The year 2012, what exactly does it mean to you? For enthusiasts of time, calendars and dates, 2012 means a leap year! That’s right, it isn’t one of those run of the mill 365 day occasions. Instead, we get an extra day that normally doesn’t exist! Roll on February 29th!

And this year, thuggish England football fans will be getting excited as they prepare to jet off to Poland and the Ukraine to witness our lads (© The Sun) losing in Euro 2012.

But the mass global event we’re all thoroughly bored of hearing about is the 2012 Olympics. Like a school sports day on a grander scale, millions from around the world will get to see London make a complete mess of it. With the help of an all singing, all dancing and all wrinkled Paul McCartney.

Recently, lizard-president of the UK, David Cameron wanted to see more support come from TV networks so the British film industry could rosily bloom like a bunch of flowers next to a cancer victim’s grave. We all laughed and scorned at the prime ministers suggestions, however, we wish that the same train of thought was suggested to the Olympics.

Us British like a good old piece of nostalgia. Honestly, it’s amazing that some trendy company haven’t found a way of sucking the fondest memories you possess out your brain and converted them into some awful glistening cupcake. Imagine if you ever felt sad or lonely; a delicious slice of nostalgia cake could be scoffed down to get that happy feeling back in your tummy.

Obviously, we’re obsessed about the past because the UK has nothing to look forward to. We’ve already peaked.

From winning the 1966 World Cup or remembering the time when one of our princesses got smushed to bits in a Paris tunnel, you’ll be guaranteed that a tabloid paper will mention it at any given opportunity. In the music world, Paul McCartney is someone that we supposedly can’t get enough of. As someone who played in a band named after his favourite type of insect that weren’t even as good as The Beach Boys, he is amazingly popular and at time of writing, hasn’t been put in a home for his own good.

Britain is a nation to afraid to even vaguely venture in to new territories, kind of like your average holiday maker who insists on getting chips instead of rice with his chicken korma. Once you get into a habit, it’s hard to break it. Think about it, we wheeled out Paul McCartney in 2002 when The Queen had her Golden Jubilee. Though we assume they’d have used Freddie Mercury if he hadn’t died of the AIDS. Speaking about any possible Olympic involvement, McCartney said:

“I am seeing the guy because there is something they want me to do. I might be doing something in the Olympics. I know until then.”

When do we get to vote him into the Dignitas house in Switzerland?

Ringo Starr, quite possibly still going around warning everyone with ‘peace and love’, is opening and closing his mouth again, letting words tumble out and reminding everyone that he once provided the voice for Thomas The Tank Engine and friends.

He’s also nattering about his famous chum, Sir Paul McCartney.

Apparently, the 10th best drummer in The Beatles (after John Lennon, Sir Macca, George Harrison, George Martin, Billy Preston, Pete Best, Stuart Sutcliffe, Yoko Ono, Astrid Kirchherr and that arhythmic dripping tap in studio 2 of Abbey Road) is still in close contact with the only useful living member of the Fab Four.

Of course, you’d expect Ringo (real name Ringles Starrguitar) to still be in contact with a bloke he’s know since he was a whippersnapper. This isn’t news is it?

The news is, that they have no plans to work together any time soon… which is barely newsworthy in itself because Paul McCartney has a perfectly able drummer as it is.

Ringo told BBC Radio 2 presenter Steve Wright (who currently looks like a melted waxwork of David Gest):

“He surprised me when I was playing Radio City Music Hall, and he got up and he played ‘Birthday’, which I played with him because I wanted the opportunity to ply with him again, and he’s on the last record, he’s not on this one.

“We do hang out a bit but we’re not in each other’s pockets, and if the opportunity is real, I’ve played on a couple of his records, he’s played on mine.”

“We never sit there and say, ‘oh yeah we’ll put it together’, I’ll do ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Hey Jude’, he’ll do ‘Octopus’s Garden’.”

While that may read duller than ditch water, you should go back and read it out loud in your best Ringo Starr impression because EVERYONE is able to do a Ringo impression and it is NEVER not funny.

