Judy hopes McCartney hit will help her wing it
SHE is tipped for an early exit from Strictly Come Dancing, so perhaps Judy Murray is hoping to win the backing of patriotic Scots viewers.
The mother of tennis ace Andy will be waltzing to Mull Of Kintyre in her debut on the hit show tonight.
The Wings track, a number one hit for Paul McCartney’s band in 1977, could be her secret weapon as she seeks votes from the public. Murray, who is partnered with regular dancer Anton Du Beke, is hot favourite to be first off the floor after sharp-tongued judge Craig Revel Horwood said he had not been impressed by her moves in a special scene-setting show earlier this month.
Among the favourites to pick up the glitterball this year are singer Pixie Lott, former rugby player Thom Evans and Frankie Bridge from The Saturdays. Other celebrity dancers include Masterchef host Gregg Wallace, reality TV star Mark Wright and TV presenter Caroline Flack.
But the real competition could be between the BBC flagship show and its ITV rival The X Factor as they go head-to-head in the schedules.
They have had one battle already this year, when Strictly’s pre-season special was the clear winner, although Simon Cowell later claimed victory when viewers watching on catch-up and repeats were taken into account.
The first six Strictly pairs will dance tonight with the rest performing tomorrow. The series will be the first without veteran host Sir Bruce Forsyth, with Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly running the show.
SCOTLAND has been kind to Sir Paul McCartney. When, in 1970, he found himself aimless and bereft following the break‑up of the Beatles, it was to a small farm in the country that he retreated. High Park lies on the Kintyre Peninsula, that snake of Argyll, almost an island, running 30 miles from Tar‑ bert in the north to Campbeltown and the Mull itself in the south. The life McCartney and his new wife Linda adopted there — simple, basic, shorn of luxury — proved his salvation.
Gradually, the drug‑taking and heavy drinking threatening his well‑ being subsided and he again began to write music. Happiness, once sought in the nightclubs of London and new York, was to be found in patching up a leaky roof or shearing a sheep.
In 1977, McCartney repaid his debt to his adopted home with an anthem. Mull Of Kintyre was the first single to sell more than two million copies in Britain and established for good the musician’s association with this dramatic sliver of land.
The ties between the surviving Beatles and Britain are particularly moot given that this month the news broke that his former bandmate Ringo Starr i s selling his rural 200‑acre Surrey estate and moving to the United States.
Ringo and his wife Barbara Bach, a former Bond Girl, are set to make Los Angeles their main home.
Yet what many people do not realise is that Sir Paul, too, has quietly all but severed his connection with his own peaceful corner of the nation.
Since his arrival on the Mull of And Kintyre in 1966, he has expanded his estate into one of considerable size.
yet I have learned that he has not been seen by some locals who live there for half a decade. Today, he i s married to t he American nancy Shevell, and prefers to divide his time between London and new York.
‘Over the years, Sir Paul has bought what used to be about seven differ‑ ent holdings,’ says david Young, a farmer and Kintyre neighbour. ‘The aim seems to have been to ensure privacy by purchasing neighbouring stretches of land. I would say the estate covers approximately 1,000 acres now.’
For many years, the McCartney family were allowed to enjoy their breaks at High Park in peace — there i s no great mansion, only a modest farm‑ house — and were rarely stopped in the street.
Locals in the nearby port of Campbeltown have always harboured warm feelings towards the McCartneys, and Sir Paul is still respected widely in the area. But there is one sour note: the treatment new management meted out to two long‑standing employees at High Park, one of whom found himself thrown out of his tied cottage and banished to a caravan after 20 years of faithful service.
Farmworker Jimmy Paterson and his partner Marion Pope now inhabit a small corner of the former Royal Air Force station at Machrihanish, a few miles west of High Park.
Some eight months after being forced to quit their home on the McCartney estate, High Ranachan Farm, they are still l ooking for permanent accommodation.
Estate manager Bobby Cairns, who worked for Sir Paul for some 30 years, was also dismissed in a shake‑up of the estate which placed it on a more commercial footing under the super‑ vision of a new manager.
