Moranthology (24 page)

“The other big news story of the year has been hacking,” I remind him. “You were hacked?”

“Yes,” McCartney says, looking serious. “There would be stories about how I was going on holiday to the Bahamas, or whatever—and I would know I hadn't told anyone. And the worst thing is that then, you suspect
everyone.
Your PA, who you thought was a great girl—‘What if?' At the time of the divorce, I realized there was quite a possibility of many people hacking me, for
various
reasons . . .”

Paul raises his eyebrows here. Clearly he means Heather.

“So I just used to talk on the phone, and say, ‘If you're taking this down, get a life.' It is a pity not to be able to talk freely on a private phone call. I tend not to say much on the phone now. If I leave a message, it's quite benign. You edit yourself according to the new circumstances of the new world. I think it really would be quite good to get some sort of laws. Actually,” McCartney continues, lightening, “do you know what
really
annoys me? I'd like to be able to go on holiday and not have to hold my belly in for two whole weeks [in case of paparazzi]. I saw some guy on the beach the other week, playing in the sand, belly hanging out over his shorts, and I was so envious.”

McCartney goes back to musing on hacking. “You know, I wouldn't mind a tabloid journalist's job. Obviously I've got the better job—but I like the idea of just . . . making up crap. David Beckham. You could go
anywhere
with David Beckham.”

With McCartney's PR telling me my time is up, this the point where I ask Paul McCartney the question about what he'd do if his face got mashed up in an horrific accident.

“Paul. If you had a terrible accident and your face got all smashed up—heaven forbid, obviously—would you rebuild it to look like yourself: or would you change it, so you could finally become anonymous again?”

I think it's quite a good question. It touches on fame, beauty, identity, ego, and the idea of living two lives in one lifetime. But Paul's actual, current face suggests he doesn't think so.

“I would rebuild it to look like David Cameron,” McCartney says, clearly thinking this is a shit question.

“Why?”

“Because I'm kidding. Silly girl.”

“Sorry—it's just, Cameron? It seems like a uniquely horrible idea.”

“I know. That's why it's funnier,” McCartney says, patiently. “Imagine me singing ‘Yesterday
,
' then people going ‘Who is it? Cameron?' But, seriously, I'm from the ‘Don't go there school.' I don't like visualizing stuff like that. I like to visualize myself living a wonderful life, being very happy, and all my family making a wonderful old age. I don't imagine things like that.”

And that's it—my time is up with Paul McCartney, which I managed to end by bumming him out with visions of his face being mashed into a pulp. We have our picture taken together, then I go out into the corridor, where I make a low, sad roaring sound, such as Chewbacca makes in
Star Wars
when things have gone wrong. Why did I ask McCartney about his face being mashed up? Why? Why? I am the worst Beatles fan since Mark David Chapman.

A
n hour before showtime, and the unmistakeable sound of an American tour manager balling someone out comes from just outside the catering area. Anyone who has seen
Spinal Tap
will know what this sounds like.

“I've told you before—if they don't have a laminate, you KICK THEIR ASSES OUT!”

It appears that someone has been sneaking local chancers into the venue. It's not clear who, exactly, is responsible for this—but it's notable the Chief of Police and his sidekick are standing there, in their shiny boots and slightly-too-large hats, with faces like smacked arses. No one in McCartney's entourage is talking to them.

“There's no reason for them to be here—but you just can't keep the local police out if they insist they want to come,” someone explains.

When the shouting ends, the Chief of Police and his sidekick sit alone, in catering, and eat McCartney's tiramisu with that look on their faces which is specifically the face angry Italian policemen pull while eating creamy puddings on their own.

Showtime, and, on stage, McCartney looks twenty years younger than he did in his dressing room. It's not the lighting—it's the music. Singing “Penny Lane” is more effective than Botox or a facelift, if you are the person who wrote it in the first place. He piles into a two-and-a-half hour set with all the attack of a man in his late teens. This is a
ferocious
gig. There's a moment in “Jet” where he's playing that heavy, strobing, fuzz-edged bass with one hand, staring out at the crowd with a look that, for a moment, I can't place.

Then I recall an interview where he's asked, “Does going to see other bands make you feel competitive?”

