PAUL MCCARTNEY AND THE STOLEN DIARY

This is the story of Francesca and Bianka De Fazi, two Roman sisters who have kept a diary hidden for twenty years. So far nothing strange, except that that diary was not a simple adolescent notebook but it was the diary of Paul Mccartney, a journal that not only talks about Sir Paul’s family life with his wife and children, but also about the Beatles break up. The diary’s dates are from 1970; that fateful year in the history of music and which among those diary pages is highlighted by phrases such as: “John arrives to discuss the dissolution of the partnership”.

But let’s take a step back. It was 1980 and Francesca and Bianka who were young girls at the time, were traveling to London with their father. Two young girls passionate about the Beatles were like many young girls of the era, only much craftier. In fact, they managed to find Mccartney’s house to take some souvenir photos in front of the entrance. At the time renovations were being done inside the house and they found the gate open. This was enough to goad the De Fazi sisters to enter the home and rummage through items that belonged to the fab four. Still less impetus was needed to convince them to take the diary, a pair of ankle boots and music paper from that musical treasure, and then run away from prying eyes.

We go from that escape to the epilogue 23 years later. From time to time the De Fazi girls tried to sell the loot, but the lack of provenance authenticating the items prevented the sales. So time passed, the fiery red diary with “Langham Diary” on the cover, full of notes and drawings, remained there in their room. In 2003, the year of the famous Paul Mccartney concert in Rome, in the enchanting location of the Imperial Forums, Francesca and Bianka showed up outside the hotel in Trinità dei Monti the day after the show, with the diary in hand. It became the pass to let the two sisters enter the safeguarded hotel, after obviously having passed security questioning. “Naughty girls, bad girls ...” exclaimed Paul Mccartney when he saw them and before he signed an autograph. That meeting was the fulfilment of the dream of the two women who had carried out their teenage stunt twenty three years earlier to find a piece of history in their hands. On his return journey to London, Sir Paul reread the diary and memories, confirming its authenticity. “Maybe it happened because they really liked the concert in Rome,” he added jokingly thinking about that particular repentance after so many years.