Elsewhere, there have been rumours that the living Beatles are to reunite and play at the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games in London this summer. Ringo’s not having it.

“There was talk about The Olympics last year, but I’m not here, I’m booked to tour America. I don’t know if he’s going to do it, but I’m off.”

He hates England, doesn’t he?

Paul McCartney is bringing a new album out. There’s a phrase that hasn’t caused too much excitement since Wings were knee-high to a grasshopper. Unless, of course, you’re a bloated Beatle fanatic who is unable to hear any criticism against any of the Fabs. Ever.

Unless it’s Ringo.

The fact remains, Macca is going to stick a new LP out on 7th February and he’s doing a whole bunch of cover versions because, sadly for him, he’s run out of ideas. The last vague hit he had was ‘Dance Tonight’ and that was thoroughly poo.

Apparently, this new album will be a “deeply personal journey” which will see Macca covering old-timey American songs that inspired him and bandmate John Lennon when they wrote their own tunes.

In a statement (because new albums definitely need ‘a statement’), Sir Paulio said:

“When I kind of got into songwriting, I realized how well structured these songs were, and I think I took a lot of my lessons from them”

“I always thought artists like Fred Astaire were very cool. Writers like Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, all of those guys – I just thought the songs were magical. And then, as I got to be a songwriter I thought it’s beautiful, the way they made those songs.”

Well duh.

McCartney will be teaming up with jazzist Diana Krall and producer Tommy LiPuma who got the recovering mop top to record his vocals in a booth without instruments for the first time in his musical career.

“It was very spontaneous, kind of organic, which then reminded me of the way we’d work with the Beatles. We’d bring a song in, kick it around, when we found a way to do it we’d say ‘Okay, let’s do a take now’ and by the time everyone kind of had an idea of what they were doing, we’d learnt the song. So that’s what we did, we did the take live in the studio.”

So how’s he been doing it since The Beatles? Being lazy and accepting that the first version is the one that gets used because everyone surrounding him is constantly telling him how bloody wonderful he is?

Not that Paul will be short of sycophants on this new album as he’s drafted in Stevie Wonder and Eric Clapton to tickle his ego. That said, Stevie and Clapton probably won’t be in the same room together, especially if Mr Wonder recalls Clapton once shouting from the stage of a show:

“Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I’m looking at you… Where are you? I’m sorry but some fucking wog… Arab grabbed my wife’s bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that’s just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country.”

“Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs… Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!”

Ebony and ivory, live together in perfect harmony. Side-by-side on my piano, keyboard…

The McCartney family have done alright for themselves haven’t they? Weird that those related to a Beatle should make it completely off their own bat, eh? No help from famous papa there at all! Nope. Never.

Anyway, the child that has done the best is Sir Paul McCartney’s daughter Stella. She likes making clothes that you can’t afford.

Now, she’s created a perfume in tribute to her mother, Linda, which is an absolute godsend for people who like to make snide jokes about the deceased.

So, what’s this perfume called then?

Well, it’s called L.I.L.Y. It will be launched at some point between this precise moment and the end of time. Yes, that’s quite vague, but in all honesty, if you cared enough about it, you’d piss-off and read a beauty blog with its tips about cigarette pants, the various fruit-shapes of women and which concealer makes you look less minging.

The name stands for Linda I Love You, which, if you didn’t know, was a nickname given to Linda by Sir Macca.

You’re probably wondering what the perfume smells of, aren’t you?

Well, if it’s a proper tribute to Linda McCartney, it should smell of sprout farts, keyboards, seal tears, mullets, out of tune backing vocals and soya sausages.

Right? Wrong! Apparently, it smells like lily of the valley as well as having hints of truffle and oak moss. And sprout farts.

Perfumer Jacques Cavallier says:

“The truffle was unusual, but I said OK to Stella. I actually told the suppliers we were working with that the extract was for a restaurant! I didn’t want to let people know what we were doing.”

