The ‘annoying sounding one’ from the pop legends told of his choice to abstain in an interview with The Independent, saying his decision came about as a result of the ongoing expenses scandal.

For those not in the know: the people in charge of Britain spent a great deal of taxpayers money on personal items like houses for ducks.

HOUSES FOR DUCKS.

It’s enough to make anyone mad – and it clearly did, as voter turnout was a pathetic 30 per cent. But now at least those of us who chose to avoid it have a spokesperson for the ages. A man who is as timeless as his face. One who can unite us and help us to speak with one voice.

Speaking to the lovely lefty Indie, Bionic Commandette’s ex-husband said:

“I didn’t vote in the last election. All that expenses rubbish has made me disillusioned with British politics.

“I didn’t feel comfortable using my vote to get any of them in power. All of them seem to be up for ripping off expenses and making themselves as powerful as possible and I don’t want a part of that.”

Now – not that we’re ones to judge, of course – it could be said that this sets something of a poor example to the masses who are still influenced by Liverpool’s favourite son, Jason McAteer… sorry – Paul McCartney.

Why? Well – maybe – because of the fact that, just possibly, the idea of abstaining from voting can leave the door open for more extreme, normally marginalised parties to get their foot in. For an example, see the BNP. In these most recent elections. That just happened. That Paul McCartney didn’t vote in.

So basically, it’s Paul McCartney’s fault that the BNP have two seats in the European Parliament.

First Wings, now bringing about the new dawn of fascism in Britain? Thanks Paul. We’re not going to forgive you easily this time.

Well, now you can, thanks to a new video game which allows you to sing, strum and drum along to your favourite Beatles tracks – and Octopus’s Garden.

The Beatles: Rock Band was officially launched by Sir Paul McCartney and Starr at the start of E3 in Los Angeles and will be released in September.

They were even joined by Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the wives of the dead half of the Fab Four, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Macca said: “It’s a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.”

For those of you who have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it is basically a game where you and your mates can pretend you are actually musically gifted by hitting buttons on plastic guitars and drums.

The Beatles: Rockband

Ever modest, Starr announced: “The game is good and we were great.” ‘Were’ being the important word there.

McCartney showed just how much he was involved in the making of the game, by adding: “Whoever would have thought we would have ended up as androids?”

Mind you, having seen the game played on stage, it does look pretty good. Thankfully, Yoko did not feel the need to have a go.

The remaining Beatles’ surprise appearance came at the start of a formidable line-up for the Xbox 360.

Trailers for Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Joyride and Halo 3 ODST, among others, all looked pretty impressive, but the star of the show for us was Modern Warfare 2, which is due to be released on October 11 and simply looks brilliant.

Even more exciting was the news that Metal Gear Solid is coming to the Xbox. However, there is no release date for Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

There’s nothing more we love then seeing a band reunite so they can relive former glories.

Of course, it would be cynical of us to see it as a money making money opportunity, but what do we know? Perhaps in fifty years time, the current writing staff of hecklerspray will get together in a grotty boozer to relive the past.

Plenty of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Take That and – despite no one wanting them – Crowded House have reformed for gigs and spanking new material. Now one of the world’s finest bands have come back together, just minus a couple of key band members.

The Beatles were comprised of George, John, Ringo and Paul. Sadly, George died in hospital and John got a psycho Japanese lady on his case as well as being shot in New York. Taking these two core ingredients away is kind of like baking a yummy loaf of bread without yeast and flour. It results in a dull, lifeless and overhyped product. Something like Razorlight, Kasabian or The Enemy.

With half of The Beatles gone, it still didn’t deter nutjob fans from gathering in New York of all places for a special charity show for the David Lynch foundation. With the band being formally out of action, we have since known Paul McCartney as the man who took on crazy pegleg vegan Heather Mills in a divorce settlement. This all comes whilst Ringo Starr continues his transformation into a miserable bastard who refuses to sign autographs and stars in appallingly bad insurance adverts.

However, it may be worth crediting the two performers with knowing more about the wider world then we actually thought they would. During the gig, Paul McCartney also dedicated the song Blackbird to US president Barack Obama. So what does this mean? Well using military technology from the 1940s, we can deduce the following:

A) Paul and Ringo have magic powers which they are slowly going to unleash on the world. Their next big performance is to paint every building brown to show their support to PM Gordon Brown.

B) They are supporting Barack Obama because he’s, um, black like a blackbird.

C) They wanted to look popular in America, just like Monty Python, pork scratchings and ocean blue paint.

