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December 2007

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December 31, 2007 -- The Mirror

McCartney Christmas row

Heather Mills and Paul McCartney had a blazing Boxing Day (December 26) row (fight) after he was said to have brought their daughter home an hour late.

The estranged couple clashed after Sir Paul, 65, allegedly failed to drop off four-year-old Beatrice at the agreed time of 5pm.

Fuming Heather and visiting family and friends were left waiting for the toddler to arrive without any explanation.

A source said: "They arranged for him to have Bea between 2pm and 5pm but he didn't arrive until 6pm - and didn't even ring to let her know he was running late. Click here to find out more! Click here to find out more!Click here to find out more!

"Heather wasn't happy. She had people round to see Bea and it didn't leave much time until she had to be in bed. She made it patently clear she wasn't happy. She thought it was incredibly inconsiderate and rude."

The pair are due to slug it out in court in February and sources say custody will be a big issue.

The insider added: "Paul has made it clear he wants custody of Bea, particularly after Heather's recent volatile appearances on TV and her claims she felt suicidal. They also have very differing views on how Bea should be schooled. Paul wants her to go to a school where she will come home every night but Heather thinks she will enjoy the experience of being a boarder."

The insider also played down speculation that Heather will sell her £3.25million ($6.5 million) mansion in Robertsbridge, East Sussex.

The friend said: "She did threaten to move to America after one row when Paul asked why she had to live so close to his place at Peasmarsh but it isn't happening at the moment."

Meanwhile Heather, 39, will throw a lavish New Year's Eve party tonight - and has even invited Sharon Osbourne.

The source went on: "Heather knows Paul and Sharon are good friends so she did it to wind him up. She doesn't really expect her to come." Heather has also invited friends from US show Dancing With The Stars to the buffet and fireworks party.

A YEAR OF LOWS AND LOWS
What a turbulent 12 months for the pair. It went like this:

JAN 22: She wants bodyguard. He won't pay.

MAR 1: All smiles as they leave court after preliminary maintenance hearing.

MAR 21: She attacks his lawyer Fiona Shackleton as "only interested in making money".

JULY 28: Renee Zellweger spotted at cosy dinner with Macca.

OCT 11: Pair fail to agree deal after eight hours in court.

OCT 17: It's revealed he offered £25million to settle after early offer of just £3million.

OCT 31: She rants on TV. Plays tape of Paul allegedly admitting to hitting late wife Linda.

NOV 5:He's spotted kissing US socialite Nancy Shevell.

NOV 6: Heather rings in fury.

NOV 8: She parts company with her lawyers.

NOV 25: Macca linked with actress Rosanna Arquette.

Ozzy Osbourme is to fulfil a lifelong dream at the Brit Awards - by performing with his hero Sir Paul McCartney.

Brits bosses are thrashing out the final details for The Prince Of Darkness to join Macca for an explosive finale.

Aptly for Ozzy, after his well documented booze and drugs battles, they will perform Paul's classic Bond theme "Live And Let Die." And if it does come off it will all be down to Ozzy's wife Sharon.

The X Factor judge has used her influence - and the couple's gig as awards hosts - to set up the once in a lifetime opportunity for her hubby.

She said: "They go together really well. It will be amazing."

Sir Paul will also be presented with an 'Outstanding Contribution To Music' gong at the bash, being held at London's Earls Court on February 20.

A show source reckons the performance will go down as one the most memorable in its history.

He told me: "Sharon is a very determined woman and wants it to be the best Brits ever. She's been in touch with lots of the legendary music business names she knows personally.

"It was her idea for a duet between Ozzy and Sir Paul. If it happens, it will be unmissable."

Ozzy is a self-confessed mop-top fan and has long been a champion of Paul's. He has said: "McCartney's a genius. The Beatles were the greatest band ever.

"The only problem I have with him is even God has a p***ed off day.

"No one can be that happy all the time. Even Mr Happy gets a sore ass sometimes."

Ozzy voted Paul's latest album 'Memory Almost Full' as his favourite of 2007 in a web survey.

And he's even admitted having rather sinister fantasies about the Scouser. He said, "I used to dream, 'Wouldn't it be great if Paul McCartney married my sister?' My bedroom wall was covered in pictures of him."

If Sharon gets her way, there will be plenty more photos for Ozzy to hang up.

Sir Paul McCartney has signed on to co-produce tracks on British singer LULU's new album, which she'll record at the fabled Abbey Road studios.

Fashion designer Stella McCartney has been named the Person of the Year by animal-rights campaigners.

The daughter of Beatles legend Sir Paul was honoured by members of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for her fur-free and leather-free collections.

PETA's U.S. Senior Vice President, Dan Mathews, says, "Stella McCartney proves you can have a look that kills without killing."

He's out of my life: Jackson erases McCartney from hit duet

Michael Jackson has delivered the ultimate snub to his former friend Sir Paul McCartney - by erasing his vocals from their 1982 hit duet The Girl Is Mine.

The reclusive King of Pop has remixed his classic album Thriller to mark the 25th anniversary of the disc, which is set for release in February.

On the track, which was the first single release from Thriller, McCartney and Jackson argue over a girl.

The increasingly reclusive and bizarre Michael Jackson has erased all signs of former pal Sir Paul McCartney's vocals from their song The Girl Is Mine.

The song hit number two in the U.S. Billboard charts and number eight in the UK charts.

A year later, the pair teamed up again for the duet Say Say Say, which appeared on McCartney's Pipes of Peace album.

However on the latest version, the former Beatle's singing has been removed from The Girl Is Mine 2008.

When they were friends:

The famous pair happily pose for a picture together in 1990, but Michael's purchasing of the rights to Lennon/McCartney songs is said to have caused the pair to fall out.

Instead, Jackson and The Black Eyed Peas rapper Will.I.Am, share McCartney's lines, according to US reports.

Jackson and McCartney famously fell out in 1985 when the Billie Jean pop star bought the Associated Television Corporation (ATV)'s back catalogue, which included the publishing rights to The Beatles' songs.

Jackson paid a reported $47.5 million (£23.5 million) for between 160 and 260 Beatles classics, including Yesterday and Let It Be.

Other stars who have contributed to the remixed Thriller 25 album include Kanye West, Akon and Will.I.Am's bandmate Fergie.

Jackson is reportedly in talks to make his comeback after the album's release with a series of gigs at the O2 Arena in London in the spring.

Promoters want him to recreate his classic Thriller album on stage to mark the record's 25th anniversary.

Tickets are expected to cost hundreds of pounds, as Jackson is said to be in debt to the tune of more than £165 million ($330 million).

Bass links rock and roll royalty

A daughter connects with her father's musical heir

When Nancy Shockley was 4 or 5, she would sometimes awaken in the night to the sound of her father coming home from work, his big "doghouse" bass bumping the furniture.

Sometimes she would climb on it and ride it like a pony before her mother chased her off.

To the world, her father was Bill Black, bass player for Elvis Presley in those early, heady days of the mid-1950s when Elvis was swiveling and shaking his way toward a music that would rock the world.

To Shockley, 56, Black was a doting dad, a working-class guy who could give her only a little time before he died of a brain tumor in 1965. His studio and instruments were sold when she was still a child.

She now lives in Covington (Tennessee) with her husband, William Shockley, where they own a company that levels ground and prepares sites for construction. She never knew what happened to the bass until the late '70s when Rolling Stone reported that Paul McCartney had it.

Last month, about 30 years later, Shockley and the bass were reunited in a remarkable interlude spent with McCartney, the former Beatle, at his studio in England. Sir Paul sang to her, posed for photos and even plucked a few notes of her dad's old part on "Heartbreak Hotel."

Shockley's first attempt to reach McCartney after seeing the article in the '70s was unsuccessful. She let it go. But the bass did not let her go.

Years later, in Oct. 2006, it turned up again in the arms of McCartney on an episode of PBS's Great Performances. A clip that spotlighted the bass circulated on Youtube.com (youtube.com/watch?v=3uz C5KC_260) where a friend found it and sent it to Shockley.

In the clip McCartney, performing at London's Abbey Road studios, literally unveiled the instrument and presented it as the "original Elvis Presley bass," with its "dashing white trim," he said, that was "played by Bill Black."

The bass, identified as a Maestro M-1 Kay model, by scottymoore.net, the Web site of Elvis' guitarist Scotty Moore, was taped at the edges, probably for protection at first, then painted white.

McCartney said when Elvis, Moore and Black toured the region, Elvis drove and the bass rode on the roof of the vehicle. McCartney then sang and played "Heartbreak Hotel" on the bass.

Shockley said Gail Pollock, longtime friend and assistant to Moore, gave her a contact for McCartney. Shockley wrote and this time received a letter inviting her to visit McCartney in England. She and her husband arrived in London, Nov. 14, for a four-day stay.

The couple, traveling south by train, were "collected," as the English say, by an assistant to McCartney and taken in a van to a recording studio overlooking the English Channel.

Shockley said she wasn't told the name of the studio and declined to provide full details out of concern for McCartney's privacy.

But she was almost certainly at his Hogs Hill Mill studio in a restored windmill in a village near Hastings.

The couple was offered tea and sandwiches in a kitchen there, and as Shockley gazed out the window, she heard a voice behind her that seemed to come out of the past, say, "Nancy has come to see her daddy's bass."

It was McCartney, casually dressed in jean and loafers. "I almost cried he was so nice," said Shockley. "I immediately felt like this was someone I should have met a long time ago. It was like seeing an old friend."

McCartney led the couple to an upstairs room, apparently an office, where the old bass waited. Shockley choked back tears, and McCartney told her, "Let it go, love."

The three remained there for a time saying little. For Shockley, the silent bass played memories of her father, a former employee at the old North Memphis Firestone plant, who had a musical bent. He was also funny and his stage clowning was often crucial in warming up 1950s crowds for what seemed then like a pretty wild Elvis.

The Blacks lived near the Firestone plant until Shockley was about 5 years old, she said, then moved to Pikes Peak Street, off Jackson and a few years later to Frayser. Her mother was Evelyn Steele Black, who died in 2002. Shockley has a sister, Leigh Ann Porterfield of Memphis, and a brother Louis Black of Atoka.

Shockley remembers Elvis coming to her house on Pikes Peak when she was a child and talking business with her dad. She wondered why his car, parked outside, drew curious folks from the neighborhood, and why women had written phone numbers on it with lipstick.

Even after Bill Black left Elvis in 1958, Black was still on the road with his band Bill Black's Combo, and had several hits, including "White Silver Sands" and "Josephine." Shockley knew him mostly during the last two years of his life, after he stopped touring.

Shockley imagines the bass stirred memories for McCartney too. It was a gift from Linda McCartney, his wife of 29 years.

Black had sold his bass around 1962 to Mike Leech of The Memphis Boys, according to Moore's Web site, and it remained in Leech's attic until sometime in the late '70s when it was sold to music publisher Buddy Killen, possibly for purchase by Linda McCartney.

A PBS.org article states that McCartney used the vintage bass on "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," songs he recorded in 1995 with the two remaining Beatles, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

McCartney later posed for photos with the Shockleys and played a little of "Heartbreak Hotel" for them. "That's why I have a big grin on my face," said Shockley, about one of the photos.

Later he showed them some of the instruments in the studio, including some used in original Beatles' recordings, and played and sang a bit of "Lady Madonna."

The visit lasted about 1 1/2 hours, said Shockley, and then the couple was taken back to the train station.

James Roy of Boston, who maintains Moore's Web site, and is an authority on vintage guitars, notes that most of the instruments from Elvis's '50s performances are privately owned or lost. Moore has not been in possession of his guitars from that time in many years, said Roy. Two are reportedly in private hands.

Graceland owns Elvis' 1956 Gibson. Only one of his Martins used from 1954-56 has surfaced, said Roy, and was owned by a Seattle man the last time he heard.

Shockley said folks in the Memphis music community sometimes ask her about the bass and whether she would like to have it back in the family. Sure she would, she said.

"But it's in the best hands it could be right now," with McCartney, she said. "He takes care of it. He loves it. He keeps it alive. And I would like it to stay with him."

Jacko to McCartney -- You're Dead to Me!

Maybe he's on Team Heather, maybe he's just jealous that Paul's still got a face, but Michael Jackson has a message for Paul McCartney on the 25th anniversary release of "Thriller" -- the song is mine!

FOX News reports that the new mixes on the re-release of "Thriller" are out, and Paul is nowhere to be seen on the new version of "The Girl is Mine." Jacko and producer Will.I.Am have scrubbed Macca out of the song, which was originally, of course, a duet. He's a real nowhere man!

Kanye West does a version of "Billie Jean," while Akon has his own rendition of "Wanna Be Starting Something."

Sir Paul McCartney is not one for extravagant Christmas gifts - he's happy with a pair of socks. The former Beatle, 65, admits he is an easy person to buy presents for, because he's so content with the basics. He says, "You can never have enough of them (socks). Trust me."

Sir Paul McCartney once built his children a hamster cage for Christmas.

The Beatles legend - who has three children with his late wife Linda; Mary, Stella and James, and also adopted her daughter Heather, 44, as well as a four-year-old daughter Beatrice with his estranged wife Heather Mills - likes handmade Christmas presents.

Paul, 65, said: "I once made the kids a hamster cage myself out of wood and wire.

"My best ever Christmas when I was little was a fort with little soldiers that my Uncle Joe had made himself. He could turn his hand to anything could Joe."

The 'Dance Tonight' singer confessed he still gets just as excited at Christmas now as he did when he was a child.

He said: "I love Christmas I still get excited by it. I think socks, ties and novelty T-shirts make the best presents."

It's a shame Paul McCartney's early stage career wasn't documented as well as its recent years, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy one of our great pop music craftsmen still plying that craft now that he's 65.