HAHAHAHA! Jacques Cavallier is soooooo funny isn’t he?! WHAT A CAD! Perfumers really are the funniest, wittiest people on Earth aren’t they?

We’re giving up. There’s no point carrying on with talent like that elsewhere. We’re off to make a perfume that smells like Ringo Starr (drumstools and spaghetti hoops).

Sir Paul McCartney, of forgotten ’70s beat group Wings, has for some peculiar reason, had his phone hacked by ‘so-called journalists’ and he’s gone grassing everyone up to the police. Including us. We got a letter informing us we’d be under investigation.

Even though we only have one PAYG mobile phone (the one with Snake II on), we do use it to get into people’s voicemails. We’ve got a great story about the not very famous comedian David Schneider, but that’s for another time.

Anyway, Macca is not pleased that we’ve been in his messages, very much in the same way his former wife, Heather Mills, was hopping mad (fnarr) that she’d had her voicemails hacked into and, of course, John Lennon’s chest was very much breached by Mark Chapman with his best gun.

Sir Paul says:

“I am going to talk to the police because apparently I have been hacked. I don’t know much about it because they won’t tell anyone except the person themselves.”

“I do think it’s a horrendous violation of privacy. I do think it has been going on for a long time and I do think more people than we know knew about it.”

Of course, these incredibly famous people aren’t bothered about us. They only want to sue famous people. The Muccas are subsequently going after CNN suet head, Piers Morgan, who edited the Mirror from 1995 to 2004. He’s getting all this lovely stick, thereby allowing us to get off scot-free.

Naturally, Piers denies any involvement in phone hacking, despite the fact he once wrote:

‘At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking.’

‘The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back.

‘He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out ‘ into the answerphone.’

Aaaw! Bless Sir Paul. Although, he really should’ve crooned one of his more erratic hits. Any of these would have been great.

Still, funny how everyone is taking phone hacking seriously, given that everyone thought Heather Mills was mental for saying such a thing all those years ago.

You fickle ogres.

Meanwhile, Ringo wonders why no-one ever wants to hack his phone and has been seen handing out his phone number to strangers and telling them his pin-code for his voicemail.

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Paul McCartney is all set to headline the opening ceremony of London 2012 Olympic Games alongside other British music stars who probably aren’t nearly as good. Unless they get Girls Aloud on which would be amazing.

The Beatle has told organisers of London 2012 he is “up for” playing at the opener, but which songs he will play is yet to be seen. Or organised at all probably. And Ringo Starr won’t be there, which is simultaneously a shame and of little consequence.

But which songs should Macca consider? Sure, he’s got a massive back catalogue to play with, but there’s some cheeky tracks that are less famous that he should really think about including.

A source says:

“The hope was to have the cream of British music all in the line-up but it now looks like Paul will be joined on stage by some younger stars.

“But of all the people you want, McCartney is number one. He is the ultimate showman and guaranteed to get the Olympics off to a great start.”

He’s not the only McCartney taking part. His daughter, Stella, is designing the kit for the British Olympic team too! That’s nice isn’t it? Not really. We couldn’t care less. And isn’t Heather Mills practising her skiing for the Olympics or something?

Anyway, forget all that. Which songs should Macca play to surprise everyone?

Check My Machine

One of Macca’s weirdest little indulgent moments, but oddly fantastic (why hasn’t someone done a mash-up with this and Carly Simon’s ‘Why?’). Imagine if Sir Paul walked on-stage, performed this, flicked a peace-sign and just buggered off. It would be astonishing.

Give Ireland Back To The Irish

Paul could see such a gigantic worldwide audience as a platform for his own political views and this would be a hilarious thing to perform in the middle of London with Boris Johnson and David Cameron looking on. He should sport an IRA balaclava for maximum impact also.

Temporary Secretary

Just listen to this synth based gonzo pop track and just imagine the look on the face of Sebastian Coe as it thunders out of the speakers at the Olympic stadium. It could well be the most amazing moment in British history.

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?

