With love from me to loo
WOULD you be impressed if I told you I’d been to Paul McCartney’s house? Don’t be. For a modest fee, anyone can go there, although you do have to book. And it’s not as if you’re likely to find him at home.
Number 20 Forthlin Road is the Liverpool council house where Paul and his family lived until 1964.And it features on this week’s HIDDEN TREASURES OF THE NATIONAL TRUST (BBC2, 9pm), the Trust having bought it 28 years ago.
If, like me, you’re a bit of a Beatles nut, it’s well worth a visit. Not just because it’s where Paul worked with John Lennon on some of their earliest hits but because it’s effectively been frozen in time. It’s just like it was when the McCartneys lived there.
Well, sort of.
What the Trust has actually done is replicate the 60s period details – the fixtures and fittings, the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece, the everyday household products on the kitchen shelves in their classic packaging.
It’s not so much saying: “Here’s how Paul McCartney’s childhood home looked” as “Here’s how it probably looked.” But that’s fine.
Some of the personal details really are spot-on (old photographs taken there by Paul’s younger brother Mike have been a huge help in this respect, as have Mike’s personal recollections), while others are a broader reflection of early-60s working class domesticity.
Even so, the more authentic McCartneyness the National Trust can impose on this place, the better. So it’s always exploring new ways to do that.
For example, it’s been desperately trying to get the wallpaper right.As we discover tonight, there were several different patterns in the McCartneys’ home (mother Mary loved a bit of Sanderson), most of which the team has managed to track down and paste back up.
The one exception, to their frustration, has been the brick effect paper that used to adorn the wall surrounding the fireplace, clearly visible in Mike’s old photos. They’ve never been able to find anything similar. But now they have a cunning plan. It’s nothing, mind you, compared to what’s been happening in the loo.
Apparently, The Beatles used to scribble on the walls in there while answering their respective calls of nature.And now, thanks to advancements in science, the Trust hopes to strip away the many layers of paint that have covered this graffiti since then – and reveal whatever it was they wrote.
Wouldn’t that be extraordinary? And what do we suppose the Beatles’ lavatorial graffiti might turn out to say?
If you think I’m childish enough to suggest Love Me Poo, you really do have a low opinion of me.