Credit McCartney, too, with continuing to move forward. He could have taken the easy route years ago and cleaned up by touring every few years with Beatles and Wings material. But he keeps producing new CDs, and with three Grammy nominations for his latest, "Memory Almost Full," he's obviously still striking some chords.

That's harder than it looks, even if McCartney will probably never eclipse the towering music in his own past.

This special, which includes several tunes from "Memory Almost Full," was recorded at the Olympia in Paris, where McCartney played with the Beatles in 1964. He doesn't duplicate any of the set list from that earlier show here, though he does play "Hey Jude" and "Michelle."

His voice also isn't quite as supple as it was 43 years ago, as if anyone's would be. But it's still got power and some inflection, which he uses to good effect on new songs like "Dance Tonight" and "That Was Me."

The special itself, spliced from the full concert, won't surprise anyone who has seen McCartney on stage in recent years. There's still a big boom for "Live and Let Die," and he still seems to get a thrill when the crowd rumble turns into a roar as he builds to the second part of "Band on the Run."

It's a little disappointing that, in a special with less than an hour of music, he spends the last part of "Jude" leading the crowd in a sing-along. That's consistent with the classic recording of the song, but here he might have cut back on the sing-along and fit in another song.

That's minor, though, compared to the fact McCartney is still singing reasonably well on a live stage. With all due respect to Ringo, Paul's really the one who has kept the live Beatles torch aflame for the last two decades, and whatever other issues arise in his life, that's something to be appreciated.

Just last month, MPL/Rhino released a three-DVD set called "The McCartney Years," a video documentary that includes footage of his performances over the years, some with his own commentary.

That McCartney is so willing, even eager, to document his career may strike some as mercenary. But since it's the kind of thing that isn't done enough, he deserves whatever he gets from it.

This isn't the best McCartney show ever. But when he's not doing this anymore, we'll look at shows like "Live at the Olympia" and wish we could see them again.

December 22, 2007 -- The Sun

Macca spends NYE with Kylie

Sir Paul McCartney hasn't been short of female company since his split from Mucca.

And now he gets to bring in the New Year with Kylie Minogue. Well sort of.

The duo spent Thursday performing a duet for Jools Holland's New Year's Eve Hootenanny show.

They enjoyed each other's company throughout the recording - their rendition of Dance Tonight may even be worth staying in for.

But who's Macca spending New Year's Eve with?

Ladies - form an orderly queue...

Jools Holland's Hootenanny show will be aired on BBC2 at 11.05pm on New Year's Eve.

MORE

Daily Telegraph

Kylie's duet with former Beatle

From one legend to another: Kylie Minogue has joined Sir Paul McCartney for a duet.

The Aussie pop star and the former Beatle recorded a rendition of Dance Tonight, taken from McCartney's recent solo album, Memory Almost Full.

The performance, to be televised in Britain on New Year's Eve, also features Minogue sexily sprawled over a piano, singing a slow version of her hit, I Should Be So Lucky.

A source said that, after Minogue's show-stopping gig, she sat at McCartney's table and watched the rest of the TV show being filmed.

"Macca paid Kylie his full attention and they nattered away like old pals," the source said.

It was a busy lead-in to Christmas for Minogue, who blitzed the European media this past month promoting her hit new album, X

Despite turning 40 next May, Minogue is as energetic as ever and has sported an edgy platinum blonde bob to add to the sexy look she has adopted since recovering from breast cancer.

Sir Paul McCartney, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997, is in the midst of a particularly fruitful period that started with the release of his Grammy-nominated 2005 album, "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard." (Getty Images | Dave Hogan)

Four decades back, Paul McCartney asked the musical question, "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?"

The former Beatle is 65 now, but he's the one doing the feeding, in the form of myriad musical projects that keep him busier than many musicians a third his age.

McCartney, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997, is in the midst of a particularly prolific period that started with the release of his Grammy-nominated album "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard" (2005). Since then he's put out another album, "Memory Almost Full" (2006), which was nominated for three Grammys, plus a classical piece, "Ecce Cor Meum" (2006), and a new three-DVD retrospective, "The McCartney Years," featuring videos and concert footage from his solo years.

McCartney also was involved in the DVD rollout of the Beatles' second movie, "Help!" (1965), and has guested on recent albums by Tony Bennett, George Benson/Al Jarreau and George Michael.

It's a level of activity at which few of his "classic rock" peers, save perhaps Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young, still operate. The reason for it, McCartney says, is straightforward.

"It's simple: I really enjoy what I do," he says. "And every so often I just get sort of inspired. I never know why or how."

More recently, McCartney admits, the work has served another purpose.

"I think one of the great things is that music is a great healer," he says, "and it's a great sort of therapy. Often, if you're going through something difficult - as you can imagine, without me laying too much of a point on it, this last year's been pretty difficult - to get into your music is a great thing.

"So I think the last couple years I've been very glad to have my music, and I've been putting stuff into it that seems to have added up to something."

In taking about his "difficult year," of course, McCartney is referring to his pending divorce from his second wife, Heather Mills. Their bitter separation has been played out in the gossip press with allegations of abuse from Mills and rumors of massive, nine-figure settlements. The situation is "something I don't want to talk about," McCartney says, particularly because it involves the couple's 4-year-old daughter, Beatrice, his fourth child.

"I do not want to excite the envelope in any direction whatsoever," he says. "I'm just sort of keeping a dignified silence."

McCartney does acknowledge that the situation is helping to draw music out of him.

"That's why I say 'therapy,' " he says. "You're feeling bad, you skulk off to a corner with your guitar and you write something, and somehow you seem to take yourself through it and you work through it with your music.

"I still seem to come out positive and optimistic," McCartney says. "I think that's my character, so I thank heaven for that. I feel very, very blessed. People always used to call it a gift, the gift of music, and I think that's very much, more and more, how I see it."

This period has also seen McCartney trying new things in and around his music. For "Memory Almost Full" he left his longtime label, EMI, and signed with Hear Music, the imprint operated by the Starbucks coffee chain. Besides the Grammy nominations, including best pop vocal album, it debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts and was popular enough to support a deluxe edition with extra tracks and videos that came out five months later.

Whether his relationship with Hear will continue is up in the air, McCartney says, but he adds that he was "really happy" with how "Memory Almost Full" was handled.

"They showed a passion that is often lacking in the music business," he says. "They had their heads screwed on right. They knew what they were doing while others were floundering, and I think it really has been a big wake-up this year for a whole load of people in the music industry who are now busy getting their acts together."

Nor was he bothered by being associated with a coffee-shop chain.

"It's an outlet," McCartney says. "It's a way to get the music to the people, and I've never minded whether it was a record shop, whether it was online, whether it was a mail-order thing. It was a real pleasure working with them, and I'll see what happens with the next project."

As for "The McCartney Years," that was something of a surprise. Despite frequent requests, McCartney says, he had never embraced the idea of a video collection.

"It's a little bit like your memoirs," he says. "It's like, is there ever a good point? You want to wait 'til you're almost like Well, I haven't done it all, but 'til you sort of have enough to make a collection. So I was always a little bit like, 'One day, yeah, I'll do it. Don't worry, we'll make it available.' "

"The McCartney Years," for which he served as executive producer and recorded commentary tracks, was actually the brainstorm of two men, director Dick Carruthers and executive production consultant Ray Still, who brought their proposal to McCartney along with some material they had refurbished and enhanced, both visually and sonically.

"They started showing me the results, and that was like, 'Jeez, I've never heard it like this, I've never seen it like this,' " McCartney recalls. "All the colors were restored, and they cleaned the sound mixes up. I just got fascinated with everything. I fell for the whole idea.

"So I just said, 'Go to it, boys, let's do it,' " he says. "I mostly sort of approved and smiled and admired what they were doing."

The most moving parts, McCartney says, were scenes that included his first wife, Linda, who died in 1998 from breast cancer. He also points to some footage of him sitting in the back courtyard of EMI's famed Abbey Road studios in London, playing some of his favorite old rock songs.

"It's like an old snapshot album, looking at pictures of yourself from many years ago," the singer/songwriter says. "I think it has quite a warm quality in the end."

"The McCartney Years" isn't his only recent sojourn into his past. The long-awaited appearance of the Beatles' catalog for online distribution will be "happening soon," McCartney says, most likely in 2008.

"It's negotiating," he says. "Most of us are sort of all ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go, so it shouldn't be too long. But, you know, you've got to get these things right. You don't want to do something that's as cool as that and, in three years' time, you think, 'Oh, God, why did we do that?' "

McCartney isn't sure what his next recording project will be, but in the meantime he's started working in the studio with his son James, who played guitar on McCartney's album "Flaming Pie" (1997) and percussion on "Driving Rain" (2001), and also appeared on "Wide Prairie" (1998), Linda McCartney's posthumous solo album.

Sir Paul McCartney believes Liverpool will enjoy a "magical" 2008.

The former Beatle made his New Year prediction during filming of the Jools Holland Annual Hootenanny TV show.

It is being screened on December 31.

Macca, backed by Holland's Rhythm And Blues Orchestra, will perform two songs ­ a Beatles' classic and a special duet with Kylie Minogue.

And asked for a prediction for the New Year he said: "I think Liverpool is going to be a magical Capital of Culture throughout 2008 and really show itself in a new light.

"Come on Liverpool."

Sir Paul, 65, is due to appear at two Capital of Culture events.

He will be at Liverpool Cathedral on May 1 when the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra performs the northern premiere of his award-winning classical work "Ecce Cor Meum".

And a month later he is back to headline one of the highlights of the year ­ the Liverpool Sound concert at Anfield on June 1.

Jools Holland's Hootenanny show will be screened on BBC2 at 11.05pm on New Year's Eve.

The line-up of artists joining Macca in the turn-of-the-year celebration includes Kylie, Madness, Kaiser Chiefs, Kate Nash, Eddie Floyd, Lulu, Ruby Turner, Rory Bremner, Ormskirk's Jon Culshaw, Lenny Henry, Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Jools Holland said: "I think we've captured something very special. The atmosphere was just fantastic."

Just about the time Paul McCartney seems to have descended into a tabloid joke, he reminds people of his long musical legacy and rebounds.

His latest leap is chronicled in part at 10 p.m. Sunday on A&E, when it airs "Paul McCartney Live at the Olympia".

The concert, recorded in Paris in October, has already generated bunches of clips on YouTube as McCartney worked his way through the catalogues of his bands, the Beatles and Wings, as well as more formally solo material.

There was even a snippet of La Vie en Rose, the song long associated with French singer Edith Piaf, a regular on the Olympia stage. According to A&E, the recent movie La Vie en Rose - about Piaf's life, and now on DVD - inspired McCartney to return to the Olympia 43 years after he had played there with the Beatles.

The show was also one of four McCartney did - the others in New York, Los Angeles and Paris - to promote Memory Almost Full, his latest CD. To be sure, McCartney is still capable of the dreadful, as Nod Your Head made painfully clear. But he is also the embodiment of the catchy tune, as was evident when Dance Tonight was driven forcefully into our skulls.

The album charted higher than any McCartney recording in the last 10 years and McCartney picked up three Grammy nominations, for best male vocal pop performance (Dance Tonight), best solo rock vocal performance (Only Mama Knows) and best pop vocal album. Besides selected oldies, the A&E special will include Dance Tonight, Only Mama Knows and a third Memory Almost Full song, That Was Me.

To be sure, McCartney is still an object of considerable fascination offstage, and his ongoing battle with ex-wife Heather Mills has led to an array of accusations against both Mills and the former Beatle. But somehow Paul has managed to hold the high ground, even when Mills was trying to improve her image by competing on Dancing With the Stars.

McCartney's longevity may come back to the still-boyish face and the joy he finds in his work.

''I really enjoy what I do,'' he told Billboard magazine in November. ''And every so often I just get sort of inspired. I never know why or how, but I think one of the great things is that music is a great healer and it's a great sort of therapy.

''Often if you're going through something difficult - as you can imagine without me laying too much of a point on it, this last year's been pretty difficult - to get into your music is a great thing,'' he said. ''So I think the last couple years I've been very glad to have my music and I've been putting stuff into it that seems to have added up to something.''

Mishcon de Reya, the firm that has represented her through most of her split from Sir Paul McCartney, is poised to issue a High Court writ to recover the funds, the Mail has learned.

The debt was run up over an 18-month period following her breakup with the former Beatle.

The law firm, which represented Princess Diana in her divorce from Prince Charles, is understood to have had an arrangement to recover payment for its services from Miss Mills' final divorce settlement.

Yet soon after Mishcon and the former model parted company, the firm became concerned about her ability to pay the fees.

It contacted Miss Mills last week and again this week, warning her to start to clear the debt or face legal proceedings.

Mishcon fears that if Miss Mills is awarded a nominal settlement, it might cover only her other debts - leaving the firm out of pocket.

The estranged couple are set to see each other in court in the spring. But sources claim Miss Mills' recurring hip injury might see the divorce stretched out much further over the year if she is unable to make court dates, which will mean her debts continuing to mount before a settlement is reached.

Sources say Miss Mills being threatened with legal action by Mishcon has put Sir Paul in a stronger position and could see him offer her a smaller settlement in which he will pay off the legal debt.

His lawyers are all too aware that if Miss Mills becomes bankrupt, she will be significantly weakened in the divorce battle.

Miss Mills' legal bill has so far been paid with an overdraft from Coutts bank, but it is understood Coutts is now looking critically at the debt.

A source said: "Heather has been told she has to make steps to clear the debt. She has been told that a writ is as good as on its way.

"Mishcon is acting as any business that is concerned about recovering a bad debt would.