Coming in a under 2 minutes, Macca could get his paycheck and slope off for an afternoon off if he performed this. Anyone who complains should be met with “Well, I said I’d do a Beatles tune didn’t I?”

Something from his ‘Fireman’ alter ego

Sound collages and nonsense. Exactly what our Olympics need.

Coming Up

Sir Paul should actually clone himself so he can recreate the video for ‘Coming Up’, complete with his amazing impression of the keyboard player from Sparks.

We All Stand Together

Big sporting events are often soundtracked by a notion of ‘togetherness’ and ‘oneness’. Paul could say… “Okay. You wanted ‘All You Need Is Love’, but that was kinda John’s song… so why not have this instead? And you’ll like it as well. That’s because I’m a Beatle and can do as I please. And yes. I am dressed up as Rupert Bear. What of it?”

Silly Love Songs

The thing that London 2012 really needs is some cod-disco and you damn well know it.

Say Say Say

Of course, Michael Jackson is dead. So who could sit in on MJ’s vocals? Tulisa from N Dubz? Jedward? If he does this, he could go straight into ‘The Girl Is Mine’ as well, and that’d be worth it just for the “I DON’T BELIEVE IT!” bit.

No Songs At All.

He’s a Beatle ferchrissakes! He can do whatever he pleases! So he shouldn’t do any songs at all and just make some mashed potatoes to irritate everyone!

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We despair about living in England. Out of every country in the world, we are the only nation that takes pride in former glories and absolutely nothing else. We’ve got nothing to look forward to. Nothing.

And when it comes to music, no band takes our regressive national pride to stalker-levels like The Beatles. It’s an actual fact that people in Liverpool aren’t christened in holy water. Instead, melted down Beatles records are used to make sure any young child gets a proper passage into the world we live in.

Even though the fab four haven’t made a record for decades (seriously! What’s George Harrison up to these days? Nothing. Lazy oaf!) it hasn’t stopped rock n’ roll granddad Paul McCartney from muscling in with his ideas on how an ageing band with no relevance on modern music can help creating an exciting opening Olympic ceremony. Where’s Mark Chapman when you need him?

When the Olympics do finally arrive, we can only assume that people in the North of England will be grumpy about the whole thing, even though the government want to promote this as a celebration of sport for the entire country, everything seems to be focussed on our nation’s capital.

London itself is pretty much dominated with ropey late night chicken places and people freaking out when a couple of snowflakes fall to the ground, grinding the transport system to a halt. Up in the grim north, nothing much is planned, mainly because people in the south are under the impression that electricity and colour haven’t reached cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds (although, in the case of the latter, it happens to be true).

Essentially when you dissect the Olympics, it’s just a massively expensive school sports day.

So what is Macca doing there? We don’t know what the Wingsman has planned, but if he really wants to involve all four members of The Beatles, it’ll prove challenging.

Only yesterday, we brought you news of a Japanese monster, forcefully destroying the peace and tranquillity of a pub in Dundee. So it’ll probably be a no-go in regards to propping up the corpse of John Lennon and strapping a guitar to him. Thinking about it further, local seagulls will probably peck his eyes out. Somebody said:

“Macca was just being coy about the details. He has been speaking to organisers and has said he’d love to be involved with the games in some way. The organisers want the music legend to appear alongside other big British acts. And they also want Ringo on stage as well to make it extra special.”

The involvement of Ringo sounds like a bit desperate to us. Sir Paul is probably trying to up his game because Glee are much, much better and more successful than anything The Beatles ever accomplished.

Maybe, just maybe, Macca will simply recreate this piece of Beatle-magic? Here’s hoping.

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Since John and George died, there’s been something of a tussle over who can be the funniest remaining Beatle. Paul McCartney is just too wacky to be properly funny, so that means, by default, Ringo gets the crown, right?

Well, sadly for Ringo, he seems to be suffering from an onset on dementia.

