias, his former secretary, in 1978.

When the Beatles broke up, Harrison enjoyed a successful solo career with albums such as Cloud Nine and a No 1 hit, My Sweet Lord. This cost him dear, and in 1976 a judge ordered that he pay $587,000 for "subconscious plagiarism" because the song resembled the Chiffons' 1960s hit, He's So Fine. In the 1980s he formed supergroup The Travelling Wilburys with Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty.

The movie business also beckoned, and in addition to the music he has given the world he should be thanked for ensuring Monty Python's Life of Brian received the funding needed for filming to be completed. His film production company HandMade was also behind Mona Lisa as well as the Madonna vehicle, Shanghai Surprise. In recent years the Beatles have made a comeback in the charts with the Anthology in 1995 and now the latest release.

Harrison still meditates and practises what he calls the science of self-realisation, and although friends have said his conversation isn't peppered with the constant stream of metaphysical references it once was, his beliefs have not changed.

His sense of humour is still intact. He wore a jacket with the words "I am an Erotic Being" to an awards ceremony. He joked with the surgeon who treated him after the attack that Abram wasn't a burglar and "he certainly wasn't auditioning for the Travelling Wilburys".

Friends also say one of his biggest ambitions is to get his 34-acre garden looking right. Another obsession is motor-racing. George is responsible for a song lyric which describes Jackie Stewart as "the master of going faster", although we should forgive him anything for the line in Taxman: "Declare the pennies on your eyes".

"I think, in one way, it's good getting old," Harrison reflected to Time magazine in 1987. "When you do things when you're young, you just don't think about it. You're crazy, like the Beatles. We were crazy but if you went on being like that you'd be put away. So there is a time to mellow out."

Given last year's ordeal, it will be a more difficult state of mind for even the quietest Beatle to attain.