"The firm worked tirelessly in difficult circumstances for Heather and it is now concerned it may not get its money.'

"Mishcon is concerned that Heather could get a nominal settlement of a few million pounds.

"But because she has other debts to clear, there is a worry that Mishcon will be at the back of the queue.

Heather Mills has run up a £2m debt with her lawyers over an 18-month period since her breakup with Sir Paul McCartney

Issuing a writ will at least make sure that it has a much greater chance of recouping the debt swiftly after the settlement.

The source added: "Mishcon has drawn a line under its relationship with Heather.

"The thinking is that by going so public with a raft of accusations in that round of television interviews, Heather ruined her chances of getting a reasonable settlement."

Mishcon is understood to have become concerned about the possible non-payment when Miss Mills stormed off during a radio interview after being challenged about how she parted company with the firm.

In the interview with LBC, Miss Mills was challenged about "who let who go".

She claimed it was her decision, and when the interviewer said it was Mishcon's, she stormed off.

According to a source, this gave Mishcon reason to think Miss Mills might try to dispute the payment.

A spokesman for the firm said it had no comment to make on whether it had issued a writ.

Miss Mills' publicist was unavailable for comment.

The former model, who is currently embroiled in a bitter divorce battle with Sir Paul McCartney, sees herself as a female "sex guru" but plans to write under a pseudonym because she is worried about a public backlash.

A source told Britain's Sunday Mirror newspaper: "I think Heather would like to set herself up as a female sex guru. But she is worried what people will think of her so she discussed the possibility of releasing the book under a false name.

"Heather believes there is a gap in the market for a good sex guide for women, as manuals are normally written from a man's perspective.

"She wants to give her little secrets away on how to attract a man and how to keep him happy in the bedroom. Despite the breakdown of her marriage to Paul, neither has ever said anything bad about their sex life."

Heather's representative has denied she is set to write a book of sex tips, saying: "Right now she is counselling cancer children in the US and trying to facilitate a bone marrow transplant to a young mother."

Porn or education?

Earlier this year, it was revealed Heather had simulated bondage and spanking and posed naked in several sexual positions for German publication The Joys Of Love.

Despite claims the book was pornographic, Heather has always insisted it was an educational manual.

December 18, 2007 -- Daily Mail

Sir Paul McCartney gives an attractive brunette an illegal ticket to ride

Eligible bachelor Sir Paul McCartney raised eyebrows as he left a charity event with a mystery brunette balanced precariously on his knee.

Sir Paul, 65, giggled as the woman perched illegally on his lap as the couple were driven away from a party at Great Ormond Street Hospital yesterday afternoon.

The former Beatle and his pal squeezed into the front seat of his people carrier, after the star made a surprise appearance at the London hospital's annual Christmas party.

The pair certainly looked cosy despite the cramped condition, but pals of the music legend - who has been linked to actress Rosanna Arquette in recent weeks - insisted the mystery girl was not his latest love interest.

A source told The Daily Mirror: "Yes, she's very attractive but she's just a friend.

"She works for his company and organises charity events. They get on well.

At the annual event Sir Paul chatted and joked with some of the 1500 children and their families in Coram's Fields, London, which was decked out with snow, elves and reindeer.

As well as playing the mandolin, Sir Paul also delighted onlookers by joining a couple of the youngsters in a festive karaoke session - belting out S Club 7 hit Don't Stop Movin' for the children and their parents.

"Sir Paul had everyone singing along. The children were thrilled but it was even more of a treat for the parents," one partygoer said.

Elizabeth Connolly, 32, whose daughter Katie, two, spoke to Sir Paul, said: "It was a really special day. He was very charming."

December 18, 2007 -- Northants News

Little Lana meets Sir Paul

Lana Leeson and other patients at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital got in the festive spirit yesterday, with the help of former-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.

The nine month-old tot, from Oundle, has a rare blood disease which required her to undergo a lifesaving operation in November at Great Ormond Street.

She has been recovering at the London hospital ever since, although it is hoped she will be home in time for Christmas.

Yesterday, Lana and her family joined in the annual festivities at Great Ormond Street with a special group of celebrity pals, elves and fairies.

Sir Paul McCartney, in particular, made it a wonderful Christmastime by singing karaoke during his surprise visit and having his picture taken with the children - including little Lana.

Lana's mum Vanessa, 27, has set up an online blog reporting on her daughter's progress.

In the latest blog she says of the star-studded Christmas party: "Wow Santa came to see us today along with Batman, two elves, a storm trooper from Star Wars and about a dozen faries. They were all so nice and gave Lana a little toy and a book. And then Paul McCartney turned up, he was so nice and even posed for a photo with Lana and after all that we had carol singers."

Sir Paul McCartney waves as he bounces a mystery brunette on his knee yesterday.

The former Beatle had clearly given her a Ticket to Ride - or perhaps it was a case of Baby, You Can Drive My Car.

Sir Paul, 65, giggled as the beauty perched illegally on his lap as the couple were driven away from a charity do.

The music legend - who is dating Pulp Fiction beauty Rosanna Arquette - was accompanied by his pal to the Great Ormond Street Hospital's Christmas party where he played the mandolin for sick kids.

Elizabeth Connolly, 32, whose daughter Katie, two, spoke to Macca, said: "It was a really special day. He was very charming."

MORE

The Telegraph (UK)

Paul McCartney sings at Great Ormand Street

Sir Paul McCartney has made a surprise Christmas visit to children at the Great Ormond Street Hospital.

The former Beatle joined in a karaoke session with the youngsters, singing the S Club 7 hit song Don't Stop Movin', as well as talking with some of the hospital's 1,500 patients.

One parent at the party said: "Sir Paul had everyone singing along.

"The children were thrilled but it was even more of a treat for the parents."

Among those Sir Paul met was nine-year-old Milly Pyne, who was born with a rare genetic condition in which the bones in her skull and face fused at birth. The young girl from Ulverston, Cumbria, underwent surgery this year.

Earlier this month she was honoured at the Woman's Own Children of Courage Awards.

Sir Paul greeted her with a hug and jokingly pretended to take a bite out of her medal.

Other celebrities at the annual party included the husband and wife television presenters, Tess Daly and Vernon Kay.

Denny Laine and Paul McCartney met backstage at London's Wembley Arena London (Saturday, December 8) for the UB40 and Maxi Priest concert. This was the first time the two have been seen together since the break up of Wings in the early '80s.

Sir Paul McCartney has teamed up with pop superstar Kylie Minogue for a duet that will air on British TV on New Year's Eve.

The Australian singer joined the former Beatle as he performed hit song "Dance Tonight" on Thursday while filming annual holiday programme Hootenanny, hosted by musician/TV presenter Jools Holland.

A source tells British newspaper the Daily Star, "Macca snared Kylie before she was due to team up with (British talent show finalist) Leon Jackson. She looked very sexy in a flesh-coloured bandage style dress.

"After her performance, which also included a stripped-down version of "I Should Be So Lucky", Kylie sat at Sir Paul's table and watched the rest of the programme being made. Macca paid Kylie his full attention and they nattered (chatted) away like old pals."

As the man who penned When I'm 64, it probably goes without saying that Paul McCartney felt a twinge of trepidation as June 18, 2006, finally approached. The way McCartney tells it, the plan was to pay little attention to it, perhaps avoid going out of his way to hear his most vaudeville contribution to Sgt Pepper. But that very morning he was greeted at his house by a delegation of younger McCartneys. "My kids did a version for me," he exclaims from the kitchen of his Sussex recording studio. "I even had the baby doing it." By way of illustration, McCartney lets forth a high-pitched imitation of Beatrice Milly McCartney singing When I'm 64 with atonal gusto.

A prurient inquiry springs to mind at this point. You wonder if Heather was there, singing along with the Maccas, all the better to imagine the atmosphere on that mildly mythical morning. But you weigh up the risks of upsetting a Beatle and you let it pass.

By the time he reached a pensionable 65 this year, he had turned into another one of his songs ­ he was here, there and everywhere. No doubt, some of the attention was unwelcome. When redtop headlines weren't trumpeting the latest installment of his divorce they were shining a light on his ensuing liaisons ­ a weekend apparently spent with the Hamptons socialite Nancy Shevell, and his current relationship with Rosanna Arquette. But even setting that aside, it was a period of activity unseen since the days when he had three other Beatles beside him to share the burden.

In June he formally severed his 45-year relationship with EMI by releasing his 14th solo album, Memory Almost Full, not with a conventional record label but with Starbucks' music division Hear Music. Along the way, there were British and American gigs of hysteria-inducing intimacy and even a measure of acceptance for his classical work ­ his memorial piece to Linda McCartney, Ecce Cor Meum, earned him a Classical Brit.

During a 50-minute conversation, there is one word he uses more than any other. If, as GQ recently declared, Paul McCartney is the Man of the Year, then "exciting" was his word of the year. And if something wasn't exciting, Macca didn't want to know about it.

It seems that excitement ­ or rather the lack of it ­ struck the death knell for what was already becoming a strained relationship with his old label. "Everybody at EMI had become a part of the furniture. I'd be a couch; Coldplay are an armchair. And Robbie Williams, I dread to think what he was," he begins. "But the most important thing was, I'd felt [the people at EMI] had become really very boring, y'know? And I dreaded going to see them."

Boring in what way? "Well, because I could guess what they were going to say ­ 'Love your record, Paul' ­ and I'd say: 'Well, what should we do with it?' Then they'd go: 'Well, we think you ought to go to Cologne', which is what they always say.

"This idea became symbolic of the treadmill, you know? You go somewhere, speak to a million journalists for one day, and you get all the same questions. It's mind-numbing. So I started saying: 'God, we've got to do something else'."

Had his American producer David Kahne not been on hand to hear these grievances then McCartney may never have got as far as working out what that "something else" was. Unluckily for EMI though, Kahne had friends at Hear Music. By the time McCartney got around to telling EMI the bad news, the deal was as good as done. Someone at the coffee chain told him that 400 Starbucks in China would be stocking the CD. He liked the idea almost as much as the fact that no one had mentioned Cologne.

The clincher, though, was the meeting he had with Starbucks executives, in which Memory Almost Full was played back in its entirety. "You Tell Me came on and one of the team started crying. It was weird. I thought, 'Oh, this is real feedback."

Not much crying at EMI then, lately? "Well, there is, but for other reasons," McCartney says. It might be argued that, for an industry monolith such as EMI ­ now owned by a private equity firm, Terra Firma ­ losing Paul McCartney in one year is unlucky. That the label went on to lose Radiohead because, in the words of the guitarist Ed O'Brien, "Terra Firma doesn't understand the music industry" ­ starts to look like recklessness. Thom Yorke may bristle at the idea of jumping ship to Starbucks, but one thing he and McCartney have in common is their enthusiasm for new, faster ways of putting out music.

Actually, they're strangely reminiscent of the old ways. McCartney was one of millions who downloaded Radiohead's In Rainbows, paying "something reasonable", on the week it appeared. "This was how we used to operate," he enthuses. "I remember John [Lennon], for instance, writing Instant Karma and demanding it was released the following week."

It wasn't the case with EMI. "I'd started saying to them: 'Look, we could write a thing and have it released the next week.' And they would say: 'You can't do that these days.' So I would say: 'Well, how much time do you need?' And they'd say six months. I said: 'Why do you need that long?' And do you know what they said? 'To figure out how to market it.' I said: 'Wait a minute, are you sure you need six months for that? Couldn't some bright people do that in two days?' Jesus Christ. I said: 'Look boys, I'm sorry, I'm digging a new furrow."

And a fertile one at that. This year he bought the domain name www.meyesight.com (a pun on MySpace but pronounced so that it rhymes with "eyesight") as a platform for his poems, paintings and demos. Far from making him retreat behind locked doors, the fallout from his divorce from Heather has thrown him not just into work but into a whirl of social engagements. At the Q Awards in September he got talking to Damon Albarn and congratulated him on the success of his Africa Express "super-jam" at Glastonbury.

"He asked me to take part in it, actually. I couldn't do it because of my personal difficulties. I was looking after my daughter and I couldn't really schlep her down and do that. But I think they're gonna do another one, so I might get involved next year."

The way his 2008 is shaping up, McCartney might find it no less of a struggle to fit in the next one. In February he picks up an award for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Brits. Between then and his Anfield stadium show in the summer, he goes into the studio to assist on an album of songs by his famously shy son, James.

Also nearing completion are a guitar concerto and a new album under his nom de plume The Fireman. While he's under no illusions about the place these projects will have in the mainstream, you suspect that much of his current swagger stems from the reception accorded to Memory Almost Full. It's a record on which the Linda years seemed to loom large ­ not just on Wings-style rockers such as Only Mama Knows and Nod Your Head, but across a succession of confessional, contemplative songs. Writing about his happiest years as though part of some increasingly intangible dream,You Tell Me, That Was Me and The End of the End numbered among his most affecting tunes for years.

That McCartney takes as much inspiration from Wings these days as he does from the Beatles, is probably no accident. The Beatles don't need anyone to stick up for them. But the same can't be said of the band formed by Paul and Linda in the hangover of the decade that the Beatles helped to define. When talk turns to the subject of Wings, McCartney relays a favourite story about Bruce Springsteen. "We were at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and we got talking. He said: 'You know what? I like Silly Love Songs. I really didn't get it at first, but now I've got a wife and kids I get what you meant'."

It isn't difficult to work out the subtext of this story. Having spent the Sixties as you would expect a Beatle to spend the Sixties ­ seeing Jane Asher, getting high with his arty mates at the Indica Gallery, being a Beatle ­ he changed with the new decade.

And many of his contemporaries resented him for it, little realising that the changes he underwent would befall them too. Family. Kids. Mellow times. "Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs/And what's wrong with that?"