Of course, our Ring’ became something of a laughing stock when he warned us all with ‘peace and love’ not to send him any more gifts (how can anyone top those paintings Marge Simpson did of him?). Then he went and vaguely slagged off Liverpool. He’s priceless isn’t he? Well, now he’s slagging Paul McCartney off. Next, we assume he’ll be pissing on Lennon’s grave.

First of all, Ringo is claiming that The Beatles were lucky to have him as their drummer. And he’s right to say that as he was the best man on Merseyside to man the drumstool at the time (and, contrary to popular belief, remained a really great drummer throughout the Beatles’ career).

He says:

‘Within Liverpool, I was a lot more well know than them. Rory and the Hurricanes (Starr’s former band) were big shots in the city. We had the suits. That was our claim to fame. The Beatles were lucky to get me. It wasn’t just that I was a big shot; I was a cool drummer.’

All well and good, right? Everyone knows Ringo was better than Pete Best. But what’s all this about Macca?

Well, Ringo is still touring with his (pretty awful) All Starr Band. He keeps asking Paul to join them but alas, as one of the greatest living songwriters on the planet, he’s always busy.

This obviously sticks in Starr’s craw.

‘Every time I ask him to tour with the All Starrs, he says he is too busy.’

Then, Ringo goes a bit mental.

‘We’re as close as we want to be. We’re the only two remaining Beatles, although he likes to think he’s the only one. I actually think it’s people on the outside who perceive Paul as thinking he’s the only member left, when actually it’s me. I am the last remaining Beatle.’

Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him…

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Don’t mess with a Beatle. Even the most irritating of Beatles will be favoured over other humans, simply because they’re responsible for those tunes you like. Unbelievably, Heather Mills swiped the crown of most loathed Beatlespouse from Yoko Ono, who seemed to have it in the bag for life.

See, while Yoko initially got heat because everyone was kinda racist toward her, she eventually settled into the world’s ire by simply being a pretentious artist (and no-one likes anyone from the artworld).

Then, along came Heather Mills and, thanks in part to having one leg which made for excruciatingly easy and tiresome jokes from the stand-up universe, became so hated that the National Grids managed to power our homes just on our collective irritation. Then she divorced daft, wacky ol’ Macca and the seething bubbled over into all-out hate. This ensured that any mishap that befell her would be met with titters.

So what’s happened now? Well, while she’s been training to participate in the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, silly ol’ Heather has broken her shoulder in a skiing accident. As Sonny Bono’s Ghost will testify, people tend to laugh at skiing accidents. Even fatal ones.

That’s because only posh people go skiing, so if you have a dreadful accident, everyone can dismiss it as hilarious, even if you’ve already tragically lost your leg. We, the people, are a cruel and unforgiving bunch. Deal with it, slebs.

According to an Austrian newspaper called Kleine Zeitung, Heather was whisked off to Lienz Hospital by a helicopter, where the pilot probably whistled the guitar solo to Maybe I’m Amazed at her, just for giggles.

At the hospital, Mills roughed it like us plebs by having her bed cordoned off for privacy.

The result of all this will, naturally, be that Heather will appear on various chatshows talking about how people ‘don’t believe’ that people with disabilities can do things like sports, despite the fact everyone absolutely does believe that people with disabilities can do great things. Look at how everybody loves Tanni Grey-Thompson… look at how much she doesn’t constantly whine and bitch to everyone ALL THE SHITTING TIME.

Anyway, the incredibly wealthy Heather Mills will be rubbing her shoulder for a while and we probably won’t hear the end of it.

Inspirational.

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If a random person stopped you in the street and told aliens were invading, you’d assume he was a mentalist and move on. Opinions are like arseholes really, everybody has one and unless you create a Facebook group, nobody will know or care what you think. Reach celebrity status however and all of a sudden people will dribble at each moronic word spouted.

Paul McCartney has reached this stage. Before become a spokesperson for vegetables, he played in a vaguely successfully band called The Beatles and had hit songs including ‘Hey Punch And Judy’, ‘Ha’penny Lane’ and ‘Back In The MFI’.

