There's a touching moment in The Beatles On Record in which a serious Paul discusses their career prospects as jobbing songwriters when the band's moment in the spotlight might be over in a few months. For eight years in the 60s and for the decades since, The Beatles comprehensively proved their sneering elders wrong; from the first they were built to last.

John and Paul kicked off as songwriters by handing out songs to the Stones and Liverpool mates like Billy J Kramer and Cilla Black but pretty soon they only had time for their own studio adventures.

Our ...Sings the Beatles compilation on BBC Four is an eclectic survey of Beatles' covers from the 60s and beyond. It's a tacit reminder of how Beatles' songs became ubiquitous almost overnight in the mid-60s and how quickly they were taken up by the mainstream and turned into easy listening. Much of ...Sings Beatles is TV gold because it's light entertainment colliding with pop music and producing... God knows what! That means Dudley Moore and Cilla Black making comic eyes at each other over If I Fell, Petula Clark in a field doing a vaudeville version of Sgt Pepper, Shirley Bassey turning Something into Wagner.

There's the occasional musical gem - I still like Richie Havens' take on Here Comes The Sun for example - and the odd reminder that although the flood of Beatles' covers slowed to a trickle in the 80s and 90s, each generation could still 'make' their own Beatles - take a bow Candy Flip's acid house version of Strawberry Fields Forever.

Of course we could only show you what's in the BBC's vaults and that doesn't include Ella Fitzgerald or many of the New York Times' fave covers from a recent Top 10 which includes The Breeders' Happiness Is A Warm Gun, Rufus Wainwright's Across The Universe and Stevie Wonder's We Can Work It Out.

There are those on the web that argue that The Beatles are much covered but that those covers are never a match for the perfection of the band's studio originals in contrast to Dylan who's a fertile source for interpreting precisely because his own versions of his songs are so idiosyncratic and sketchy.

There's some truth in that and while there's plenty of discussion out there online with lists of jazz , Moog and other genre Beatles' covers, the last 45 years or so of covers suggests it's hard to take on perfection. I'm going to plump for Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude with Duane Allman on slide guitar because, for once, here's a version that isn't awed by the original. We'd like to know what your favourite Beatles' cover is and why so - anyone for Marmalade?

Mark Cooper is the Executive Producer of ...Sings the Beatles which you can watch on BBC Four on Friday 11 September.

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Albert Maysles on Filming the Beatles

Related Links
...Sings the Beatles

Watch Albert talk about the Beatles' arrival in the US.

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I put my hand over the phone and turned to my brother David and said, "Who are the Beatles? Are they any good?" Fortunately he knew and with a big smile on his face, the two of us got on the phone, made the deal and rushed out to the airport in time to see the plane coming down. Soon we were filming them in a limousine and then upon their arrival at the Plaza Hotel.

Watch Albert talk about filming in the Plaza Hotel.

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The next seven days we were with them day and night. When they went into the TV studio to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, we knew that we wouldn't be able to film because of union technicalities so instead we walked down the street, went into the first tenement we saw and as we walked through the corridor, we heard Beatles music coming from one of the apartments. We knocked on the door and the mother let us in. We filmed the whole family watching the Beatles on television.

Watch Albert talk about the Beatles' photo op in Central Park.

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Watch Albert talk about the Beatles' night at the Peppermint Lounge.

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But that's not the end of it. When John Lennon and Yoko moved into the Dakota building, we were already there, so we got together a number of times. There was a time when John and Yoko thought we should do some more filming, perhaps go to the pyramids of Egypt where they would bury themselves in the sand with only their heads protruding and we would film them. I was in Paris at the time but my family was home and heard the shots that killed John.

So many coincidences... In 1965, before John had met Yoko, I filmed her doing one of her happenings called Cut Piece, and more recently her 70th and 75th birthday parties. As the Beatles film was the early bookend to the 1960s (1964), my film Gimme Shelter is the bookend to its close (1969).

• The Beatles: The First US Visit is on BBC Two on Saturday 5 September at 9.35pm and BBC Four on Thursday 10 September at 9.30pm.
• Filming the Beatles' First US Visit, featuring Albert Maysles, is on BBC Four on Thursday 10 September at 10.40pm.

Related Links
Maysles Films - official site
The Beatles - official site

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Countdown to Beatles Week
Tweet the Beatles!

On Saturday night at 8.35pm BBC Two are showing a new documentary called The Beatles on Record which uses rare archive footage, never heard before out-takes, and interviews with the Fab Four to shed light on the creation of all of their albums.

It's a fascinating programme and one we think Beatles fans will want to talk about while they are watching. The director Bob Smeaton, who also made the landmark Beatles Anthology series, will be using Twitter during the broadcast to join in this conversation and answer some of your questions

If you use Twitter while watching the programme and add the hashtag #beatlesbbc to your tweets you will be able to see what Bob and other viewers taking part are saying about it by looking at twitter's search results for #beatlesbbc or on Twitterfall.

If you would like to take part don't have a Twitter account you can sign up at twitter.com.

There are lots of other Beatles programmes coming up on TV so don't feel you can only use the #beatlesbbc hashtag while watching on Saturday night. It's already being used by BBC staff talking about Radio 2's Beatles bank holiday weekend shows.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and we'll answer it before Saturday evening.

Related Links
Beatles - BBC artist page
Beatles - official site

BBC TV's Beatles Week begins on Saturday 5 September, so all fans of the Fab Four should cancel their evening engagements or make sure they know how their PVRs or dusty VHS recorders work. We also have some special contributors to the BBC Music blog lined up next week to talk about the programmes.

At the centre of Saturday's schedule on BBC Two is a new documentary called The Beatles on Record that offers a concise overview of their recording history from Please Please Me to Abbey Road, told entirely by the Beatles and producer George Martin. Next week I'll be explaining how you can get involved with other fans to talk about this programme.

That programme is bookended by a repeat of The Timewatch doc Beatlemania and the Maysles brothers' legendary film about the Beatles' first US tour. Next week on the blog we are thrilled that Albert Maysles will write about making this groundbreaking film in 1964 and share some clips from the 'Making Of' documentary. The evening ends on BBC Two with a screening of Help!

The season continues on BBC Four with a wonderful Storyville film, How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin. Veteran filmmaker Leslie Woodhead, who first shot the mop tops at the Cavern Club in 1962, travels to Russia to reveal how The Beatles, banned in the USSR, helped end the Cold War. Leslie will also be writing about the film on the blog next week.

The season concludes on Friday 11 September with ... Sings The Beatles, a new compilation from the BBC archive featuring acts as diverse as Sandie Shaw to Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Carpenters to Candy Flip performing Beatles covers.

Stay tuned!

• BBC Press Office - Beatles Week