Does he ever get bored of being portrayed as easygoing, thumbs-aloft Macca? I suggest that his glass-half-full persona must have been manufactured as a method for coping with his extraordinary fame. He bristles slightly at the word "manufactured". In fact, he says, it was probably a mechanism that activated itself during an adolescence overshadowed by the death of his mother. "If you knew anyone I went to school with, it was the same, you know. I was pretty optimistic."

Besides, even happy songs have a way of turning sad as the years go by. Penny Lane pauses the videotape of memory on a moment to which its author knows he can never return. Even When I'm 64 carries a poignancy that he couldn't have foreseen when he wrote it. "You know, I think you're getting to the philosophical core of things when you say that. Things that are happy also contain the seed of sadness."

By way of illustration, he pretends to be a brass band playing I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside. Images of Victorian ghosts in stripy bathing costumes suddenly abound. "See what I mean? One day, when we discover the meaning of life, that will somehow be contained within it ­ that happy is sad and sad is happy."

At the risk of sounding like an enterprising Starbucks executive with a chopped onion secreted in his handkerchief, I tell Paul that the home movies on The McCartney Years ­ a new DVD anthology spanning his work with and beyond Wings ­ movingly underscores the point. Particularly affecting is the footage of the McCartneys revelling in anonymity at their Scottish farm retreat. It must have been incredible to raise children who had yet to rumble who exactly their dad was.

"Exactly," he says. "There was one moment where they were riding their little ponies in Scotland, and Stella said to me: 'Dad! You're Paul McCartney, aren't you?' 'Yes darling, but I'm Daddy really'."

Were any reminder needed that he's still Daddy, he has to leave his studio in a few minutes to pick up four-year-old Beatrice from school. On the way back they might do some Christmas shopping ­ a ritual with which he is quite hands-on. "I like to do that myself, you know?" In terms of getting the kids excited, I tell him I can recommend the Argos catalogue. It's got nearly 2,000 pages.

"I don't get the Argos," he says, with the mock air of a man who may yet do ­ now that the idea has occurred to him. "But I do have others. There are catalogues that are even better than Argos. Believe you me."

The McCartneyYears DVD and the deluxe edition of Memory Almost Full are both out now.

Sir Paul McCartney's estranged wife Heather Mills is reportedly "disgusted" by his new girlfriend Rosanna Arquette for her controversial role in 1997 movie CRASH. The former model - who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident in 1993 - is sickened by Arquette's portrayal of a disabled woman who gets sexual enjoyment out of car accidents in the David Cronenberg-directed movie, according to a pal. Mills' alleged attack follows reports of a romance between the ex-Beatle and the Hollywood star, which first surfaced last month.

A close friend says, "When Heather saw Paul's new girlfriend appearing on screen with a similar injury to herself, she was disgusted. Rosanna's character gets turned on by accidents. Heather told pals she finds this reprehensible."

Mills and McCartney - who have a four-year-old daughter, Beatrice, together - are currently embroiled in a bitter divorce battle.

Rock royalty turned out clad in denim and leather to see the band reunited for the first time in 19 years, in a show which brought the rock gods out of their country piles and into London's O2 arena.

Macca rolled up for the show - but didn't let on he had rumoured new girlfriend, actress Rosanna Arquette in tow. Paul hung out backstage, and so did actress Rosanna, who is said to be enjoying a blossoming romance with the former Beatle.

Since the early 1960s, there's barely been a week when Paul McCartney hasn't been in the news. First with his mates John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in The Beatles, then onto working with his wife Linda and others in Wings, as well as proceeding with a prolific and extremely successful solo career.

Recently, though, he's been in the news more for his tabloid-topping, turbulent divorce negotiations with his second wife (Linda passed away in 1998), Heather Mills, than for his music. That's very foreign territory for McCartney, but he's still progressing with numerous musical projects.

The songwriter recently released a three-disc DVD ("The McCartney Years") chronicling his post-Beatles career, as well as an expanded deluxe edition of his critically acclaimed 2007 album "Memory Almost Full." He's working on the release of a classical DVD. He played a handful of small-scale shows earlier this year, including two in the U.S., and is hoping to mount a full scale tour once the divorce is finalized.

He recently spoke - at length - from England about his amazing life and times.

"It's sort of a rainy evening here in London," McCartney said over the phone. "It's cool, though, things are starting to get a bit Christmas-y - it's nice."

And so it went, as rock's leading Renaissance man reflected on the good times and the tough times and everything in between. As you can read, at 65, the guy once dubbed "The cute Beatle" has got far too much on his plate to even consider slowing down:

Q: It's obviously been a tough year for you in a lot of ways. How are you getting through it all?

PAUL: I'm doing quite well, y'know, surprisingly well, really. I think it's mainly because of my music. I think music is a great help in difficult situations. I love music. Music is a place to kind of escape to in many ways and that's one of the great things about it. It also is a healer. So I'm doing pretty good.

Q: Looking back on the 40 music videos in your new DVD "The McCartney Years" must have brought back a lot of memories. Was it a major nostalgia trip for you?

PAUL: Yeah, it was. It was one of those things I put off for years 'cause when is the right time to release a collection like that? It was suggested to me by the guys who put it together, Dick Carruthers and Ray Still - who were the main people behind it and did most of the work they said, "We'll put it all together for you, we'll clean it all up, we'll clean the pictures up, clean the sound up, it's gonna look beautiful. All we want for you is to enjoy it and approve it." So I would go in and see them every so often and, I was like, "Wow, I haven't seen that thing in years. Ooh, look at that." Obviously, the main nostalgia thing was Linda, really, 'cause she plays such a big part in it. But it was lovely; it's like looking at your family scrapbook.

Q: The film "Heart of the Country" really focuses on your life with Linda shortly after The Beatles' breakup. It has the intimacy of a home movie. Is that one especially difficult for you to watch?

PAUL: Yeah. The truth is really that anything with Linda in it is kind of difficult for me to watch because of losing her. So I don't think that's any more difficult than anything. The whole period was great. Like I say, all of that is difficult, but at the same time, this is what happens in life. And we have to rationalize that fact, that we lose people. Y'know, I lost my mom and dad, I lost my mom when I was young. And even though it's really sad, I think you have to - I certainly do - look to the good times. Even though there's sort of a tinge of sadness running throughout any of the pieces with Linda in it, there's also a great feeling of, "Wow, God, what a good time we had." That's really what outweighs everything in the end for me.

Q: Watching it all, were there any songs that you had sort of forgotten about and felt like - "Hey, we should play that one live again"?

PAUL: There were a few like that, actually. There was one, "Pipes of Peace," I don't really consider performing that. There's some sort of some good stuff there. I think "Put It There" is kind of interesting to suddenly see out of nowhere. "Take it Away," that's another quite a sort of funky little music video, that.

Q: You'd have to get (producer) George Martin back on piano, though, for that ("Take it Away").

PAUL: That's amazing. Whoa. You kind of forget. You do it, then a year or two later you're not always thinking, "Oh, that was the music video with George in it," I mean, 'cause it also had John Hurt in it, it had Ringo in it, and Linda, it was quite a star-studded little cast that one ...

Q: As seen in the DVD, you've played with a whole lot of musicians since The Beatles. Other than Linda, obviously, and other than your current band, who are some that you miss the most and are there any that you might like to play with again at some point?

PAUL: "Since The Beatles" - That's kind of a difficult question because I think they're all cool in their individual ways. I mean, because I'm very happy with my new band. If we were five years from now, I think I'd probably sort of miss guys out of my new band if I wasn't playing with them. Then I don't know who you'd choose.

My mind goes to Joe English, actually. Funnily enough, he's just a real cool character Joe, I liked him, I thought he was a really hot drummer. But y'know it's always difficult singling anyone out. My mind went to him but I kind of loathe to single anyone out. We had some great times.

The 1976 lineup of Wings, which Joe drummed for, I think was the height. Linda and I always thought that was the height of the Wings' period. But then again you have a memory like the "My Love" lineup, which was Henry McCullough , ex-Grease Band on guitar. Henry's greatest moment for me was in the recording of "My Love," when we'd rehearsed the whole thing and I kind of knew what he was going to play on the solo and I was happy with it and he just came over on a live session where we were playing live with the orchestra in Abbey Road No. 2 studio and he just sort of wandered over to me just before the take and said, "Hey, do you mind if I try something different?" That was like, "Whoa, wait a moment, decision time: 'Yes I do, stick to the script' or; 'No, of course, I don't.'"

The latter was my answer. And he came up with the solo there on "My Love," which I think is a real fine moment, the definitive Henry moment. It's difficult to single any one out, so I think I shouldn't really, it was all great and each period had something great.

Q: Now that you've gone back into the archives, and it's come out so well, let me ask about two other projects that a lot of fans have asked about through the years.

One is "Cold Cuts," the long-discussed album of some of your best solo unreleased material, and one is a DVD of all The Beatles' promotional films, which were the music videos of their era. Any chance of either being released?

PAUL: I think there's every chance always. George Harrison and I used to joke when we did "The Anthology," "O.K. guys, we've done it now. The next album is going to be called 'Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel'" (laughs heartily). We can poke fun at ourselves. But there still is stuff at the bottom of the barrel. It's not the A-list stuff, The Beatles' promo stuff, it isn't bad stuff, but the fact that it hasn't been released 'til now indicates, I think, that there's not sort of a huge outcry for it. Maybe, not absolutely the greatest stuff we ever did, but I think it's good enough. I think The Beatles' barrel is pretty cool. I think you can scrape the bottom if it.

"Cold Cuts," with me, it's kind of bootleg country, a lot of that has been out on bootlegs. I always like the idea of going to the bootleggers and putting their stuff out officially and watching them as they come up to me and say, "Hey, that's our album." "No, it ain't buddy." So I imagine, yeah, both of those, it's a possibility as time goes by.

Q: You've released a special edition of "Memory Almost Full" with a bonus DVD of film clips from the London club show you did awhile ago. Why did you pick London, as opposed to say, the show you did at the Highline Ballroom in New York City?

PAUL: I tell you what it was. We just got more film on the London one ... we did film the others, but didn't film them as comprehensively. I think what will happen, we do have footage of all of these gigs, they were great - he said modestly (laughs). I really enjoyed them. The feedback we got was super. So we were just talking the other day actually that when we had to put it together, you can imagine for it to be released now we had to put it together very quickly. And the most footage we had readily available was of the first show.

Q: Speaking of the clubs shows that you've done this year, they've been tremendously well-received. The new songs sound great live. Do you have any plans of bringing them out for a wider audience and doing a full scale tour, and if so, when?

PAUL: Yeah, I'm looking at that now. The truth is, personal circumstances. I've never done this divorce thing before. It's completely new to me. My basic feeling is, it's really difficult and the thing I need to do sort of before taking on any big commitments like a big tour is try and get it settled. I've got like a tidy mind that way. I don't want to be in the middle of some holocaust and be on tour. So I would like to tidy it up and try and do the whole thing with dignity. But certainly what we're looking at beyond that, I'm itching, me and the band are itching to get out for those friends of ours.

Q: Seeing you play in a club made me wonder. In the early days of The Beatles, did you ever just bomb with a crowd? Somewhere where they hated you guys?

PAUL: Oh, yes. This is what early days and training are about. Oh, yeah, that sure happened.

Q: Where?

PAUL: It happened all over the place.

Q: C'mon, it was The Beatles.

PAUL: You're talking early days. For instance, there's a place called Stroud, which is really sort of backwoods country (in England). We'd never heard of it and certainly didn't know how to find our way there in our little van. But it was that early, it was really van time. What you did in those days, you'd get down there in the afternoon, you'd have to find the gig. That was the most important thing. And then you'd get your equipment sort of set, get your van parked and then you could go get something to eat. Anyway we did this gig in Stroud, we finally found the place. There weren't an awful lot of people who showed up. Very slim audience, some of whom were male hooligans that you'd always get at these shows. This is half the fun about a rock'n'roll show, there's always somebody going, "Wellwayabeya" (McCartney yelling gibberish). And you've got to prove yourself. The cooler you get, the less of that you get, but in the beginning, these guys, we use to call them "Teddy Boys" in England, we called them "Teds." A bunch of "Teds" in the back of the room, they came forward and they started throwing coins at us. We were like, oh (expletive), this is what we've heard about (laughs). But we were, as always, on top of it. We just kind of stopped and picked them up and pocketed them and we thought, well, a little extra money. They didn't stop us, we just continued. I think they realized they were giving us their money rather than shaming us. It wasn't having much of an effect, other than we were looking rather pleased to make a little more out of the gig. But yeah, we certainly had those moments. That's just one I particularly remember.

Q: 1961, you think, or '60?

PAUL: Yeah, that kind of time.

Q: "House of Wax," from the new album isn't just musically complex, it also offers some very fascinating lyrics. What exactly is "hidden in the yard, underneath the wall?"

PAUL: "The meaning of it all." It's like that. Look at any kind of philosophy and they're talking about their view of what this thing we're going through means. Look at modern science and they will give you the molecular quantum theory view. The big question is really that. To write a song and say, "It's hidden in the yard, it's buried in the wall, buried under a thousand layers." That's kind of how it is, it appears to me. You don't just get born and someone goes, "This is what it is," and you go, "Ah, ok, Buddha thank you." It's not like that. We've got this hugely complex life, multi-layered. More layered perhaps now than ever. We're all kind of, in a way, it may not be our primary question of the day, but in the background there is always this thing - what's it all about, Alfie? That's just a song that found its way to that in the chorus. The front bit, I was just enjoying writing kind of surrealist poetry, what is this house of wax?