The music legend gave up eating the flesh of animals in the 1970’s and then proceeded to tell us why we should as well. Frankly, we’re bored of him harping on. Perhaps he’s realised that nobody cares and, is instead, spreading the message of cucumbers to India.

The only people to agree with Paul McCartney are vegetable terrorists PETER. We imagine the members of this meat hating organisation get their kicks by using sprouts as gobstoppers, sprinkled with a little sugar if they’ve been good. When they cast eyes on Lady Gaga’s meat dress, it must have been an apocalyptic moment for them, causing them all rub red onions into their eyes so the pain would go away, with added extra pain to veggie martyrdom.

Why he targeted India is a bit of a mystery, after all he is already halfway there if a U.N survey conducted in 2003 is to be believed. Reportedly, nearly half (42%) of India’s 1.2 billion people are vegetarian. And that was eight years ago, so with a booming population, that number will probably be higher.

Honestly, he could have at least preached to the people of Scotland where the word “vegetable” is as offensive as the naughty “c” word.

Digital Spy reports:

“The former Beatle sent a letter to the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh urging the country to declare a day that, he says, would promote the environment as well as healthy living and eating habits.”It would be a celebration of life,” McCartney stated in the letter, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).”

What Paul McCartney has against meat is a mystery. Did he once order a steak not cooked to his liking? Or when he and John Harrison from The Beetles went through their druggy recording period, perhaps he did something with a farmyard creature that he’d rather forget?

Nonetheless, if he gets his way, all of India will soon be holding hands and celebrating the humble vegetable – forgetting that for millions of years, man has hunted and gathered animals for food and shelter, eliminating the old method of throwing spears at things like dinosaurs for food.

If this does happen, we’ll happily eat a large slice of vegetable flavoured humble pie. Indians have exported their cuisine around the world, so who is a former musician to take away some blokes lamb madras or beef bhuna?

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Heather Mills is a nice lady isn’t she? She’s an inspiration to anyone who has lost a limb. She’s proven that you don’t need both legs to be chastised and widely loathed. Striking a blow for real, practical equality, her existence has shown that people can be just as nasty to those with a disability as those without.

Great work Heather.

She’s also responsible for bringing The Beatles up-to-date. It’s all her doing. Before Mills, The Fab Four were seen as irrelevant and without any worth at all, but thanks to her wheeling and dealing, they’re now a vital cultural cog in society. Isn’t she just swell?

That’s right!

The ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney is adamant that we should all be thanking her for The Beatles’ back catalogue becoming available online. It is thanks to her that we can buy music we already own and rip it to our computers from CDs we’ve had for years.

She “organised it all”. EVERYTHING!

This of course, flies in the face of the fact that executives at EMI/Parlophone have been in talks with McCartney and Ringo Starr to put The Beatles’ tracks on the digital store. Lets not forget that The Beatles have a company called Apple Corps who have been working and squabbling with Apple for some time now.

However, last month, the Fabs’ music was (finally) launched online, shifting two million songs and over 450,000 albums sold in the first week alone. That’s quite astonishing really.

And it is Heather Mills who is responsible for the whole deal.

“iTunes? I organised it all with Steve Jobs.”

You’re probably thinking that she’s being rather self-centred about the whole thing. Far from it. She’s all heart about the matter, magnanimously adding;

“there’s no way I’m going back to court for more money. It was all settled at the time and that’s it.”

She’s a fucking Saint of a woman, eh?

Next week: Heather Mills claims to have invented the wheel.

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Since George Harrison shrugged off his mortal coil, Paul McCartney has been a changed man. He’s not quite as ‘thumbs aloft’ these days and has returned to the live arena to play more obscure Beatle numbers like Helter Skelter and Getting Better (well, relatively). As such, his stock has risen and the kids want in.

Having worked with the Super Furry Animals on a Fireman project, Sir Paul is not averse to teaming up with younger psychedelic acts. And so, once upon a time, he flippantly said he wanted to do something with MGMT.