And McCartney replies, “Actually, it works the other way. Without being too immodest, I tend to see shows and think, ‘Well, we rock out pretty well.' ”

And suddenly I know the answer to the question, “What's in this for Paul McCartney?” All that stuff about being an insecure performer—yes, that probably is one part of the motivation. But the combustion comes from combining insecurity with the fact that McCartney is the best in the world at this, he knows it, and the quietly aggressive part of him wants to go out there and, in the most elegant way possible, smash his competition to bits.

At root, McCartney is still the quiffed-up rock 'n' roll kid in the incongruous combination of black leather and cowboy boots in Hamburg in 1961, off his tits on speed at 4
AM
, playing to sailors and whores. We might be in an arena that has spent all day waiting for a knighted global dignitary to turn up—but the set he blasts through is like the Death Star of rock'n'pop. Nothing can touch its fire power. This old man is in the middle of the greatest pop show on Earth. Just with the opening
“Aaaah”
of “Eleanor Rigby,”
he acclerates away from anyone who might come close.

As the gig comes to the end, I am confused as to why, joining us at the side of stage, is a whooping, dancing Kate Middleton, freaking out to “Helter Skelter.” One always
presumes
everyone in the world is a McCartney fan—but I'm amazed at how little security the future Queen has. Then I realize this is, actually, Nancy Shevell—Lady McCartney—still-new wedding ring catching in the light. She has the extremely cheerful air of someone who came off honeymoon three weeks ago, and is really enjoying unwrapping all the diamonds off her John Lewis wedding list.

As Paul comes to the end of the “Golden Slumbers” medley, Shevell fetches a red terry cloth robe and, when he comes offstage, sweating, she wraps it around him, with a kiss.

McCartney exits down the ramp with her—out of the Medioforum, and into his tour bus. His private jet is waiting: he'll be in bed in St. John's Wood by 3
AM
. The crew line his route to the tour bus—whooping and clapping. He high-fives each one as he passes them.

“Thank you!” he shouts to everyone. “Thank you!”

And into the fog goes a blue-light flashing motorcade, over which can be heard the half-joyful, half-mournful cries of “PAUL! PAUL!”—the sound of his every entrance and exit since 1962.

I fly back to London with his plectrum in my purse.

 

And now onto celebrity weight-loss—a subject which, in Google returns, brings up more results than “potential nuclear holocaust” and “Charlie bit my finger” combined.

C
ELEBRITY
W
EIGHT-
L
OSS:
T
HE
T
RUTH

O
ver the years I've been very fat (size 24—try getting
that
through the turnstiles at Regent's Park Zoo in a duffelcoat) and I've been very thin (actually I haven't, but all articles on weight have to start with this sentence, I have noticed)—and all through these vagaries of heftiness I have observed one thing: women have to lie about how they lost weight; and the more famous you are, the greater the lie.

If a non-famous person loses ten pounds and is asked to comment on it, they'll say, “Oh, I ate a bit more salad, and went running a couple of times,” in a slightly awkward, “Let's drop this” manner.

The reality is, of course, that they've been running up hills at 8
AM
in the morning with “Don't Stop Believin' ” on repeat on their iPod, weeping with the searing pain that is manifesting, mysteriously, in one buttock only, only to return home to a great big plate of cold beetroot mash, and would rather die than tell you.

This reticence to fully disclose the reality of the endeavor stems from a) an unwillingness to become a Weight-Loss Bore (returning from the toilet: “Hey—everybody! Guys! Listen up! I lost an OUNCE!”) and b) an awareness that if you—as is statistically likely—end up putting the weight back on, you don't want everyone casting pitying looks at you, and saying, “All that effort—and then she blew it all on ten-day holiday with an all-you-can-eat savory crepe-buffet. Oh, the humanity.”

No—as regards the circumferance of your arse, as far as everyone else is concerned, you want them to think it's, “Easy come, easy go.” An air of studied casualness about your weight is the aim. It's no biggie.

However. When it comes to celebrity weight-loss, this “studied casualness” is taken to absolutely absurd extremes. As someone who spends half their life reading glossy gossip mags—and therefore doesn't miss a single post-baby/new album/new boyfriend weight-loss story—I can confidently announce that we are currently living through an Imperial Phase of celebrity lies about weight-loss, and have duly collated my favorite ones here:

1. First post-baby photo-shoot: mom's looking HOT! She's at a premiere in a Herve Leger Bandage dress—just SIX WEEKS after pooing out a human-child! How, Celebrity—HOW?

“I've been so busy running around after the baby, the weight just dropped off!” celebrity mom reveals, giggling.