For Beatles nerds, it would have been ace seeing their heroes performing briefly together on the same stage. Let’s face it, we know that the full band line up is going to be pretty hard to sustain.

That’s unless John Lennon has been pulling a massive joke on us all along! Ho ho ho, the cheeky Scouse scamp.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

We’ve all been there: you’re walking along with your granddad, when suddenly you spot someone approaching who is quite obviously not of your racial group. Your head sinks way down into your thorax, as the old man rather loudly says, “Hey, look. It’s a [horrific racial slur]“. Paul McCartney’s staff recently found themselves in a very similar position at an airport.

Old people, eh? With their incontinence, their droning on about their youth and their very very racist ideas. Oh, how we love them. Correction: ‘Are embarrassed by their unreformedly nasty views’.

But who would have thought that Paul McCartney would be one of those old people to have such repugnant attitudes towards other races? This is the man who built a career on African-American music. Who idolised the famed Indian mystic, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Who treated Ringo Starr as human.

But this is where we are today. TMZ has video showing jovial Macca being asked a question by an unseen cameraman while walking from his parked car to the airport departure lounge, fawning staff in tow. The questioner has an Indian accent, leading Macca to avoid answering him by quipping, “No speakee English“. Twice. Oh, titter!

It is rumoured that the tape failed to capture McCartney’s follow up: “I would like some poppadoms. And chut-a-ney. Yes indeed. Do you have some poppadoms and chut-a-ney please, Sahib?”. Delivered while clasping his hands in front of him and moving his head from side to side.

Old Man McCartney’s outburst is obviously part of his beloved PETA’s latest ad campaign;: you know, the one where they dress up as members of the KKK. But please, PETA, do not incorporate him into your other recent adverts: the world does not need to see Macca frotting a courgette.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Paul McCartney from The Beatles has announced that none of his band’s music will be available on iTunes for the foreseeable future because everyone is arguing over money. But Paul McCartney says he wants The Beatles on iTunes, EMI wants The Beatles on iTunes, and iTunes wants The Beatles on iTunes, so all is not yet lost.

Until then, the music of The Beatles is still available on something we’re told is called a Seed Ee, and you can put these Beatles Seed Ees into your computer and download them onto iTunes that way. But this Seed Ee-buying method does involve leaving the house, and that’s so old-fashioned that they may as well be asking to go into the woods and kill Beatles songs with rocks for food. What do we look like, bloody Luddites?

As we speak, The Beatles are everywhere. You can buy CDs by The Beatles, movies by The Beatles, books about Beatles, posters of The Beatles, soon there’ll be a videogame about The Beatles and if Paul McCartney has his way you’ll also be able to buy 14 unlistenable minutes of The Beatles pissing about on drugs. The Beatles are everywhere.

OK, not everywhere. Type ‘The Beatles’ into iTunes and you’ll be presented with the following albums:

* A Tribute To The Beatles by The Silver Beatles

* The Bornagen Beatles Play The Beatles Greatest Hits

* Butchering The Beatles – A Headbashing Tribute

* Lullaby Renditions Of The Beatles by Rockabye Baby

* The Bingo Kids Sing Beatles Hits For Kids

That last one, by the way, is so close to being a work of demented genius that if we don’t finish this post it’ll be because the overwhelming power of it hypnotised us and drove us insane and we had to throw ourselves out of a window to rid our bodies of its evil. But we digress.

The thing you don’t get when you search for The Beatles on iTunes is The Beatles. But this isn’t something that anybody wants, which is why The Beatles had been working with EMI and Apple to fix this issue in recent months.

Notice the word ‘had’ there. According to Paul McCartney, the talks are mired up in all kinds of red tape and it’ll be ages before everyone realises that nobody cares either way because they all borrowed their dad’s Beatles CDs and downloaded them onto their iPod about four years ago. Reuters reports:

We’d like to do it,” McCartney was quoted as telling the BBC. “We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. Last word I got back was it’s stalled at the moment,” McCartney added. “But I really hope it will happen because I think it should.”

Despite Paul McCartney’s caginess over the exact issues preventing The Beatles from being included on iTunes, we think we have an idea – iTunes wants a bigger slice of the sales, EMI wants a bigger slice of the sales and Paul McCartney is waiting for Ringo Starr to die so he can sell all the old Beatles albums under the new name Paul McCartney Presents: Paul McCartney And The Paul McCartney Four Sing The Hits Of Paul McCartney And A Couple Of Other Dead Blokes.