There were two things and I hadn't decided. One of the terrible things about doing a poetry book with a Japanese translation was I had to actually decide the sex of the (Beatles' song) "Blackbird." In Japanese you can't just put "Blackbird singing in the dead of night." They need to know if it's a male or a female. I'm going, "Um, I don't know, I don't want to tell you, I don't want to decide." In the end I think I had to decide. They bullied me into it and I think I made her female.

In that sort of vein, this song is sort of like that. What is a "House of Wax?" Is it a museum like Madame Tussaud's? Or is it a record shop, or label? I think I kind of thought more of that, a fantasy, surreal place where they make records, manufacture them in sort of a Tim Burton house. That's where my mind was going. But I liked the sort of poets spilling out onto the street. Spilling. I enjoyed the lyrics to that. "They can only dream of flight away from their confusion." It's slightly sort of chilling. It's just me having fun really as Edgar Allen Poe did (laughs). It's a little bit Poe-esque.

Q: In June, you and Ringo and Yoko (Ono - Lennon's widow) and Olivia (Harrison - George Harrison's widow) attended Cirque du Soleil's production of The Beatles' "Love" together in Las Vegas. How did you enjoy that, and what was your reaction when Yoko referred to you as "a magnificent man?"

PAUL: I thought she was stealing my line. I had just said two seconds before that John was a magnificent man. And she went, "Paul, you're a magnificent man." I think in the interests of equality, which is rather nice, we're always trying to do that. It was very cute, really. I was very pleased, obviously, but my main thought was, "Didn't I just say that? (laughs). Just kidding, this is all in good humor.

Q: How did you enjoy the whole thing of "Love" in Las Vegas, other than Larry King mixing up your names?

PAUL: I thought that was the best. We nailed Larry, it was terrible. We shouldn't have, but the sort of hunting instinct came out, I'm afraid. The interesting thing was, he was saying, "No, I didn't mean it like that," and we were going, "Get out of here." We wouldn't let him off. But afterwards I was thinking about it. I think possibly what he was actually saying wasn't, "Now George," looking at Ringo. I think what he was sort of saying was, "Now George, there's a subject." I'm giving him such a massive benefit of a doubt. I'm afraid we nailed him on that night. But he's a good enough friend of mine, I've run into him so many times. I like Larry. And he was also a voice in "Shrek," so anyone who's a voice in "Shrek," I have a lot of time for.

Q: You were recently quoted as saying that it looks like The Beatles' songs are going to be available to download in 2008. That's been in the works for a while. Are there plans to include any bonus material on that project?

PAUL: It's progressing. I don't actually know the details just yet. We're all very keen - everyone's very keen - but it's a deal, a negotiating thing. And when you talk about The Beatles, all it needs is one branch of the deal - and obviously there's a lot - there's the record company, individuals, whatever. And it just needs somebody to need a variance in the deal. But it's near, it's very near. As I've said, there are one or two things that need talking about rather than just "Yes," which is natural. But it will happen. Everyone really wants to make it happen. I think there's just I's being dotted, T's being crossed.

Q: A restored version of The Beatles' "Help!" DVD was recently released. What are your favorite recollections of that movie and how do you think it compares with "A Hard Day's Night?"

PAUL: In truth, my recollections of making "Help!" were that we really didn't bother. We didn't read the script. I don't think any of us read the script. Ringo might have, being the film star amongst us. I don't think anyone bothered. At the time I thought, "This is probably not a good omen." And I say we were a bit stoned during the making of it, and we weren't in "Hard Day's Night." So I consequently at the time thought, well, "Hard Day's Night" has got it a million times over "Help!" But seeing it now, it's actually pretty cool, it's actually sort of rather brilliant in a strange way. The filmmakers, I think, did a pretty good job putting it all together, it's filmed beautifully. And the script writer caught some surreal, witty, period things. So all in all, my answer is, it's kind of cool. But I must say I never thought it was. I always thought we really missed that opportunity. But looking at it now, it's great.

Q: What can you tell me about this Long Island Labor Day party of Bon Jovi's? There were reports that you played at the party at his house with a band that included Billy Joel, Bon Jovi, Roger Waters and Jimmy Buffett? Is that accurate?

PAUL: That is.

Q: What songs did you play and what was it like?

PAUL: It was funny, actually. It was the last night of my holiday and I was going over there and there were huge local fireworks displays. I went this way, got stopped, went this way, it must have taken me about an hour more than the usual 20 minutes to just sort of get there. So I got there and I was having fun just meeting people. Then I noticed Jon going down the lawn to where there was just a little band and I thought, "Oh, he's going to play. Oh, my God." He suddenly starts calling everyone. "Hey is my friend Billy there?" And so Billy goes up, and I'm thinking, "Oh, wow, what do we do now?" I must admit, I was kind of edging toward the parking lot, very, very discreetly (laughs), when I heard, "Hey, my friend Paul, you gotta come up, man." I felt, "Well, there's no way out of that one." But it was great. All that lineup in the band and the rest of the other guys from the evening's band. I did "Long Tall Sally." It was impossibly high. Someone said, "E." I said, "No, it's in G." They said, "No, E will be more attainable." So I sort of (sings a bit of "Long Tall Sally" in a very high voice), I was right up there. But I enjoyed it a lot and the band kicked ass. We had a fun number, but I think then I felt, "Get off, quick (laughs), jump onto the dance floor."

Q: One other memorable jam - 1974 in Los Angeles, the jam in the studio with you and John (Lennon) Stevie Wonder, Harry Nilsson, the whole crew. Was that the last time you ever played with John, and what are your recollections of that?

PAUL: I think it was. If it was, it was great fun, great to just be part of that company. Looking back at it, I think it was a stoned moment. There was a lot of stoned-ness going on. When I say a lot, take that in capital letters and square it at least. I think I ended up on drums of all things. It was really just to have fun in the studio. It was good to see John. It was good to see Harry and Jesse Ed (Davis) was there. Lovely people, lovely, crazy (expletive) man.

Q: I think there's only one photo of you and John together after The Beatles that's ever been published. I believe it was taken around the same time as the jam out in L.A. with Keith Moon. Since Linda was a photographer, did you and John ever (have other photos taken). I know you got together sometimes at the Dakota or different places a few times.

PAUL: Yeah (but) I'm not sure. I don't think so. It doesn't always come up, man, let's face it. It depends what your relationship is. It's not like guys getting together for a high school reunion and, "Let's have a photo." It's just people that know each other running into each other, you don't take pictures. You just hang with each other.

Q: It's not hidden in the yard underneath the wall?

PAUL: (laughs) Oh, come on, man.

Q: People like Tony Bennett and B.B. King have proved that one can still sing and perform with class into their 80s. Your voice seems to be holding up remarkably well. I mean, on the last tour you were even still doing "Helter Skelter," which was a real vocal workout in your concerts. Do you ever think about that stuff?

PAUL: Yeah. But as far as my vocals are concerned it's always been a constant source of amazement to me - he said modestly (laughs) - please put that in, somehow, let me off the hook. My voice, I've never understood it. I remember when I was recording "Kansas City" with The Beatles. Weeks before that I said to John, we talked about my "Little Richard" voice, which is what it was to me. I said, "It just comes out of the top of my head." He said, "Oh wow," and we forgot about it. Later, I was trying to do "Kansas City," and not doing too well, not catching the thing. He just came down to sort of help me and said, "Remember, it comes out of the top of your head." That's all I know, that's the best thing I know about vocalizing. So to answer your question, I have no idea. But it is funny, I'm in the middle of one of these songs, like "Helter Skelter," which has got some tortuous things. All I know how to do is go for it and hope for the best. I'm constantly surprised.

But as you say, I take your point, wow, Tony and B.B. and Muddy (Waters) did great, these guys. And Mick Jagger, he's very old, isn't he? (laughs) He's about 10 years older than me. (For the record, McCartney is 65, Jagger is 64). They're all very good, though. You know what I mean. The great thing is, they're busting rules. Tony Bennett. I don't think anyone quite knows how, except my explanation would be the love of it, the love of what you do. Bennett's very good. These boys, they can lay it on the line. They've got this finely honed skill. ... What I find, it's kind of surprisingly there. Something I'm having extra fun playing with it, if you know what I mean. But I have great hopes. Looking at Tony, one constantly thinks of the great Bennetto, he's the man, he sings beautifully, lovely, and he's a great painter as well. He had something just recently exhibited in the Smithsonian. Not bad.

Q: Your son James is working on an album. Is that an album by the two of you, or his album that you're going to be working on?

PAUL: No, that's just him.

Q: Something you're looking at for 2008?

PAUL: Yeah, it's just started. We just went in for a short period, to dip our feet in the water. We went in with (producer) David Kahne, and James and we had the most delightful week. I mean more than that, I think he's very good. But you don't want to go talking things up when they're not formed. So it's great. But you're just waiting because you know I'd love to talk all about it, give you the week's blow by blow. But I think for now, it's great, we went in there, we enjoyed it very much, I think he's very good.

Q: Fans. What's your whole take on your fans? How do you feel about them? When you're at the level of fame you've been at for so long there have got to be pros and cons to it all.

PAUL: Yeah. Hmm, fans, I don't know, I think it's only pros really. I was just going to go for it and say, "Cons," that would have put the cat amongst the pigeons. (laughs) But no really, my thought is you go from one end of the spectrum to the other. From the true meaning of fan which is fanatic, to the other end which is, sort of, friend. And so I'm kind of fascinated by it. I don't like it when it gets intrusive, but I must say that my people don't seem to do that. People who take an interest in me don't seem to be too sort of crazy, they seem to be great. The amazing thing is, they know more about me than I do. No, seriously. They do. "Oh yeah, you went to the so and so ballroom." I go, "Wow, really?" Because when you're living it, c'mon you're not sitting in front of a computer dialing it up.

Q: What are your goals for 2008? We're almost at New Year's.

PAUL: Win the Olympics, single-handed. Hundred-yard sprint. If you're looking at goals, that's it. As to whether I can achieve it, I don't know. You asked the question, you got it.

Q: Finally, why are you a Yankees fan?

PAUL: Oh don't tell me you're not. What are you?

Q: I'm from Massachusetts, we're Red Sox fans.

PAUL: Oh, I know a lot of Red Sox fans, a lot of my family are Red Sox fans. If you want to know the answer, the true answer, I got free tickets. ("Saturday Night Live" creator) Lorne Michaels had some tickets to a game. I went there and the very first baseball game in my life I had seen was at Yankee Stadium with the New York Yankees in quite a cool year where I believe they won. So I obviously became a bit of a fan. That's it. Hey, man, "Go Yankees. C'mon man, Go Yankees. Good team." (laughs) I'm lucky, I'm British. I can appreciate it and I'm glad that the Red Sox won it. Like I said, I have a lot of Red Sox friends. I'm kind of not really partisan. But you pick a team.

Q: You've got to be loyal.

PAUL: Yeah, man. It's great, but my New York friends go, "Oh, we're with the Mets." Whoever, you know?

Thom Yorke has revealed that he turned down a mouth-watering collaboration with Paul McCartney because he can't play piano well enough.

As reported previously on Gigwise, The Beatle asked the Radiohead frontman to appear on the track 'Mr Bellamy' ­ a song which appears on Macca's latest effort 'Memory Almost Full' ­ but Yorke turned down the offer.

Now, speaking to the Observer, Yorke revealed the real reason behind the snubbing: 'Uhh, 'cause I can't play piano. Not like that. I had to explain to him that, I listened to the tune - "Mr Bellamy" - and I really liked the song, but the piano playing involved two hands doing things separately. I don't have that skill available. I said to him, "I strum piano, that's it."

McCartney is a hug fan of Radiohead's work and even drafted in their long-term producer Nigel Godrich to work on his 2005 album 'Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.'

Its acceptance by younger artists, including Oasis last year, helped to change his mind. He is also promoting the digital release of his solo hits, with the Beatles finally set to join the iTunes store. Sir Paul will close the show with songs from his latest album, Memory Almost Full, released through the Starbucks coffee chain, and classic hits. The Beatles were given an Outstanding Contribution prize in 1983, the same year that Sir Paul was named Best Male at the British Phonographic Industry awards.

Mika, the Arctic Monkeys and Take That are also expected to appear at the awards, which will be presented by Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.

The Brit Awards 2008 will be televised live from London's Earls Court 1, Wednesday, February 20th on ITV1(UK) at 8pm. ITV will have backstage coverage with viewers getting VIP access to celebrity arrivals and instant reaction from winners, nominees and performers. On the night of January 14th The full list of BRITs Nominations will be announced live on ITV2 and online from the launch party (venue to be annnounced).

On the Friday of BRITs week (February 22), ITV1 viewers can relive their BRITs experience with the popular 'BRITs Backstage" show with VIP access to the stars in the exclusive backstage bar area, backstage gossip, and the pick of the best performances from the night.

December 9, 2007 -- The Mirror

Euro 4m ($7.73 million) paypacket for Macca

Sir Paul McCartney was paid Euro 4m last year by Apple Corp, the Beatles music publishing company, according to new accounts.

Macca's tidy sum was triggered by an upswing in sales from Euro 9m ($17.4 milllion) in 2006 to Euro 25m ($48.3 million) for 2007.

Ringo Starr and Beatle widows Olivia Harrison and Yoko Ono also enjoyed the Euro 4m ($7.73 million) payday.

December 8, 2007 -- News of the World

HaBEA Christmas - Macca to get daughter

Paul McCartney will spend Christmas with his daughter Bea - but Mucca has been banned.

Barmy wife Heather had suggested they ALL get together for the day. But Sir Paul, 65, quashed her bizarre bid to play happy families following the bitter war of words in their £100 million ($200 million) divorce battle.

The ex-Beatle will spend four days over the festive period with four-year-old Beatrice and close family.