‘ I don’t know why they were removed,’ says Mr Young, whose family has farmed in the area for generations. ‘They were perfectly
capable of doing what they were asked to do. They were told to manage the farm in the way they did. It was out of the blue. Really unexpected.’ But what do the two men say about their treatment? 'You won’t hear anything from them,’ he says, making a zipping motion across his mouth. At the vast airfield, one-time base for US Navy SEALS, some of the most secret operations of the Cold War
and – so me say – aircraft with alien technology, Miss Pope is saying nothing. 'I can’t speak out of respect for Jimmy’s wishes,’ she says about her partner who was sacked. Do they feel betrayed by Sir Paul? She smiles but refuses to elaborate. The reason, according to local people, is a gagging clause in the serverance agreement signed by both
men. Is that true? ‘All I will say is that money is power,’ Miss Pope adds. Sir Paul certainly has plenty of that. Never extravagant in public, he has built a financial empire running into hundreds of millions of pounds.
Such fortunes are rarely subject to detailed public analysis, but a light was shone on the singer’s wealth in 2008 when he faced his second wife, Heather Mills, across the floor of the High Court in London to hammer out a divorce settlement. Miss Mills demanded £125 million from her former husband, claiming his fortune amounted to some £800 million. The j udge calculated McCartney’s fortune at half that and awarded Mills £24 million.
During the hearing, the extent of Sir Paul’s property empire became known, including the obligatory repertoire of superstar homes in London, Manhattan, the Hamptons and Beverly Hills, as well as his farm in Sussex and house in Arizona.
That High Park Farm survives in Sir Paul’s portfolio is due mainly to sentiment. It is thought to have been bought initially to minimise the young McCartney’s exposure to tax. The year was 1966, Eleanor Rigby was playing on the nation’s radios and the lad from Liverpool was enjoying his first season as a millionaire. McCartney’s then girlfriend, the actress Jane Asher, helped him select High Park from a pile of properties for sale, and visited it with him. But it was Linda, Lady McCartney, who took the place to her heart, renovating the threebedroom farmhouse while Paul installed a recording studio. The song The Long And Winding Road was inspired by the area, as well as, of course, Mull Of Kintyre, accompaniment for the latter being provided by the pipes and drums of Campbeltown’s band.
‘It was a love song really,’ explained Sir Paul, ‘about how I enjoyed being there and imagining I was travelling away and wanting to get back.’
Converts to vegetarianism (this week Sir Paul appeared in a video in which he gave an impromptu rap, encouraging fans to give up meat one day a week), the McCartneys allowed the farm to grow wild.
Deer multiplied, fields became overgrown and the couple’s four children, Heather, Mary, Stella and James, found themselves at home in an enormous playground, isolated from prying eyes.
Drive along t he tracks l i nking Sir Paul’s holdings and you enter a dreamscape of rolling hills topped by conifers, a quiet, otherworldly place of loch and burn.
‘ Local people didn’t bother Sir Paul — they let him be,’ says Mr Young. ‘The great attraction was that he could fly into the small airport in his private jet and within 20 minutes be in a different world.’
Linda’s death i n 1998 was a turning point.
Gradually, visits to High Park tailed off. Perhaps there was too much pain in its associations, but the singer has refused to part with a property replete with family memories.
There are still visits to High Park by relatives and friends of Sir Paul, but visits by the singer- songwriter are now virtually unknown. It is thought that he has not dropped in on his Scottish home for around five years, one of the last great influxes of McCartneys being in 2003 for the wedding of Stella, a clothes designer, on Bute in the Clyde.
‘ The gates to the estate are padlocked now,’ says Mr Young.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s hostile but a relationship that was once close is now strained. I have nothing against ONCE, the new manager; it’s the policy that’s changed.’
the principled McCartneys would not allow fodder from their farm to be sold to feed animals destined for slaughter. High Park was a hippie paradise in which profit counted for little.
But that appears to have changed, too. Sir Paul and his advisers are said to be no longer willing to accept losses on his farms and are renting out f i elds to neighbours, while encouraging forestry.
‘Basically, the place became a wildlife haven,’ says Mr Young. ‘It was quite a sight to see the hundreds of deer roaming over the l and — beautiful. It’s a shame. It was very beautiful the way it was. I am very sad at the changes made. ‘But despite those changes, I personally have very great respect for Sir Paul. He has done an enormous amount for the area and injected an enormous a mount of money into the local economy.
‘There were never any airs and graces. He and his f amily are truly pleasant people.’ Others are less effusive . One woman, who refuses to give her name, says: ‘ We don’t care about celebrities if they are not living here or contributing to life here.’ Down i n Campbeltown is a memorial garden dedicated to Linda McCartney. Her image sits there, in bronze, cradling a lamb. Sir Paul did not attend its unveiling.
In Mull Of Kintyre, McCartney sings of wanting ‘always to be here’. But 37 years after the song seduced us, it seems his ardour has cooled.