We’re only joking, of course. But The Beatles had better hurry up and get their act together – they longer they keep iTunes waiting, the more people will think that iTunes only included Ringo Starr’s solo albums in its catalogue because it actually likes his music. And that’s nothing short of a bloody insult.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

But now Paul McCartney has dreamt up a brand new way to make even the most ardent Beatles fan drop to their knees and scream “Stop it! Stop punching it! It’s already dead!” at him – he’s going to release the never-before-heard, experimental 14-minute Beatles track Carnival Of Light.

Carnival Of Light is, of course, probably most famous for being just about the only Beatles track to not be included on The Beatles Anthology because George Harrison and Ringo Starr thought it was rubbish. And look at some of the stuff Ringo Starr has released – he’s essentially saying that Carnival Of Light is even worse than Snookeroo.

The Beatles all had their own individual ways of making people dislike them. John Lennon had Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr had his obnoxious refusal to sign autographs and George Harrison had Got My Mind Set On You. But Paul McCartney has really put the effort in, turning people off by going over and above in his efforts to rape the carcass of The Beatles harder than anyone else thought possible.

We thought that Paul McCartney had already reached the bottom of the barrel – what with Rock Band: The Beatles, the horrible Love mash-up album and Let It Be Naked, a nightmarish ‘What The Beatles Would Be Like If Paul McCartney Had His Way’ vision to which the only logical conclusion is a Paul McCartney’s Greatest Hits Of The Beatles album that contains Maxwell’s Silver Hammer 13 times in a row and a version of Love Me Do without any mouth organ on it – but we were wrong.

And that’s because Paul McCartney has decided to release Carnival Of Light – an experimental Beatles track from 1967 that goes on for 14 minutes and is presumably unreleased because it’s a pile of unlistenable self-indulgent twaddle. But anyway, The Observer reports:

The track, a jumble of shrieks and psychedelic effects, is said to be as far from the melodic ballads that made Sir Paul McCartney famous as it is possible to imagine. But now McCartney has said that the public will have the chance to judge for themselves. ‘It does exist,’ McCartney says. The former Beatle confirms that he still has a master tape of the work and says he suspects that ‘the time has come for it to get its moment’.

We’ve decoded that last sentence in the hecklerspray labs, and we’ve figured out that it actually means “Heather Mills took so much of my money that I’m prepared to release anything, even a drug-blattered tuneless dirge from 41 years ago that lasts for half an episode of EastEnders, so long as I can get some of my beautiful, beautiful money back.”

But who knows how Carnival Of Light will be released. Will it be included on a new album of Beatles rarities? Will it be released as a standalone download? Or will it be renamed See John Lennon? See? I Came Up With This A Year Before Revolution 9 And You Still Get Called The Arty One! I’m The Arty Beatle! This Is So Arty That Nobody Will Ever Listen To It All The Way Through More Than Once. So Shove That Up Your Arse You Dead Idiot? Nobody can really say for sure.

But it’ll definitely be the last one.

The MTV Europe Music Awards took place last night in Liverpool, and it was the perfect opportunity for the city to show off that famous sense of humour it’s always blathering on about. How did it do this? By naming Rick Astley as the Best Act Ever? No – it did it by giving 30 Seconds To Mars multiple awards even though they’re the worst band in the history of recorded music. Oh, you crazy Liverpudlians with your funny pranks.

Also Paul McCartney got given something called an Ultimate Legend award at the MTV EMAs, which isn’t surprising because he’s hands-down the thing that Liverpool is most famous for. Well, the most tangible one, anyway – it’s not like you can give an award to a chippy sense of wounded resentment, is it?

For all its sins – like the way it commoditised the music industy and its perverse insistence on keeping Kerry Katona in gainful employment – MTV is making the world a better place. No, really, it is.

And it’s all down to MTV’s foreign exchange awards host scheme. At the MTV VMAs earlier this year, Europe sent Russell Brand over to America as a host and then sat back as he offended everyone in sight. And so America retaliated by letting Katy Perry host last night’s MTV EMAs in Liverpool, even though everyone hates her because she held a knife once.

But anyway, the awards. Rather than do what others are doing and grumble that hardly anyone British won any MTV EMAs even though Britain had graciously allowed MTV to hold its awards show here, we’ll just try and concentrate on the facts. And those facts are:

* Pink won Most Addictive Track for a song we heard once and can’t remember.

* Kanye West won Ultimate Urban, depriving everyone of the only reason to watch music awards shows – the embittered Kanye West spaz-out.

* As with the MTV VMAs, Britney Spears won several awards, including Album Of The Year, Act Of 2008 and the We Promise To Give You All Sorts Of Awards You Don’t Deserve If You Let Us Do A Documentary About You bumlick award.