Now, because he hasn’t called in the last five minutes, MGMT are acting like spurned mentals, crying to the press about broken promises and hearts or some rubbish.

The band said that McCartney had previously expressed an interest in working with them, but has yet to organise studio time.

“It’s been tough. We did play a show with him last summer at NY Park, which was really cool,” frontman Andrew Wells VanWyngarden told Spinner.

“But nothing has really come of the collaboration part of it. We still would really like to do that. We like Paul McCartney’s songwriting abilities and musical sensibilities. His bass playing is unreal – he is definitely our favourite bass player.”

Get that! They ‘like’ Paul McCartney’s songwriting abilities. How very bold of them to say! They ‘like’ the man who wrote Maybe I’m Amazed and Yesterday. That, coming from a band who wrote… *remembers what MGMT sound like and falls into a heavy coma*

Last year, Macca said: “I like MGMT. I’d like to work on some more dancey stuff with MGMT. But it has to happen organically. We need to talk about it. I can’t call them. “If they called me, I’d say, ‘How did you get my number?’. ”

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I should preface this. I should preface a lot of things in fact, usually with “She was already dead”, but in this case, I need only disclose that I’m not a critic.

Critics are invariably asteroidal pricks, and I’m not. I really am just the world’s greatest. So it was my birthday, see, and I was taking my Ma and Da to see Paul McCartney in Hyde Park.

We had a long lunch. What did we have? I hardly think this is the time*. This lovely lunch, (and it was a lovely lunch), aside from being an enjoyable part of the day in its own right, did impact on a full appreciation of the entire Sunday lineup. We missed Joshua Radin, who I’m only vaguely aware of; some almost-certainly-antipodean archangel of banality, whose soporific noodling about misplaced affection would have sent me on a willing one-way trip to a Swiss hotel room, and the divorcees and homosexuals in the audience into some massive, shuddering orgasm.

We arrived to the tail-end of Elvis Costello, who I can honestly say seemed to be enjoying his set a good deal more than the audience. I mean it was pleasant enough, but you know, whatever. Following Costello was a surprising Crowded House, who in between being absolutely charming, dryly witty and self-deprecating in a way seemingly only New Zealanders can be, graciously took us on a giant set of ‘guess the advert’.

I should disclaim that at this point, the England football team were in full backwards-stride (I’m sure you’ve all forgotten by now) and so some of the less familiar or advert-y tracks came with an impromptu counter-melody of expletives directed at a screen showing the game, which was a shame, really, as they were for the most part the superior ones.

Crosby Stills and Nash disappointed horribly, singularly justifying why society treats the elderly with snide contempt. Three old blokes playing the same sixteen bars before a ropey guitar solo with the aural consistency of farm slurry. There were many of these instances, and I can only assume they represented individual songs.

But then Paul McCartney. “Good evening Hyde Park. I got a feeling we’re gonna have a rocking time tonight!” And was he right?** A relentlessly flawless set; briskly skipping between Beatles, Wings and solo. Two tracks of the recent album Fireman were outed, with the giant displays confirming this throughout, to avoid… confusion (?), and were promptly forgotten.

Musical tributes to John Lennon, George Harrison and Linda McCartney were affectionate and heartfelt, and tracks like Blackbird, played without the band, were the ultimate reminder of why the man is simply the greatest songwriter of the pop era. Banter and trademark daft-daft daftness peppered the daft parts, and whilst much about the set was expected, it did not feel wholly predictable.

Big erection moments included the electric Back in the USSR, pyrotechnic Live and Let Die, and herculean Hey Jude sing-along, and all in the crowd were hopelessly drawn into the warmth and jigging of mellifluous musical security from a master who is now 68, but whom all could fantasise of as a peer. Two rapturous encores later and Macca was finally finished for the night, and for the tour; which some say could be one of his last. It seems like McCartney would be incapable of finishing even an egg on anything but a glorious high note, and an evening where sunshine poured from both sky and stage made it the perfect conclusion to Germany beating the crap out of England in the World Football Cup.