It will be the 10th anniversary of his last Christmas with late wife Linda. Heather, 43, will have Bea for three days up to Christmas Eve, before the little girl joins her dad in Peasmarsh, E Sussex.

A pal said: "Paul's thrilled he's got Bea on Christmas Day. He's keeping Heather away as he fears she'll make a scene. And he's adamant there'll be no bust-ups for their daughter's sake."

Macca's Knight out.... photos

Sir Paul McCartney expects to tour Australia for the first time in nearly 15 years as soon as his divorce from Heather Mills is finalised.

Speaking by phone from his office in Britain, the ex-Beatle said he is waiting for life to get back to normal before he firms up his touring plans for 2008.

"Next year I am starting to plan some touring but I don't know how much," Sir Paul said.

"In truth, the whole situation is a little complicated by the fact that I am separating from my missus.

"That kind of colours an awful lot of what my travelling plans are because I have got a little four-year-old (daughter Beatrice)."

Sir Paul, 65, is currently in a bitter legal battle with Mills, officially separating in May last year after four years of marriage.

He is rumoured to be dating American actor Rosanna Arquette and reportedly introduced his new love interest to his daughter last week.

"Anyone who has been through this kind of thing will understand that she is my priority, the little one," he said, promoting the release of The McCartney Years DVD retrospective.

"But I am going to tour. I just have to think a little more carefully about it than I would in the past."

Despite his personal troubles, plans are under way for a world tour.

"I have been dying to get to Oz for an awful long time," he said.

"I am planning it. I am hoping for it. I would love to get down there because I haven't been forever. If we get down there, man, we're going to have fun."

It has been nearly 15 years since the former Beatle last toured Australia.

He played the Sydney Entertainment Centre in March, 1993 for his global The New World Tour, with former wife Linda McCartney in his band.

Sir Paul was set to tour Australia in November, 2002 but cancelled after the Bali bombings that year.

He said the 2002 tour was cancelled out of respect for the Australians that lost their lives in the tragedy.

"It wasn't the right moment and very regrettably because of that we had to cancel," he said. "We didn't feel like it would be the right moment."

Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney has revealed he has learned to be patient during his bitter divorce battle with estranged wife Heather Mills.

The 65-year-old 'Mull of Kintyre' singer, looking back on a "quite exciting" year, was asked what he had learnt.

McCartney quipped: "F**k all. Algebra? B Minor? Patience, perhaps?

"Obviously the low point was the whole divorce thing.

"That situation isn't madly great. But there you go. Patience is required. It's happening and I'm working through the process."

The singer, who, as we all know, is embroiled in a bitter divorce battle with Heather Mills - said the stressful break-up and legal woes were unlikely to feature in any of his songs.

He added to Word Magazine: "I tend to do hopeful songs in order to counteract the angst. I'm not so good at angst-ridden songs. My natural optimism tends to take over."

"Excuse me, Stella."

She turned in her tracks, looking strikingly like her mother, Linda. "I'm Piers Morgan, and since I am one of the few people in the world who loathes Heather Mills more than you do, I thought it was time I said hello."

She smiled. "Oh yes, I know all about you Dad always says you tried to warn him about Heather!"

"Well, that's true, but unfortunately it was a bit late given that I introduced them in the first place."

Stella shook her head slowly, then laughed: "Yes, thanks very much."

"I think you have all been very dignified in your silence," I said. "There is nothing more powerful than saying nothing when someone goes on a global rant."

"Well, silence is always the most dignified way of dealing with something like this," she replied.

"Yes, especially when that something is a raving bloody lunatic."

Stella stifled a giggle. "You might well think that, Piers ­ I couldn't possibly comment."

In a letter to the Press Association he quoted Henning Steinfeld, chief of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's livestock information and policy branch, who said: "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation."

Sir Paul said the report, Livestock's Long Shadow - Environmental Issues And Options, contained one clear message - that the single most effective act that any individual can currently do to lessen the effects of global warming is to become vegetarian.

"That this message comes directly from an authoritative body such as the UN (whose member states, it should be remembered, are not generally considered vegetarian) rather than an organisation committed to vegetarianism is significant."

Sir Paul adds: "What I think is especially compelling is that this report should now encourage everybody to 'do their bit' for the planet... the evidence that the report gives is, frankly, stunning. It points directly to the striking detrimental effects of
excessive livestock farming on the environment."

He points out that the report says 70% of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing and that livestock now use 30% of the entire world's land surface.

When emissions from land use and land use change (ie deforestation) are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9% of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases, the report says.

"It generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure."

Sir Paul adds: "By simply considering altering eating habits people can strike a blow for the environment, our children and the future. Such facts and data as those listed above can't be ignored."

Sir Paul McCartney said his divorce could disrupt a tour next year as it is "dictating" his life.

The former Beatle, promoting his new album, said he wants to play the US. But he added: "I don't want to talk about my divorce, though it has a bearing on that."

Sir Paul, 65, in a legal battle with Heather Mills, said his music helps.

He told the Chicago Tribune: "I just try to keep my head down and get on with my music.

"That's the great thing, the great healer. I'm trying to make an antidote."

Sir Paul and Heather's daughter Beatrice, four, is bemused by old photos of dad. He said: "It's spooky, she puts it best.

"She sees pictures of me in The Beatles, and she'll say, 'That's daddy when he was different'."

The actress Rosanna Arquette has a fondness for pop stars. For six years she lived with Peter Gabriel, she was the partner of Steve Porcaro, the keyboardist with Toto, and the voice on her answering machine is Bob Dylan singing Blowin' in the Wind. "I love musicians," she once said. "Music used to change people's minds ­ and it still changes mine."

This is just as well since Arquette is now dating the world's most famous pop star, Paul McCartney. And, as Lady McCartney, Sir Paul's soon-to-be ex-wife Heather says, life can be hard for the girlfriend of a Beatle.

Nonetheless, Arquette's relationship with Sir Paul seems to have taken a step forward this week with reports in The Sun that he has introduced her to his four-year-old daughter, Beatrice. In media terms this is obviously Big News. Meeting the children equates to "settling down" and there is already fevered speculation that Arquette, 48, may become Mrs Macca No 3.

A glance at Arquette's upbringing suggests that she might be more suited to that role than Ms Mills ever was. Having been brought up in a commune, she describes herself as "hippie bohemian". When she was young the family moved to Subud, in Virginia, where it is reported that they became disciples of the guru Bapak. She once said: "From the school of life I learnt very early on what an orgasm was." She has been married three times and has a daughter, Zoe, 13, with her third husband, John Sidel. One of Arquette's most treasured rock photographs is of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. By delicious coincidence she is friends with Ono.

She was born in Manhattan in 1959 into celebrity stock. Her grandfather was the actor, Cliff Arquette, her father, Lewis, also an actor, and the Arquette siblings include David, Patricia and Alexis. Throughout the Seventies she worked mainly in television films and showed her acting talent in The Executioner's Song (1982), the TV biopic about the convicted killer Gary Gilmore. But it was not until 1985 that she became a big screen name when she starred in Desperately Seeking Susan. Her career was further enhanced by appearing as a junkie in Pulp Fiction and, later, Crash.

In 2005 she made a documentary, All We Are Saying, in which she interviewed various musicians. Tellingly perhaps, she singled out Sir Paul for mention when she talked about the greatest composers who put passion into their work. "That's what all the great artists have done ­ John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash," she said.

But perhaps more telling still is a remark she made in November when asked what she'd be doing now if she wasn't being interviewed. "If I was on my own I'd be heading to Stella McCartney," she said. Maybe Arquette's feet are farther under the McCartney table than we realised.

Macca gets 3 Grammy nominations!!!

50th annual Grammy nominations list

Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance
(For a solo vocal performance. Singles or Tracks only.)

* Only Mama Knows
Paul McCartney
Track from: Memory Almost Full
[MPL/Hear Music]

* Our Country
John Mellencamp
Track from: Freedom's Road
[Universal Republic Records]

* Radio Nowhere
Bruce Springsteen
Track from: Magic
[Columbia]

* Come On
Lucinda Williams
Track from: West
[Lost Highway Records]

* Timebomb
Beck
[Interscope Records]

Best Pop Vocal Album
(For albums containing 51% or more playing time of VOCAL tracks.)

* Memory Almost Full
Paul McCartney
[MPL/Hear Music]

* Lost Highway
Bon Jovi
[Island/Mercury]

* The Reminder
Feist
[Cherry Tree/Interscope Records]

* It Won't Be Soon Before Long
Maroon 5
[Octone/A&M Records]

* Back To Black
Amy Winehouse
[Universal Republic Records]

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance
(For a solo vocal performance. Singles or Tracks only.)

* Dance Tonight
Paul McCartney
Track from: Memory Almost Full
[MPL/Hear Music]

* Everything
Michael Bublé
Track from: Call Me Irresponsible
[143 Records/Reprise]

* Belief
John Mayer
Track from: The Village Sessions
[Columbia/Aware]

* Amazing
Seal
[Warner Bros.]

* What Goes Around...Comes Around
Justin Timberlake
[Jive]

The Grammy awards will be aired live February 10th at 8pm ET on CBS from the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Pulp Fiction actress Rosanna, 48 - who The Sun can reveal is dating Macca - met the youngster on a visit to the ex-Beatle's sprawling East Sussex estate.

The revelation comes just ten days after Sir Paul was pictured having a cosy lunch with the blonde in London.

A Macca source said: "For Rosanna to be welcomed into Paul's inner sanctuary means he thinks a great deal of her."

Meanwhile Macca - whose hits include Please, Please Me - has sought advice from one of his closest female friends on how he can sensitively announce he has a new relationship.

The pal - herself a high-profile musician - confirmed the pair have been secretly dating since August.

Asked if Sir Paul, 65, and Rosanna were an item, the friend laughed: "Of course! It's on! Why would he take her to his country estate to meet his little girl? He's checking her out. They've both told me."

Bea's mum Lady Mucca, 39, who is locked in a £50 million ($100 million) divorce fight, will be furious.

She hit the roof when Sir Paul was pictured with US society beauty Nancy Shevell a month ago.

The 26-year-old actress is stunningly beautiful, has a 20-plus film career capped off with an Oscar nomination, is Harvard University educated and politically and environmentally active.

She is a vegetarian, does not wear leather, drives a Toyota Prius and works for charities in Africa, including campaigns to save endangered gorillas and micro-financial programs to help women in developing countries.

Earlier this year, out of the blue, she received a call from a British gentleman. It was Paul McCartney.
The former Beatle wanted Portman to appear in his music video for his song, "Dance Tonight", which appears on his 21st solo album.

"It was the coolest thing," Portman recalled.

Portman had never met McCartney, but was a fan of his fashion designer daughter's clothing line, particularly her non-leather shoes.

"I guess Stella, his daughter, had told him I was vegetarian and I don't wear leather, so he asked me to be in the video which was the coolest thing ever," Portman said.

"He is by far the finest human being.

"Here is this icon to so many people, and still he is a wonderful human being.

"He was a good guy with everyone.

"I saw him treat everyone with respect and love and fun.

"I can't say enough about him.

"He is a miracle of a person."

December 4, 2007 -- Inside PR

McCARTNEY OBSESSED WITH 17TH CENTURY OIL PAINTING

Sir Paul McCartney is obsessed with an iconic 17th century oil painting known as The Guitar Player.

The star, 65, has reportedly viewed the work - which depicts a young girl posing with a guitar - at London's Kenwood House gallery at least 10 times, and is keen to purchase the artwork.

But English Heritage, which owns the piece by Dutch master Jan Vermeer, insists the painting will never be sold to a private owner.

The Guitar Player, painted in the 1670s, is thought to be worth over $100 million (£50 million).

Paul McCartney Using Art To Avoid Divorce Battle?

Sir Paul McCartney has reportedly turned to staring at a piece of art in order to forget his divorce battle with estranged wife Heather Mills.

According to reports, McCartney is a regular visitor at the Kenwood House Art Gallery in North London where he has become fixated with a paint entitled, 'The Guitar Player.'

The 17th century portrait by Jan Vermeer features a teenage girl strumming a guitar.

According to a 'source,' McCartney has spent as long as "40 minutes" admiring the picture.

The former Beatle has had a long-term association with art, taking up painting as a hobby in the early 1980s.

Folk legend Judy Collins tells Lew Baxter she believes Sir Paul is still grieving over the real love of his life.

In all the heartache, hullabaloo and turmoil that has engulfed Paul McCartney over his acrimonious split from Heather Mills, most of his friends have been steadfast and silent, loyal to the man who has been tagged by the second Lady McCartney as a self-obsessed, control freak.

Some, though ­ fired by affection and concern ­ have spoken out to vehemently disagree with the allegations made by Mills about the 65-year-old McCartney, insisting he is a decent bloke and a warm family man, citing his unblemished 30-year marriage to Linda as the bedrock of his life.

One of Linda's best friends was American folk troubadour Judy Collins and she too largely remained quiet as, five years ago, the former Beatle wed Miss Mills, then 34, in a lavish £2 million ($3.7 million) affair in Ireland, apparently much to the chagrin of the children from his first union.

Judy then watched sadly ­ although not surprised ­ from the sidelines as the relationship splintered, despite McCartney's clear devotion to Beatrice Molly, his three-year-old daughter with Mills.

Speaking from her New York home, Judy now reveals that the then Linda Eastman asked her when she was first dating Paul how she could handle all the women who chased after him.

"I told her I didn't really know, but Linda was very perceptive. She solved the problem by virtually never leaving his side. They were hardly separated in all their time together, apart from maybe one night," says the crystal-voiced soprano singer, who made her first public performance at 13. Later, she turned to the traditional sounds of the fabled Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger for her inspiration, and then to the poet balladeer Leonard Cohen as a mentor.