* 30 Seconds To Mars won the Rock Out and Video Star awards, which we’re taking as either a) an elaborate joke that we haven’t got yet, b) a shameful recognition that Jared Twatting Leto was the most famous person from an American rock band to bother showing up, or c) that God hates us all.

And then there was Paul McCartney. As the sort of guest of honour at the MTV EMAs, it was only right that Paul McCartney was given the biggest award of the night – the Ultimate Legend award or, as it’s informally known, the It’s Safe To Assume That All Paul McCartney Albums In The Future Will Be Rubbish award.

As Liverpool’s most famous son, not only did Paul McCartney turn up to the MTV EMAs but he was also deeply gracious in victory, as Reuters reports:

“Many years ago four little boys were born here in Liverpool and we went on to do quite well,” McCartney said of his former band the Beatles, the most successful pop act of all time. “So thanks to all my family, to all of you for coming along, to all of you in Liverpool, to everyone in Britain, to everyone in America for voting for Mr. Obama.”

So congratulations to Paul McCartney for winning his MTV EMA, and commiserations to Ringo Starr. Apparently he was the first choice to win the Ultimate Legend award, but he must have thrown his invitation in the bin or something.

Paul McCartney has chosen to summon up all the energy in his wrinkly little body to call on his fans to boycott McDonald’s. Not because of the deforestation caused by the fast food industry’s mass farming practises, though, or McDonald’s aggressive child-centric marketing, or even the potential health risks inherent in a predominantly fast food diet.

No, Paul McCartney wants everyone to boycott McDonald’s because someone put a photo of Paul McCartney up in a Liverpool branch without asking him first. Come back next week, when Paul McCartney tries to ban abortion because he heard that someone who aborted her pregnancy once hummed three notes from Love Me Do for one and a half seconds in a shower on her own in 1975.

People often give John Lennon all the credit for being the political one in The Beatles, but that overlooks a vast portion of Paul McCartney’s oeuvre. Give Ireland Back To The Irish, for example, was a bloodied warcry for the abolition of crappy Irish-themed funpubs. Hi Hi Hi was an impassioned called for the legalisation of Hi-Tec trainers. And Dance Tonight was a thundering commentary on the uneasy political friendship between Pakistan and India, and not a cacky load of bum wanked out on a mandolin in five minutes like you thought.

Lately, though, Paul McCartney has been flexing his political muscles with a little bit more might than usual. He invoked the wrath of fundamental Islam by playing a concert in Israel recently and, what’s more, he was slightly rude about Gordon Ramsay in a supermarket magazine, too. Paul McCartney has got the fire back in his belly, that’s for sure.

And now Paul McCartney has picked his next target – McDonald’s. As a devout vegetarian, Paul McCartney has long since spoken of the environmental cost of humanity’s passion for meat, but that’s not why he’s angry at McDonald’s. Nor is it because the meagre vegetarian options on sale at McDonald’s all taste like slurry.

No, Paul McCartney has decided to go after McDonald’s because one branch in Liverpool has a picture of him in it. The bastards. Paul McCartney’s serious, too – he wants all his fans to boycott the restaurants, as The Telegraph reports:

The singer was said to be furious after discovering pictures of the Beatles had been placed prominently in a restaurant in his home town. A spokesman for Sir Paul said: “What sort of morons do McDonald’s think Beatles’ fans are. It’s ridiculous and insulting to use images to peddle hamburgers. Fans should boycott Mcdonald’s, and not just in Liverpool.”

It’s good that the spokesman managed to say “Beatles’ fans” and not “fans of Paul McCartney’s solo work,” isn’t it, because that’s the difference between a large percentage of the world’s population and a couple of old ladies with bad hearing who drink at Starbucks more often than they probably should. That would have probably been quite a crappy boycott, to be honest.

Anyway, we think that McDonald’s branches having pictures of their towns’ favourite sons is a brilliant idea – because that way people in Birmingham could eat their burgers under big pictures of UB40, residents of Brentwood could order their Egg McMuffins next to pictures of Chantelle from Big Brother and everyone in Nottingham could utilise the McDonald’s free wifi facility with several giant portraits of Dr Harold Shipman looming at them from every surface.

But still, we should probably do what Paul McCartney says and boycott McDonald’s. Otherwise he might try and kiss us, and that’d be like kissing your granny. Bleurgh.

Let’s say he wanted to swing in through your living room window dressed as an octopus. Nobody would call him a mentalist. It’s because he’s flipping Paul McCartney from The Beatles. You have to be polite to him; he’s not a Sir for nothing.