Yay football!

* An excellent rib of beef.

**Yes, he was right.

This was a guest post by Iain Haywood, mastermind of the genius that is Rock Soap Opera

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As a vegetarian, Paul McCartney lives his life by two simple rules. One is ‘never eat anything with a face’.

The other is ‘never sign anything with an arse’. There have been subsequent rules made up over the course of the last few years – ‘never dress your age’ and ‘never marry anything that can’t do the Can-Can without the aid of artificial limbs’ are perhaps the most obvious two – but the face/arse rules are the ones that really stand up.

And that spells bad news for the audience member at a recent concert who unsuccessfully tried to get Paul McCartney to sign their bottom. He doesn’t sign bottoms, you see. And, to add insult to injury, the fact that they also had a face precluded Paul McCartney from eating them in a nightmarish cannibalistic orgy. Some people just don’t have any luck.

If you go to a Paul McCartney concert these days, you pretty much know what to expect – he’ll play Something on the ukulele, he’ll skip over most songs that Wings ever recorded, he’ll play three songs from his most recent album, he’ll end the show with a patience-stretching half-hour singalong version of Hey Jude that’ll make everyone present forget why they ever liked the poxy thing in the first place, and he’ll look more and more like your nan.

And he won’t sign anyone’s bottom.

That’s right, following Ringo Starr‘s decision not to ever write his name on anything ever again because he’s a fusty old twit, Paul McCartney has decided not to sign anybody’s arse. He knows all the scams – first you sign one arse, then everyone wants their arse signed, then hundreds of arses covered in Paul McCartney signatures start appearing on eBay. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again and that’s why, during the Hard Rock Calling festival at the weekend, McCartney set out his position from the stage. Digital Spy reports:

The suggestion was written on a sign held up by an audience member. “We got one here that says, ‘Sign my butt and I’ll get it tattooed’,” McCartney said from the stage. He added: “The answer to that is no.”

Whoever held that sign up is an idiot. After all, everyone knows that the best way to get Paul McCartney to sign your arse is to hire Yoko Ono to tell everyone that John Lennon invented the act of signing arses, because then Paul McCartney will sign everybody’s arse and claim that he actually taught John how to do it so he’s the cool one IDST.

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If you tried to think of a celebrity as equally unappealing as shrieking harridan Heather Mills for her to have a public dispute with you couldn’t go far wrong with odious potato-faced toad Piers Morgan.

And you’d be right, because that is what’s happened in a Press Complaints Commission investigation completed yesterday.

The unintentionally hilarious Mills – whose face increasingly resembles a crude caricature drawn by a ‘special’ child – has objected to an article written by Morgan in which he describes his “eternal shame” at having been the cretin to introduce her to Paul McCartney in the first place. She says this isn’t true – not the ‘shame’ thing, but the ‘introduction’ thing, in the mistaken belief that anyone gives a toss.

Adding fuel to the self-righteous fire that constantly burns inside her head, Morgan went on to compare the song-writing ability of McCartney with Mills’ own literary output, which he unfavourably described as “nothing but bleating letters of complaint to newspapers and divorce lawyers”.

Mills’ genius response? She told the commission that actually, she’d written some books as well, so it’s not all ‘bleating letters’ is it? That was genuinely her big comeback.

When probed by the Commission as to exactly how many of these books she had written, Mills is reported as having replied “at least three”.

At. Least. Three.

This is the point we like to imagine the Commission staring at her without blinking for two solid minutes whilst trying to work out if she was taking the piss before telling the screeching peg-leg to bugger off.

At time of writing the Press Complaints Commission has entirely rejected her complaint, although does concede that she had “written a number of books”, according to The Independent.

Any sympathy generated for Piers Morgan immediately evaporated when everyone remembered that, well, he’s Piers Morgan isn’t he?

A number of snarky celebrity websites have expressed their concern that Mills may do them out of a job if she continues to act like such a colossal tool.

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