At 22, Judy's debut album in 1961 ­ A Maid of Constant Sorrow ­ was hailed as a minor masterpiece and she won Grammy recognition for her version of Stephen Sondheim's ballad Send in the Clowns and Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now. She has more than 40 albums to her credit and her riveting blue eyes were celebrated by Stephen Stills in the Crosby, Stills, & Nash classic Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.

Breaking away from her roots, Judy has just realised a long-held ambition and released an album of songs by Lennon and McCartney that she dedicates to Paul ­ and Linda, who died in April, 1998, after battling breast cancer.

"She (Linda) was determined to keep her man, although he obviously adored her so much that I seriously doubt if he would ever have strayed. They were so committed to each other," says Judy, who declares that, although she did cover In My Life a few years ago, she has always wanted to record a full collection of Beatles songs.

"They symbolise my youth and that wonderful 1960s adolescence. I love them all, they are like a Rosary to me.

"So, I took the 13 songs that I like the best, and there is also a web download of The Fool on the Hill that isn't on the album," says Judy who, like her friend Paul McCartney, also suffered personal tragedy when her only son, Clark, committed suicide at 33 years of age in 1992.

"Linda was a dear friend of mine even before she met Paul, and she took a lot of photographs of me and my son in the mid- 1960s. Yet, since her death, paradoxically I've seen more of Paul when he is New York," comments the 67-year-old singer.

"Linda kept Paul's feet firmly on the ground as they both did with their kids. They did a swell job on them.

"Everyone figures that because they were in that fabulous Beatles circle they were always out having fun but actually, as a group, it was more a nine to five existence, no matter how incongruous that sounds.

"And every day Paul couldn't wait to get home to Linda. She was the love of his life and always will be. When she died, he came to see me and we sat together for hours reminiscing about her, talking about what a wonderful person she was.

"He was destroyed by her death and in bits and pieces. I am convinced that even now he is still in shock. He is still mourning Linda," believes Judy.

The first song on her album of Beatles songs is the McCartney classic And I Love Her. Although it was recorded in 1964 for his then fiancée Jane Asher, Judy believes it is just as apposite to Linda. She also tackles his iconic Yesterday and the anthem-like Hey Jude, finishing the set with The Long and Winding Road.

"I once went to see Wings at Madison Square Gardens when Linda was singing in the band and Paul never went near the old Beatles stuff," Judy recalls.

"Then, when I was back there a couple of years ago for another of his concerts, the crowd went wild when he just unexpectedly swung into those fabulous tunes and songs.

"The people around me were gasping in delight and disbelief. It was one of those magical moments in life. I just sat entranced and thought: 'Well, I just have to sing these songs'," she says.

"So, I got together a great band and we recorded all the songs in less than three days."

Judy confides that, although she would have loved Paul to play on the album she didn't actually ask him. She isn't quite sure yet if he's even heard it, although she's just sent him an autographed copy.

"Most people in the business would have called him just to sit in and listen. And I knew he would have agreed for me, but I was just too shy, even though he knows I was one of Linda's best friends, " she explains.

And she confesses that she has also been too shy to ask McCartney to work on her proposed new album of her own songs due out early next year, which features such musical luminaries as Chrissie Hynd, Tim Robins and Dolly Parton.

But she had heard that Sir Paul is to headline a show at Liverpool's Capital of Culture jamboree next year and declares that she would be so pleased if she got the chance to sing her favourite Beatles songs in the city that spawned them.

"I was there on a fleeting visit years ago and thought it so lovely," says Judy. "But how good would it be for me to do a concert in Liverpool during that special year?

"They are my favourite songs in the whole world. Maybe you could ask someone in the city to invite me."

The sister of Sir Paul McCartney's rumoured new paramour, Rosanna Arquette, has confirmed the two "are spending more time together".

The Desperately Seeking Susan actress' sibling, transsexual actor and performer, Alexis Arquette, spilled the beans to People magazine at the TV Academy's annual Ribbon of Hope AIDS charity event in Los Angeles on Saturday.

"She's been a big fan of his music for a long time, and I know that they befriended each other several years ago. "

He added: "Who knows, if something came out of it, that's cool, it's great."

Last week Rosanna 48, and McCartney, 65, were pictured taking a romantic stroll through London's Hampstead Heath.

But it was not the first sighting of the pair. Rosanna was spotted leaning on McCartney's shoulder during "How Sweet It Is (to be Loved by You)" at musician James Taylor's concert in New York back in August.

According to Arquette's spokesperson it appears the two have long been "good friends," and share a common bond - their love of music.

Rosanna Arquette is the latest woman to be photographed with the 65-year-old ex-Beatle.

Last month a Sunday newspaper published pictures of McCartney and the 48-year-old actress walking together outside of what it said was McCartney's north London home.

According to the News of the World, the encounter took place only a month after McCartney was photographed embracing American heiress Nancy Shevell.

McCartney's love life has been the subject of intense scrutiny amid his bitter, multimillion-dollar divorce from second wife, Heather Mills.

The newly single rock legend has previously been spotted with Renee Zellweger and Christie Brinkley.

Brother James joins Stella for fun lighting-up ceremony at her store

London's most fashion-savvy shoppers know Christmas has well and truly arrived when the lights go on at Stella McCartney's Bruton Street boutique.

This year a hilarious time was had by all as The Fast Show's cult comedy duo Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams had been invited to do the honours. And the gags were obviously coming thick and fast as Stella, who is heavily pregnant with her third child, was so creased up with laughter at one point she had to wipe away the tears.

Also having a blast was the designer's publisher husband, Alasdhair Willis, and her 30-year-old brother, musician and sculptor James. Sir Paul's son is even more discreet about his personal life than 36-year-old Stella, but seemed happy enough stepping into the limelight on this occasion in support of his big sister.

Among the A-list crowd joining the McCartneys were supermodel Linda Evangelista, bundled up against the cold and wearing a beanie hat, singer Louise Redknapp, showing where her fashion loyalties lie by toting one of Stella's cream studded clutches, and M&S muse Twiggy.

He was the one member of the family who shunned the limelight,working as a waiter to make ends meet. Then he fell out with his father over Heather. Now James McCartney is living in a £1million ($2 million) flat and making an album with a pop legend...his Dad...

Rippingly shy, deeply introspective and terrified about being compared with his legendary father, James McCartney has spent most of his life trying to hide from his showbusiness heritage.

While his sisters, Stella and Mary, have prospered from their father's fame, Sir Paul McCartney's only son often refused to tell new friends his surname, lived a meagre student existence in Brighton (complete with long hair and worn clothes) and even waited on tables in a restaurant to earn his keep.

But over the past few months something has dramatically changed.

Now aged 30, James is happily mingling with A-list stars at exclusive London parties with either his father or his glamorous sisters.

He has lost more than two stone in weight, cropped his hair and is wearing designer clothes. He is living in a £1 million mansion flat in London and gets around town by driving his dad's Mercedes.

What is more, he has a smile on his face.

"Wow, this guy has really changed," said one society photographer who has bumped into James several times over the past few months.

"I used to see him around a bit with his dad and he was really reclusive.

"He seems totally different. He looks good and even engaged in a bit of banter with me. He doesn't look like an outsider any more."

Now James has made the biggest leap of all.

The talented guitarist, who was terrified of trying to live up to his father's extraordinary output, is to work on an album with the one man who can help him banish those fears: his dad.

"I'm actually doing some recording with my son, James," Paul told music magazine Billboard, with obvious excitement.

"We're looking at the idea of him making an album. He's doing it all. He's writing it all.

"It's sensational.

"There's nothing set in stone yet - the plan is for me just to do some recording with him. But it's really exciting."

There is even talk that Paul and James - who looks like a blond version of his father - will do some of the recording at the Abbey Road studios, still revered as a shrine by Beatles fans who turn up in their droves every day to scrawl graffiti and have their picture taken on the famous zebra crossing.

"It's early days, but Paul is really excited by this project," one aide said yesterday.

"It is going to be really good."

But what an extraordinary turnaround for James. Recording an album with Paul is going to involve a huge amount of pressure. The album will be talked about around the world.

And unless it really is very, very good, James is likely to come out bloodied like his contemporary Sean Lennon, whose own music has been compared unfavourably with that of his father, John.

Indeed, James's decision is one that has stunned some of the McCartney family circle who recall a man so morbidly shy he can sometimes barely talk.

"He is incredibly quiet and unassuming," said one friend of Stella.

"It doesn't seem like he has a lot of friends, although he is very sweet and polite.

"I think there was a girlfriend on the scene at one point, but I haven't seen her around recently. His sisters seem to be his best friends.

"He has always avoided the limelight and is a bit introverted.

"He is the antithesis of all those kids who become D-list celebrities simply because their dad is famous.

"I've always admired him for that and I am surprised that he is doing this album."

A former aide of McCartney added: "He is very much like his mother Linda.

"He has her gentleness and sensitivity and is a deep thinker.

"From his dad he has his witty and slightly sarcastic sense of humour - and his musical talent. He really is a very good guitarist.

"Ironically, he first wanted to learn after seeing Michael J Fox playing a guitar in Back To The Future, and not because his dad was in the world's biggest band.

"He has never wanted to trade on the McCartney name, although it seems it is impossible to avoid."

The youngest of Paul and Linda's children - Mary and Stella are eight years and six years older respectively while stepsister Heather, from Linda's previous marriage, is 15 years his senior - James has always been the baby of his family.

"His sisters have always been incredibly protective of James," continued Stella's friend.

"They still talk about him like he is a child - even though he is a grown man."

Reaching the landmark age of 30 in September may have been part of the reasoning behind this album, say sources close to the family.

"James has realised that he needs to do something with his life," said one.

"He has seen Stella become a massive success in the fashion world, Mary become an accomplished photographer and their stepsister Heather is also doing really well with pottery exhibitions in the States.

"And what has he done?

"James has trained as an architect and is also a skilled potter, but hasn't really pursued a career.

"For the past few years he seems to have been drifting. He has even become a glorified babysitter for his sisters' children.

"When Mary split from her husband, he was around a lot to help with her two boys.

"He has been playing the guitar since the age of six and that has always been where his heart lies.

"And after four difficult years - when Paul's relationship with his children was strained by his marriage to Heather Mills - James and his dad are now really close again. It is inevitable that talk should turn to working together."

Indeed, it seems the biggest spur for this new father-and-son love-in is the incredibly bitter divorce battle still raging between Paul and Heather.

Since the pair announced their separation in May last year, what was supposed to be an amicable break-up has become increasingly acrimonious. Paul's family have rallied around the star as he has put up with allegations that he was a cruel drunk and dopehead who tried to choke his wife.

Paul recently said: "I'm going through great struggles, but I'm feeling pretty good.

"I have a lot of good support, particularly from my family. In difficult moment like this, it's when a loving family shines through."

His children famously struggled to get on with their stepmother, a former soft-porn star and alleged high-class call girl.

"James hated, really hated, Heather," Paul's former aide said.

"He disliked her even more than his sisters. I'm not sure whether he even went to their wedding.

"Understandably, it caused a lot of friction with his father, who was desperate for his family to like Heather.

"And Paul was really hurt by James' attitude as - being the only boys - they were particularly close.

"But once Paul's marriage started breaking up - and Paul realised just what Heather really is - he has needed the support of his family.

"He was really, really hurt by everything that has happened and James, in particular, has been his rock."

James was just 19 when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. He was the only one of the McCartney children still living with his parents at their rural hideaway in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, during her three-year battle with the disease.

He found therapy in playing guitar with his father and features on Paul's Flaming Pie album which was released in 1997.

Despite being an art student at Bexhill College, on the south coast, he continued to work on his music with his parents and recorded a track with Linda, The Light Comes From Within, a month before her death in 1998. The whole family came together at their ranch in Arizona for Linda's final few weeks.

But after her death, while they were still grieving, James's sisters all returned to their lives in London. Only Paul and James returned to live in Peasmarsh, where they scattered Linda's ashes on one of her favourite walks.

The two devastated McCartney men slept in the same room for weeks as they struggled to get over her loss. They sought solace in writing a song about her.

But Paul admits he found it so hard to cope that he cried every day. James wasn't doing much better, although he decided to do something positive in memory of his mother, an animal rights activist, and pledged to become completely vegan.

"I'll never forget seeing James after Linda died," said one of Stella's friends.

"You just wanted to reach out and hold him. He seemed lost."

One can only imagine how James must have felt when Paul met Heather little more than 12 months after Linda's death.

Like all of the McCartney children, he instantly took against her.

She was loud and bossy. She was extremely self-important. She was no Linda.

And her attempts to try to win him over - by taking his side in family disputes, for example - only increased his dislike.

Knowing how his son felt, Paul practically moved out of Peasmarsh when he was wooing Heather. He bought a house in nearby Hove, where the two of them would spend most of their time.

But Paul never stopped trying to get his children to like Heather and, for a while, father and son continued to jam together, with James contributing to Paul's 2001 Driving Rain album.

Then in 2004 James left home altogether, renting a small flat while he attended a college in Brighton to work on his music.

Determined not to live on his father's £725 million ($1.5 billion) fortune, he waited on tables to pay the rent.

The arrival of Beatrice, Paul's daughter with Heather, four years ago, did mean James visited his father more often - even now, all the siblings adore their half-sister.

But it was only when the marriage broke down that Paul's relationship with his older children was truly repaired.

Bitterly bruised by the break-up, he needed their support. And none was more supportive than the caring James.

Now, as a sign of his father's gratitude, James lives in a sprawling four-bedroom, £1 million flat Paul bought him in a mansion block near his own London house. (Paul also bought one each for his other children.)