It’s well known that when The Beatles were locked away in a Liverpool studio many moons ago, they were under the influence of the mindbending drug LSD. So will Paul decide to swallow a couple of ecstasy pills so he can make more druggie inspired music? Who knows, but we expect him to don bright neon clothing and dance around like a twat with a couple of glowsticks. You see, he’s going to bring the party to YOU with an album full of electronic treats.

Paul McCartney hasn’t been in the spotlight for his musical ability recently. Firstly he had to deal with his second wife Heather Mills, who accused him of all sorts of wrongdoings. Once she was disposed of, Paul got all kissy kissy with a millionaire called Nancy Shevell. The two have been spotted together regularly and have probably caused all sorts of embarrassment for their children as they are forced to watch their parents eat each other’s face off.

Lately it was all about Paul McCartney and Israel. Not taking to peace and freedom that well, terrorists threatened to blow him up and force everyone to burn their Stella McCartney designer burkas. Triumphantly, the nasty Middle Eastern men didn’t attempt to disrupt the gig and, instead, they got their asses kicked off an old man. Take that you pesky terrorists! We have the weapon of music.

Now Paul’s back to release more records that will probably be crap, but bizarrely lauded because he used to be in The Beatles. Instead of writing more terrible love songs about coconuts or coyotes, or producing cringe-worthy classical music, Paul is instead going to rave it up big style. It’ll be the perfect record to get wasted to as all your mates come round to have one of those Skins parties where everyone wears clothes from Topshop, gets pissed off a can of cider and ends up shagging everyone else by the end of the night.

So what will be the end product of Paul McCartney’s dance direction sound like? How about a bit of early house music sounding house music? Or does he want to mash up our ears and record an entire album of 200bpm gabba colliding with some jungle influences for shits and giggles?

Either way, we are genuinely interested in seeing what he comes out with. No seriously, after this album we look forward to his ghetto rap album where Paul McCartney collaborates with Snoopy Dog, Kanye West and Lil Wayne. There can’t be that many other genres he hasn’t had a stab at.

But wait! The pesky Scouser is trying to throw you by releasing this record under a pseudonym. Going under the guise of The Fireman, Paul must be pretty sure this record will be hot stuff when it’s released. Ouch, our hands will be burnt after touching the CD, and our speakers may just melt from the heat emitted from the album. It should really carry a health warning.

Now, we always thought a lot of care and thought went into a song from an ex-Beatle. But as the BBC reports, it seems that he found the process quite an easy one:

“Each song was written by Sir Paul and recorded in the space of one day.”

As we said, it won’t matter if the end product is gash. They’ll be plenty of people telling him it’s the best thing since Brian Eno and early works of Aphex Twin.

Or maybe we’re jealous that our album of rubbing elastic bands against cups hasn’t been snapped up yet.

Despite the all the threats against his life, Paul McCartney and his 5,000 bodyguards finally played their long-awaited peace concert in Israel last night, with no disruption whatsoever from fanatical snipers or would-be suicide bombers or whatnot. Paul McCartney lives to fight another day!

Of course, Paul McCartney’s masterstroke was to address both sides of the Middle East conflict in their own language right at the start of the concert. First McCartney opened with “Shalom, Tel Aviv, shana tova, ahlan!” giving the crowd the traditional Hebrew greeting ahead of Monday’s Rosh Hashanah celebrations. Then he added “Ramadan kareem” which, as we all know, is Arabic for “Not the face! Not the face!”

When you’ve been around for as long as Paul McCartney, you don’t worry about little things like fanatical death threats. That’s because, when you reach an age where death could come just as easily from a fall on an icy street, a sudden loud noise behind you or a faulty walk-in bath, Islamic extremists just seem noisy and a little attention-seeking in comparison.

That’s why, although threats were made against his life when he announced last night’s concert in Israel, Paul McCartney vowed to play on regardless, with his only defence being his music and the 5,000 bodyguards he hired to protect him from everything.

And play on he did. In photos taken a few hours before the concert, you can see no sign of anxiety on Paul McCartney’s face at all. Although, actually, it might have been there – Paul McCartney’s face now resembles a 3D representation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream sculpted from a bucket of week-old porridge so perfectly these days that we haven’t got a clue what’s going on with it – but we’ll guess there wasn’t.

