THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD TO MACCA’S 80TH Yesterdays

BEATLES legend Sir Paul McCartney turns 80 this Saturday!

The Liverpudlian singer made his name with the Fab Four in the 1960s before going on to have more smash hits and albums both with his band Wings and as a solo artist. Having sold millions of records and amassing an £800million fortune, Macca’s success has been well charted over the years, but here JAMES MOORE serves up 15 surprising facts about the star… 1

Paul is his middle name. He was born James on June 18, 1942, in Walton, Liverpool, named after his salesman father – who bought him his first instrument, a trumpet, at 14.

2

In the same year his midwife mum Mary tragically died from an embolism following surgery. He later wrote the song Let It Be, which was inspired by her.

3

Paul had a stepsister Ruth and younger brother Peter (above right) who, as musician Mike McGear with The Scaffold, once had a No1 Christmas hit with Lily The Pink.

4

Brought up an Everton fan, he got into grammar school and once got 90% in a Latin test.

Paul met future

Beatles guitarist

George

Harrison on the school bus.

5

Paul failed an audition for the cathedral choir, but soon traded his trumpet for a guitar. The first song he wrote was I’ve Lost My Little Girl, although he never learned to read sheet music.

6

Aged 15 he met John Lennon at a local fete and joined his band The Quarrymen, below. Left-handed Paul became a bassist and the outfit morphed into the Beatles, with Harrison and Ringo Starr joining later.

7

During the Beatles’ time in Hamburg, Germany, in 1960, Paul and original drummer Pete Best lit a condom and nearly set fire to a building. They were briefly jailed and then deported.

8

He also ended up behind bars after being caught with marijuana in Japan in 1980, having already been fined for growing it on his Scottish farm in the 1970s.

9

The melody for Yesterday, originally titled Scrambled Eggs, came to him in a dream while he was living with actress Jane Asher.

10

After they split, he married

Linda

Eastman in 1969. She died from breast cancer in

1998. He wed model Heather Mills in 2002 before divorcing her and marrying Nancy Shevell, below, in 2011.

11including

A dad to five, fashion designer Stella McCartney, he penned Hey Jude to comfort Lennon’s son Julian after the singer’s first marriage broke up.

12

In the 1960s, an urban myth started that Paul had been killed in a car crash and his place taken by a lookalike.

13

Macca was on a plane at JFK airport, New York, watching the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

14

He’s a skilled painter and likes to go birdwatching.

15kittens

Paul once had called Jesus, Mary and Joseph and wrote Martha My Dear about his dog.