He also has keys to his dad's house and to his car - frequently using the Mercedes estate that Paul has owned for the past 11 years. The two also enjoy weekends in Peasmarsh together.

And Paul, as well as Stella and Mary, have introduced James to the London party scene where he appears to have finally come out of his shell.

At one such party last month, held by Stella's husband Alasdhair Willis, James enjoyed talking to the ravishing actress Thandie Newton and catching up with old friend Dhani Harrison, son of Paul's bandmate George.

A few days later he was happily gossiping with Kate Moss at his father's BBC concert at the Roundhouse in North London.

"I saw him at one party and he seemed to be in good spirits,' said a friend of Stella's.

"His shyness was still there, but he seemed somehow happier and more content with himself."

There is only one cloud on the horizon. Having decided to expose himself to the world with the new album, it would be horrible if it all backfires.

"It is a brave thing to do and I can only hope he will cope," added the friend.

"He has had long enough to work out who he is, to come to terms with what he is.

"He has been around fame all his life and is aware of all the pitfalls.

"But the bar has been set so high around him - not just with Paul but his sisters too - that it could devastate him if it fails."

The musician is the spitting image of his famous father - albeit with ginger hair.

There are now signs the 30-year-old is starting to step out of the famous family shadow.

He made a rare public appearance last night at the switching on of the Christmas lights at the Stella McCartney store in Mayfair.

The youngest of the McCartney clan, until Sir Paul's now estranged wife Heather Mills gave birth to a daughter Beatrice in 2003, James has always shied away from the spotlight.

He spent his earlier days as a penniless student and even working as a waiter. He was studying for his A'levels when his mother Linda died of breast cancer in 1998.

In 1999, he made a rare public appearance when he joined his father to support Stella's first fashion show following the death of their mother.

Guitarist and drummer James is now working on an album with his father, after previously playing with the former Beatle on his North American tour in 2005...(???)

James' heavily pregnant sister Stella McCartney hosted the small bash only 24 hours after winning the Designer of the Year accolade at the British Fashion Awards in Westminster.

Other guests included Stella's publisher husband Alasdhair Willis, M&S model Twiggy, and Fast Show comedians Paul Whitehouse and Mark Williams appearing under the guise of their "Suit you Sir" tailor characters.

Stella is expecting her third child in December - a sibling for her two children Miller, two and a half; and Bailey, 11 months.

Paul McCartney can't buy love, but he can buy lots of fancy lingerie and pricey perfume. The aging ex-Beatle has gifted both Nancy Shevell and his newest flame, Rosanna Arquette, with a bottle of a fragrance he enjoys and a few lacy underthings. "He has a ritual. He buys the same thing. He's been buying a bottle of perfume and lingerie for so long, it's predictable," said our insider. "He gives it to them even before they get dinner. He's done it with everyone he's been with.

Mucca squeezed into a red lace teddy with matching stockings for a hardcore photoshoot.

She pulled down her top to expose her boobs and splayed her legs in this classic porn magazine pose.

And in another of the explicit shots - taken before she lost her leg in a 1993 road accident-she writhed knickerless on a white quilted bed, cupping her naked breasts.

Across the pages of the smutty mag, pouting Heather boasts: "I'm gonna drive you crazy with my body...". Yet just a month ago, the estranged wife of Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney had the front to go on GMTV and rant hysterically that newspaper stories of her porn past were untrue. Mucca on GMTV

Heather, 39, cried crocodile tears and said: "They eliminate the whole 20 years of my life of campaigning and put in things like 'hardcore porn queen'." She dismissed her top shelf career as "glamour modelling".

Now we'd love to hear how the former hooker explains this snap of her as an unashamed hardcore porn queen.

Last year, Heather strenuously denied ever being involved in porn after lurid shots emerged of her posing in a German sex book. Die Freuden Der Liebe (The Joys Of Love)-shot in 1988-featured her naked, performing a sex act on a nude male porn star.

Heather tried to play down the filthy book as a "sex educational manual". But clearly there is NOTHING educational about today's sickening photo.

Seething

A source told the News of the World: "Paul has tried to give Heather the benefit of the doubt for the sake of their daughter Beatrice. Now these pictures have surfaced, it's impossible."

Meanwhile Mucca, who also blasted the press for calling her a gold-digger, is scouring glossy showbiz mags in the hunt for a rich new fella. She is seething after seeing photos in last week's News of the World of Sir Paul, 65, canoodling with Pulp Fiction star Rosanna Arquette in London.

We revealed how Macca-battling Heather in a £100million ($200 million) divorce war- is dating the 48-year-old actress.

A source close to Mucca said: "Heather saw pictures of Paul strolling with Rosanna and it made her stomach roll.

"Now she wants to orchestrate a similar set of pictures to get Paul back. That means picking someone who will make a good photo opportunity.

"Heather went out and bought magazines to see who's hitting the headlines and has been making a list of her favourites."

It's been a tumultuous year for Paul McCartney. He severed a five-decade relationship with his record label to release his latest solo album, "Memory Almost Full," on a new imprint (Hear Music) backed by the Starbucks coffee chain. And he is going through a painful divorce with Heather Mills that has been widely covered in the tabloid press.

But when reached at his recording studio on his 160-acre estate in the British countryside, McCartney was in his usual affable mood. "Memory Almost Full" has re-entered the Billboard album chart after being re-released with bonus music and DVD content, and a three-DVD set documenting his post-Beatles career, "The McCartney Years" (Rhino), is now in stores.

"The sun is out and the view of the English Channel is just beautiful," McCartney reports, a reflection of the optimism the now 65-year-old singer brings to most of his ventures.

Q: You released "Memory Almost Full" in partnership with Starbucks, after 45 years with a major record label. Did the switch pay off?

PAUL: I did it to create some excitement. When I first used to release a record it was very exciting, because you'd never done it before. Now, it can be a bit boring, because you feel like, here we go, back on the treadmill, and you tend to go through the same moves each time. The record release itself isn't automatically going to be exciting, so my record producer, David Kahne, suggested Starbucks. He knew a guy there, and they loved the music. There was excitement there. It was like the old days. The deciding factor was that people had been telling me the last couple years the way I was selling most of my records was in Best Buy and Wal-Mart. You're getting most of your sales in supermarkets. So it was more logical to me to do it in Starbucks, because it has a music connection. It's the same thing: It's still a distribution machine. Particularly with the world changing so much so that you've got tragedies like Tower Records closing, I said, the time's right. You want to reach people, and people have the music, so that's all you can ask for. Plus, I've never drunk so much coffee in my life.

Q: You were part of the foundation at Capitol EMI and the major-label system for 45 years, starting with the Beatles. Do you feel that the record business is done?

PAUL: No. It's not final. I feel like I made the right decision, because right after I left EMI got sold, so obviously something was wrong. They are now in new hands and are applying themselves and they're going to bring themselves into the modern world. This is the point. They were floundering. Like a lot of these record companies, they were in the old world, and they needed to enter the new world. It's not just me. Look at Radiohead's new outing [offering their new album, "In Rainbows" on-line at the consumers' choice of price]. Artists are taking it into their own hands again, and it's really showing the record companies that it's time they get their act together. It's not the end of the world for EMI, they are like family to me. But the funny thing was, they understood. I'd told people I'd known for years at the label, "Hey, guys, I've gotta make this move." And some of them said quietly, off the record, "I really don't blame you, man." Then they got sold, and so I would've been in the middle of a takeover bid with my record. And you don't need that stuff. I'm just trying to make music and get it to people.

Q: This was also your first digitally released album. How do you feel about that model for distributing music?

PAUL: I've known [Apple founder] Steve Jobs for a little while, and he's a hand's on guy who I can talk to. Strangely enough, that's not always the case. I often met layers of secretaries before I could talk to the guy in charge at my old label. If I call Steve Jobs, I get Steve, and you talk like guys, like a couple of people. That element was great. They became interested in me doing a commercial for the Apple thing. All I had to do was sing the first track of my album. That was more like a music deal than a commercial for me. I didn't have to say, "And I believe in iTunes and Apple, and the iPod is the greatest invention ever." I didn't have to do any of that. So that suited me.

Q: But as a listener and music fan, is digital distribution a step forward?

PAUL: I'm from the world of 45's and LP's, then it became cassettes and 8-tracks, then CDs, and now it's downloading. It doesn't make much difference to me. It's up to the people however they want to buy and however they want to listen. It's not for me to tell them what to do. We always try and accommodate all tastes. I hear that vinyl is the best way to listen to music, but I'm not an audiophile.

Q: You're not an audiophile? You've made some of the most meticulously recorded albums ever. C'mon.

PAUL: No, really, man. I'm used to hearing things on the radio. OK, I've got a sound system on my car. But we used to listen on the beach. As kids, in the summer, you'd listen to a little mono radio. It sounded great to me. The joke was when George Martin first announced this new thing called stereophonic and we walked into the studio and there were two speakers, we went, 'Great, twice as loud!' I still think like that. That's what stereo should've been. Never mind all these putting things in funny places. It sounds OK on iPod. Those little headphones come out of my ears all too readily. Obviously, I love to hear the music on a great big system straight off the master. But if you're in a car, or on the beach, or somebody's playing it on a railway station, it still sounds good.

Q: Do you ever think about the time and effort you put into the album cover of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Is there any incentive to do something that cool in terms of album artwork now?

PAUL: There's not as big an incentive. Now you are generally designing to a CD format. It's the difference between doing a small watercolor or a big oil painting. We knew the room we had on "Sgt. Pepper," and our idea was to cram it full of value. Because what I particularly remembered is I used to go to a record store in Liverpool city center called Louis', and I used to buy my record and then I had a half-hour bus journey back home, and I'd slip it out of its little bag and study it for the half hour. The more that was on there to study, the better. We designed "Sgt. Pepper" so there was always something for you to find. It's doable now, but it's not so obvious. The options have closed down in some ways. The space you're designing for is smaller. On an iPod, the record cover is the size of a postage job. But the kids who listen to it have good eyes.

Q: On your new DVD, you're seen in three concerts from three phases of your career: 1976 with Wings, 1991 in an unplugged session, and 2004 at the Glastonbury festival. Is it like watching someone else when you see yourself in these different eras?

PAUL: It's kind of spooky. I show my little four-year-old a picture of herself when she was a baby, and it's freaky. My four-year-old puts it best. She sees old pictures of me, let's say in the Beatles, and she'll say, "That's Daddy when he was different." I love that. It's a great way of looking at it. And I suppose that's how I feel looking at those shows. That's me when I was different. The common thread is that I did what I did to have the most fun at that time. I might look at it differently now. But "I was different" then. Right now, I'm very happy with the band I have. We really enjoy playing some of these small gigs we've done recently. We haven't done it to death. Just a half-dozen gigs this year. We're all real hungry to play.

Q: Are you going to tour with this band next year?

PAUL: I'm hoping to, yeah. My personal circumstances are sort of dictating that element of what I do. I don't want to talk about my divorce, but it has a bearing on things like that. I want to get that settled so that I don't feel that's over me. So we're going to be cool, get that settled. I'd particularly like to go to the States next year. We've had interesting offers from places like Japan.

Q: You've been in the spotlight for so long as a media celebrity, and this latest go-round with your divorce is nothing new for you in a way. But has the level of scrutiny changed at all, and how has that affected you personally?

PAUL: Yeah, it's changed, particularly the British media is very, very different from how it used to be. It's merciless now. In the '60s I used to have a pretty good relationship with most of the guys in the media. I've been in the game too bloody long to start complaining now. But I used to call them lovable rogues. I'm now not quite so sure about the word "lovable." It's a game that's gone a bit too far. It's demeaning to the public. You guys don't have it as bad over there. You have your trashy little celebrity magazines at the supermarket checkout, but your newspapers still have some integrity. It's not wonderful going through this, but it's a money maker for someone. At the same time, it's lowered people's standards about what matters.

Q: It's a weird obsession with people's private lives that has become an industry unto itself, and it seems to have accelerated in recent years.

PAUL: It's an industry built on inaccuracies. You're not actually gonna find out the real deal by what's being written. You're going to find one sentence is accurate, but the stuff that surrounds it is wildly inaccurate. And I just keep saying, 'That's not true, guys,' and then that adds to the story. I just try to keep my head down and get on with my music. That's the great thing, the great healer. I love music, always have, always will, and I've got a beautiful family, and my daughter, Stella, she's about to have a baby. A lot of great things are happening. The difficulties are exactly that. I prefer not to get into it.

Q: "Memory Almost Full" was a very personal record. Did it help process some of this stuff?

PAUL: I'm not really sure about that. I'm not a great analyst of my own stuff. One of the things that I've always thought is that if you're going through difficulties, then the songs will reflect that. But I know with me, if I'm going through difficulties, sometimes the songs can sometimes be even more optimistic, because I'm trying to get out of where I'm at. I'm trying to create an antidote. The fact is, music is a great help. And I'm blessed I have it in my life, because I don't know what I'd do without it.

Q: You've always had empathy for other people in your music. You can hear it in "She's Leaving Home," "Eleanor Rigby," "Hey Jude," "Let It Be." It's that "take a sad song and make it better" vibe. It's even on "Memory Almost Full," where on "The End of the End" you imagine your own funeral and you're basically cheering up the mourners: "It's not so bad."

PAUL: It seems to be in my personality. It's what I enjoy to do in music. I know my music reaches people. One of the great joys of my life is walking down the street and someone comes up and says, "I don't want to bother you, I just want to thank you. Your music helped me out big time." And they'll tell me a little example of why. I find that every emotional, it's a great buzz to hear that. It's a natural thing to see that quality in music. It's what it has always meant to me.

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