And Paul McCartney was right not to worry either, because in the end the concert came off without a single assassination attempt. E! Online reports:

McCartney then unleashed a string of hits from both his Beatles and Wings days, among them “I’ll Follow the Sun,” “Live and Let Die,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Yesterday,” “Jet,” “Drive My Car,” “All My Loving,” “Eleanor Rigby,” and, of course, his signature sing-along “Hey Jude.” The concert, which boasted two encores and many, many wild standing ovations, lasted about two and a half hours.

No wonder Paul McCartney got such a wild reception – as well as songs by The Beatles and Wings, Paul also managed to spin some brand-new material into the show, like the just-written Don’t Blow Me Up, along with others like Please Don’t Blow Me Up, Think Of My Children (I Beg of You) and the fan favourite in-waiting Don’t Bloody Blow Me Up I’m Paul McFuckingCartney.

So we can all agree that Paul McCartney’s Israel concert was as epic and statesmanlike as it could have possibly been, and all because he thought to address both the Jewish and Arab sides of the argument in their native languages. It’ll backfire for sure when the Greek Orthodox gang realise they they didn’t get a shout-out and send over a suicide squad to finish Paul McCartney off once and for all, but hey ho.

And because of this, Paul McCartney’s concert tonight in Israel is shrouded with danger. Islamic extremists are apparently so determined to kill Paul McCartney tonight that nobody is taking any chances – which is why 5,000 bodyguards have been hired to surround Paul McCartney at all times during his visit. That’s even more that George Bush needed.

The message of this is clear – although he takes the death threats incredibly seriously, Paul McCartney will not deprive the Israeli people of his music. The other message, of course, is that Paul McCartney’s got so many bouncers around him at the moment that there won’t be anyone working the door of your local nightclub tonight, so you could probably get away with jeans and trainers if you wanted.

Paul McCartney has played some important concerts in his life – Shea Stadium, The Super Bowl, Red Square – but none have been quite as important as tonight’s concert in Tel Aviv. That’s because religious extremists didn’t decide to promote any of the other concerts by promising that Paul McCartney would get blown up by the middle of the second half.

Islamic fanatics have threatened to kill Paul McCartney if his concert tonight in Israel goes ahead. You see, to them Paul McCartney is the ultimate icon of western opulence and his death would be as heavily symbolic to the world as the events of 911. Also, they’re totally pissed off that Paul McCartney never responded to their letter asking if they could use Wonderful Christmastime as their theme tune.

But Paul McCartney has refused to cancel tonight’s concert, believing that not singing C Moon to a load of middle-aged Jewish people would literally be as bad as dying anyway. So McCartney’s decided to do the next best thing instead – he’s hired 5,000 bodyguards. The Mirror reports:

The vast security for Sir Paul McCartney’s Tel Aviv concert tonight even dwarfs the protection given to President Bush when he visited Israel. A 5,000-strong security team will ensure Macca, 66, is watched around the clock in the wake of death threats from Islamic fanatics. A massive security army guarding Macca includes 20 agents from Israel’s elite Mossad intelligence organisation as well as officers from Britain’s MI6.

He’s just playing it safe, of course – Paul McCartney doesn’t need all that security. He has his own ways of stopping the terrorists, like launching into a 20-minute version of Hey Jude so utterly tedious that it’ll knock any religious extremist into a deep slumber for up to a week. He could achieve a similar effect by playing any song from his last three albums, but the risk is just too high – these fanatics aren’t people you’d want to anger, remember.

And anyway, we’re only assuming that Paul McCartney will be playing the concert tonight. For all we know he could be sending on a stand-in in his place. For all we know that could be your nan up on stage tonight. Don’t pretend you could tell the difference.

No, instead, the concert in Israel could be Paul McCartney’s last because a gang of Islamic extremists are running around telling everyone that they’re going to kill him if he follows through with his plan to play there.

However, Paul McCartney has shown admirable strength of character by refusing to bow to these religious fanatics. In fact, if anything this death threat has just strengthened Paul McCartney’s resolve – not only will he play the concert in Israel, but he’s even going to turn it into a live album, entitled Paul McCartney Live Behind Six Inches Of Reinforced Plexiglass Inside A Sealed Lead Box Surrounded By Several Bodyguards And At Least A Couple Of Tanks.

You know what offends Islamic fundamentalists the most about the west? No, it’s not our consumerist lifestyles, our swaggering cultural dominance or our free and easy attitudes to sex and stimulants – it’s the bloody Frog Song.

Seriously, al Qaeda didn’t even exist until Paul McCartney wrote The Frog Song. There they were, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Hamza, all sitting round the kitchen table discussing the Pauly Shore movie Biodome when – bam! – all of a sudden The Frog Song by Paul McCartney came on the radio and everyone more or less instantly decided to bring western civilisation to its knees. True story.

