. . . and from their waistlines to their wallets, who gets the satisfaction of being winner?
A WEIGH WE GO IN THE LIVES OF TWO TRIM ROCK LEGENDS
JAGGER is famously slender and, at 5 ft 10 in, is said to weigh just 10 st. His jeans waist measurement is a slim 28 in. McCartney is rather more average, although still trim. He is said to weigh 13 st 7 lb with a 32 in waist and stands 5 ft 11 in tall.
HEART FLUTTERS AND HEADING TOWARDS 80 . . . BUT I FEEL FINE
MACCA, 79, has recently had a hearing aid fitted. During an interview with the new Yorker magazine, the device sprang out of his ear before he re-inserted it. While it’s not known if Jagger, 78, also wears one, he has actively participated in campaigns that raise awareness of hearing impairment.
Both men have had surgery for heart problems. During his divorce from Heather Mills in 2008, Macca had an angioplasty, where surgeons pass a fine tube into the aorta, inflate a balloon and leave a short wire mesh tube to prop the artery open.
Jagger had surgery on his heart in April 2019 and was back on stage two months later. He underwent a minimally invasive transcatheter aortic valve replacement in new York.
JUMPING JACKS ARE STILL QUITE FLASH
THE Stones singer has long been a health nut, much in the mould of his father Joe, a PE teacher and athletics enthusiast, who lived to be 93.
Sex, sleep and ballet all play a part and he’s said to exercise for three hours a day, six days a week. He has a norwegian personal trainer, Torke Eike, who has looked after him for nearly 30 years.
He will run for up to eight miles in a session, is devoted to yoga, takes ballet classes to help with balance and does aerial aerobics.
He barely drinks alcohol and eats healthily. ‘It’s debilitating to drink a lot,’ he said. His diet includes lots of sushi and small portions of protein. Before a performance he will have a big plate of plain pasta for energy.
no personal trainer for Sir Paul, although he does visit a gym near his home in St John’s Wood. Friends say he is an ‘outdoorsy, active’ kind of person. He rides horses when he’s on his estate in Peasmarsh, East Sussex, and likes to cycle where he can.
He also sails and has done yoga with third wife nancy Shevell for several years. He said: ‘I feel pretty fit. I do a bit of the cross-trainer, a bit of running, a bit of cardio and then I do some weights, some abs on the Swiss ball, before ending up on the mat doing a few stretches. Then standing on my head. I learned it in the Sixties — it was a yoga thing.’
He has been a vegetarian for more than 40 years. These days he drinks wine and beer ‘in moderation only’.
A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE PAY IN THE LIFE OF
THERE’S no doubt about which man is ahead in terms of money — Macca, by a mile. The Sunday Times Rich List suggests that he is worth £820 million to Jagger’s £310 million.
Why such a huge difference? The Beatles have sold far more music globally, and Macca is also the holder of 25,000 copyrights, so money streams in from thousands of songs by other artists. According to the Guinness World Records, Yesterday is the most covered song, and Macca as its co-writer collects money every time a version is released, performed, streamed or broadcast.
not that Sir Mick is a slouch when it comes to money. Jagger, who studied accounting at the London School of Economics and insisted on the whole band becoming tax exiles in 1971, is said to have personally made £3.5million when their song Satisfaction was licensed for use in a Snickers commercial.
Both men are penny-pinching by reputation. Mick’s daughter Georgia complains that he goes around the house turning off lights complaining about extravagance, while Jerry Hall said in an interview that her former husband was ‘tight’ and ‘made me pay for everything’.
Stella McCartney said her father was a ‘tight b ***** d’ for sending her
to a comprehensive school. During his marriage to Heather Mills he threw her a birthday party and guests were surprised to find that they had to pay for their own drinks at the bar.
MILLIONS OF ALBUMS SOLD
THE Rolling Stones have sold around 240million albums, The Beatles some 600 million. The Fab Four have had 17 UK No 1s, The Stones eight. It’s a similar story in America where The Beatles have had 20 No 1 singles and the Stones eight.
LET’S SPEND THE KNIGHT TOGETHER
BOTH men are ‘Sirs’. McCartney was knighted in 1997, Mick Jagger only caught up in 2003. Sir Paul is also a Companion of Honour — one of just 65 — alongside national treasures such as Sir David Attenborough.
HERE COME THE SONS
MACCA has five children including fashion designer Stella. The oldest is Linda’s daugh- ter Heather, 58, while the youngest is daughter Beatrice (with Heather Mills) who is 17. He has eight grandchildren whom he says call him ‘grandude’.
Jagger has eight children. The oldest is Karis, 50, by actress Marsha Hunt, while the youngest, Deveraux, is four. He has four grandchildren, including baby eugene, born to daughter Lizzy last year.
I GET HIGH WITH A LITTLE HELP . . .
BOTH men were formerly enthusiastic drug takers who have kicked the habit. In 2012 Macca said that he was going to give up smoking marijuana. ‘I smoked my share,’ he told Rolling Stone magazine.
‘When you’re bringing up a youngster, your sense of responsibility does kick in at some point.’
In 1980, Paul was held in custody for nine days after he was found with half a pound of cannabis trying to enter Japan.
After protests from fans and visits from his lawyers, he was eventually released without charge.
Mick was famously busted for drugs in 1967 at Keith Richards’ house, Redlands.
He was accused of illegally possessing four tablets containing amphetamine sulphate and methylamphetamine hydrochloride and Richards was charged with ‘allowing his house to be used for the purpose of smoking cannabis’.
There was another drugs raid — this time at Mick’s house in Chelsea, where he lived with Marianne Faithfull in 1969. Jagger was found guilty of cannabis posession, fined £200 and ordered to pay 50 guineas in costs.
Jerry Hall said that when she met Mick in 1977 he admitted that there was a year in the 1960s when he took LSD every day and that he had smoked cigarettes laced with heroin. She said he gave it all up for her.
GIMME SOME VERY EXPENSIVE SHELTER
THE two rock legends have houses in London. Sir Paul has a £10million home in St John’s Wood (which he bought in the 1960s for £400,000) while Sir Mick has an equally enormous home in Chelsea, also worth £10 million.
Mick also has a 16th-century castle in the Loire Valley, worth around £5 million and an estate in Mustique where there is an annual Jagger family holiday over New Year. There is also at least one £5 million ‘brownstone’ in New York and a new £1million house in Sarasota, Florida, where he has been preparing for the current Stones tour of America.
Macca has his estate in east Sussex, a Fifth Avenue duplex in New York worth £15million, and a holiday house on Long Island.