John Lennon and Yoko Ono Were ‘Obsessed With Their Weight’ Says A Close Friend (Exclusive)

Few people were closer to John Lennon and Yoko Ono than Elliot Mintz.

The former Los Angeles radio and TV announcer first met the couple in the early seventies after interviewing Ono about her album, Fly, the beginning of an unlikely friendship with the couple that lasted for nearly a decade until Lennon’s murder at age 40 on Dec. 8, 1980.

 Mintz, 79, who now works as a media consultant, always remained extremely close to Ono, 91, and in turn, their son Sean Lennon, 49. For the first time, he shares new details about what the legendary couple was really like in a new memoir: We All Shine On: John Yoko & Me.

One of the more surprising revelations is that the rock ‘n roll couple was “obsessed with staying skinny,” notes Mintz.

“John kept a journal where each day he would write what his weight was,” he says. “Yoko and John had endless questions about this subject.”

Lennon once even called Mintz at 4 a.m. and asked him to find “diet pills.” 

“They thought that everybody in Hollywood was slim and trim and that there were magic diet pills,” recounts Mintz, “and insisted I get that for them.” Mintz did not deliver, much to their dismay.

Although the couple always always appeared quite thin, Mintz describes their rotating racks of clothes, “like a Manhattan boutique,” organized “according to waist size,” he says, “and with a large wraparound ladder so they could get to higher boxes.”

There were, he adds, “Hundreds of articles of clothing, including dozens and dozens of hats and glasses.”

“They kept their various jeans and pantsuits, whatever it might be, in different categories of waist size, 28 [inches] reaching to 32 or so, depending on how they perceived their weight and how tight the pants fit.” he notes.

Mintz also recalls how their refrigerator was often filled with what he called “unrecognizable” health foods.

“Their refrigerator was like going into this pit of curiosity,” Mintz tells PEOPLE, with a smile. ”There were sometimes these paper containers, suggesting there were leftovers from the night before, and you would open the container and look in and still not be able to identify what they were eating.”

There was, however, “lots of water” in the house.

“Before John learned to cook, they were a little thin in the nutrition department,” he admits. “And Yoko, with all due respect, did not know her way around the stove.”

It’s just one of many stories about the intriguing couple who continue to captivate our imaginations. As Mintz explains about his forthcoming book, “This is not a love poem to John and Yoko. For those who were looking for something salacious, that’s not here either,” he adds. “What it is to the best of my knowledge, is an honest first-person account of what it was like to spend almost a decade of my life with them, and now, more than 50 years with Yoko.” 

We All Shine On: John, Yoko, and Me by Elliot Mintz comes out Oct. 22 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.