Since then, the terrorists have been determined to finish Paul McCartney off, and now it looks like they might have their chance. Next Thursday Paul McCartney is going to play a concert in Tel Aviv, which would be fine except for all the Islamic extremists carping on about killing him if he does. But, as The New York Times reports, McCartney is unbowed:

Paul McCartney has refused to cancel his concert in Israel, despite threats from Islamic militants, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. The response follows comments made by Omar Bakri Muhammad, a militant Lebanese Islamic activist, in an interview. Mr. Bakri said, “If he values his life, Mr. McCartney must not come to Israel… He will not be safe there. The sacrifice operatives will be waiting for him.”

Oh God, this is worse than we thought. Paul McCartney is relevant again. Ugh.

Anyway, it’s absolutely right that Paul McCartney should play on in Israel despite the death threats. If he can see off threats from Gordon Ramsay he can definitely see off threats from organised terrorist groups. You know what they say – if Israelis aren’t being charged through the nose to listen to an old man with a face like a ruptured hot water bottle sing a load of 40-year-old songs in a way that can’t even come close to replicating the original versions before being relentlessly hounded to buy an overpriced programme and tour T-shirt then the terrorists have won.

Actually, Paul McCartney should be safe, because terrorism experts have already dismissed the death threats as not credible. For some reason the Islamic activists sort of went off the idea of blowing up Paul McCartney’s car with a mortar as soon as they realised that he’d divorced Heather Mills and she wouldn’t be coming with him. Funny that.

Anyway, let’s just hope that Paul McCartney remains safe duing his time in Israel. Not because we care about him or anything, but with John Lennon already shot and George Harrison already stabbed, can you imagine what an obnoxious bighead Ringo Starr would turn into if Paul McCartney got blown up by a terrorist and he was the last one left? God, it’d be unbearable.

But now the gloves have come off, because Paul McCartney has just squared up to testicle-faced TV chef Gordon Ramsay in a magazine over a comment the chef made about wanting to electrocute some vegetarians. It’s literally the most dramatic fight between two funny-looking millionaires about vegetables that Sainsbury’s Magazine has ever seen.

But who to side for? On one hand Paul McCartney was in the most famous band of all time and wrote Yesterday and Hey Jude, and on the other Gordon Ramsay can cook dinner quite well. Oh, this is a right bloody dilemma.

Gordon Ramsay is known for a handful of things. Firstly he’s single-handedly changed the way that British cooking is seen around the world. Secondly he’s got a bit of a dirty mouth and a freakishly monomaniacal fixation on his own droopy manboobs.

Thirdly, Gordon Ramsay hates vegetarians. He hates vegetarians so much that on the last series of The F Word he spent an entire season rearing two veal calves – the cruelest meat of them all, remember – only to shove slices of their dead bodies into the terrified mouths of 50 vegetarians on the final episode to prove his superiority over them, presumably because nobody would let him swagger around slapping everyone in the chops with his willy instead.

How much does Gordon Ramsay hate vegetarians? Let’s put it in Gordon Ramsay’s own words:

“My biggest nightmare would be if the kids ever came up to me and said “Dad, I’m a vegetarian”. Then I would sit them on the fence and electrocute them.”

And this hatred of the poor protein-strapped vegetarians has struck a nerve with Paul McCartney. He’s been a staunch vegetarian for 30 years because he once saw a fish that looked a bit sad or something. And when he hears Gordon Ramsay trash-talk his feeble brethren like that, there’s only one thing he can do about it.

And that’s trash-talk back. In Sainsbury’s Magazine. At a time that coincidentally happens to be right before he relaunches the Linda McCartney range of vegetarian sausages. The man clearly means business. Here’s what Paul McCartney said:

“I think it’s a case of live and let live. I will talk to people about the advantages of vegetarianism, and it will upset me if we’ve had a good conversation and they turn around and say something stupid. I just read a quote from Gordon Ramsay… ‘If my daughter ever grew up and married a vegetarian, I’d never forgive her.’ But even that I would forgive because it’s not my affair, it’s not up to me if he talks stupid or not.”

Yeah! That’s, um, mildly giving it to him! You’ll politely show Gordon Ramsay that you, um, considered his views in depth before coming to a differing viewpoint! Grrr!

Anyway, this Paul McCartney/ Gordon Ramsay face-off looks set to rage on for ages, or at least until everyone gets a bit bored of it and finds something else to entertain themselves with. So probably a couple of minutes or so, in truthfulness.

Really, though, Gordon Ramsay got off lightly. Paul McCartney isn’t a man you want to cross. At least not when you’re anywhere near the wine glass cupboard, anyway. Allegedly.

No one ever thinks that last one is for real, so the answer is always ‘yes’. But, a poor hotel worker man has to look that question square in the face now that he is dating Heather Mills, and she’s rather delighted about it all.

Yay! It’s a rare night when we aren’t tossing in turmoil over Heather Mills’ happiness.

Heather Mills isn’t just an activist for defenseless edible creatures, or a former model especially popular with the seeing-impaired demographic, but she’s also, of course, Paul McCartney’s ex-wife, who was awarded a paltry £24 million in the divorce.

She’s also a woman that screeches like a banshee when she gets upset, but that doesn’t mean she’s not looking for love.

So, we submit to you, the impartial jury, what man would not want to get with that? What man? Every single man anywhere ever, actually, except for this one guy, Jamie Walker.

No, you don’t know him, and neither do we. The only reason you should care is that six months from now when you hear about a new reality show coming out featuring Heather McCartney and her man-accessory picking our dressy prosthetic legs for a forthcoming charity auction, you’ll have a vague recollection of him, and it will bring you fond memories of us, as well as save you an internet search.

Anyway, Heather dug him up at the Tenerife Hotel she was staying at with her unfortunately-named daughter, Beatrice. This Jamie character is pretty much the exact opposite of Paul McCartney. He’s 36 years old, brawny, muscular, hasn’t been a member of The Beatles, and reportedly doesn’t have two coins to rub together between shifts handing out towels to rich divorcees at the pool.

It appears Heather isn’t put off by his lack of fortune, though. She knows what’s really important: his rockin’ bod. A so-called “friend” of Heather’s had this to say:

“Heather is completely infatuated with Jamie. He is a gym junkie and Heather has been boasting his body is so much fitter than Paul's.”

In other news, this year’s Master of the Obvious award goes to Heather Mills for her poignant observations between the physique of her 66-year-old ex, and her current 36-year-old hunk of man candy. We will re-broadcast her acceptance speech once we have slowed it down and lowered the pitch so that dogs aren’t the only ones who can hear it.

That’s not because Paul McCartney was one of the principle songwriters in the world’s biggest-ever band, mind you. No, it’s because Paul McCartney has now been given an honorary Doctor of Music degree from Yale University. Just an honorary one, mind you – Paul McCartney isn’t that good at music.

Despite the token nature of the doctorate, Paul McCartney’s new title means that he now gets to fist-fight Dr Fox to determine who has the most pointlessly hokey medical-sounding title. Careful, Sir Paul – Foxy fights dirty, plus you’re really bloody old. The odds aren’t looking great.

If you’d fallen off a ladder and snapped your leg in 16 places, who would you want rushing to help you – an actual doctor or a wobbly-headed old man who looks more and more like your dead grandmother with every passing day and once wrote a song about some happy frogs?

Of course you’d want the froggy old man, because real doctors are inherently untrustworthy and there’s a chance that the old man would amputate your leg, marry you then divorce you a few months later and give you millions of quid. But only if he’s Paul McCartney, mind you – it’s less likely to happen if he’s the scary old granny tramp who sleeps outside Argos and scream-sings an improvised song called Happy Frogs (Crawling Out Of My Arse) at strangers all day.

Anyway, this is all just a long-winded way of saying that Paul McCartney is Yale University’s newest honorary doctor of music. The Associated Press reports:

Yale said the 65-year-old McCartney awakened a generation, giving a fresh sound to rock and roll and to rhythm and blues. Yale University President Richard Levin evoked some of the songwriter’s most memorable lines. “Here, there and everywhere,” Levin said, quoting a line from a Beatles song, “you have pushed the boundaries of the familiar to create new classics. We admire your musical genius and your generous support of worthy causes.”

Levin then added “Plus you aren’t dead like John Lennon. Seriously, he’d have got this title years ago if he was still alive.”

However, after the year that he’s had – what with his divorce from Heather Mills and his heart surgery and his multitude of alleged sexual liaisons with women young enough to be his daughter – Paul McCartney needed cheering up, and if it took an ego-boosting but ultimately worthless publicity stunt by an American university to do so, then so be it.

Plus, for all his awards and record sales and increasingly legendary status as a musician and songwriter, Paul McCartney never gained any formal qualifications for his music, but at least that can change now. Paul McCartney is now a genuine music graduate, which means he can now follow the path of millions of music graduates before him.

That’s so long as Superdrug will employ a Saturday boy his age, of course.