Whoah here, missy, whoah! “I've been so busy running around after the baby, the weight dropped off”? But how can that be? Your experience is so very dissimilar to mine! When
I
had babies, I seem to remember most of that time being spent pinned under a fractiously half-sleeping colicky infant: unable to move in order to carry out even the most basic of human functions, like breathing particularly deeply, or finding the TV remote.

The first nine months of a baby's life are an infamously non-mobile period. A baby's notable stasis has been the inspiration for a number of high-profile inventions—such as the stroller, and the sling. How—six weeks after birth—anyone could be “running around” after something with all the motility of an ancient tumulus is an absolute mystery to me. Perhaps celebrity dads strap the babies to remote-control helicopters, and get the celebrity moms to chase them around the house. Yes. That will be how Victoria Beckham lost all that weight after having Cruz.

1. “I've been so busy with work, I just forgot to eat!” Again, celebrities, your experience is so very different to mine. I work on the fringes of entertainment/media, and one thing that I have noticed about entertainment/the media is that, in these fields, every single work-thing you could do—meetings, photo-shoots, aftershows, filming—is accompanied by AT LEAST three of the following: a plate of cheese and ham slices, brioche, potato chips, massive “platter” of assorted Pret sandwiches, miniature burgers, meat on a stick, selection of stupidly dandy cupcakes, spendy chocolate biscuits, twenty-four “deli-style” Scotch eggs, some salady shit that no one touches, and as many milky lattes as would take to fill a putative and revolving Lactose Hot Tub. You can't “forget” to eat in these conditions. Everyone
else
around you is medicating their constant, low-level media anxiety by troughing refined carbs, interspersed with fags smoked outside while texting their boyfriends about how everyone else they're working with today is a neurotic bitch. Just copy their behavior. You'll soon “remember” to eat again in no time!

2. “I went to see this amazing woman, and found out I am allergic to wheat/that my blood type means I can't eat cheese/that my face shape means bananas make me fat—and since I cut them out of my diet, I've never been more toned!” The truth: “As you can see, since I started mixing up all my prescription drugs in a big bowl by my bed and eating them like Dolly Mixtures, I've lost my mind* and I'm not terribly hungry. Life is GREAT!”

*falls asleep for twenty-six hours straight.

 

Nearly the end of the book, now, and a couple of obituaries to finish things off. We will stumble toward the end piece through death, and loss. Black-veiled and attendant at the graveside, thoughtful. Thankful. Confused.

Two of my favorite women died in 2011—Amy Winehouse and Elizabeth Taylor. Two lush-lipped, hard-drinking British women—broads made of eyeliner, grace and balls.

In my dreams, as a fan, I would have been on casual, cheerful email terms with both—enjoying the very great pleasure of seeing their names in my inbox, in black pixel; when they're more usually up on billboards, in lights. Asking questions not for quote, but from curiosity. Trying, in some manner, to amuse a pair who—Cleopatra-eyed, both—had seen everything by the age of twenty-five.

In the end, the only thing I ever said to them was these obituaries—the worst letters, never sent; but posted up under headlines, instead.

E
LIZABETH
T
AYLOR:
H
EAVY,
L
IKE
W
ET
R
OSES

T
hey were the greatest eyes, and now they have ended: violet, violently beautiful and lush-lashed, Elizabeth Taylor's extraordinary eyes have passed from fact to artifact. Man, she was awesome—my favorite, my most-watched. The best of all the legends. A star in an era of dames and broads, Taylor out-damed and out-broaded them all—even fabulous Ava Gardner, who once, when her then-husband Frank Sinatra was described as “A 119-lb has-been,” replied, “Yes. And 19 lbs of it is cock.”

But Taylor topped that, effortlessly—with a private jet called
Elizabeth,
two Oscars, skin like milk and the ability to drink any man under the table, she could walk into any gathering like the commander of a star fleet. No one was superior to her—but then, no one was worthy enough to worship her properly until Richard Burton came along, for the first and then the second time, and kissed her right out of her shoes. Their relationship was like a bomb that kept going off: they were condemned for “erotic vagrancy” by the Vatican at the start of their affair, but carelessly racketed around the world collecting Van Goghs, Pissarros, Rembrandts and diamonds, arguing, drinking and trashing big beds.

Burton was lost the moment he met her—his description of their first meeting is one of the most astonishing declarations of love ever written. It twangs with holy lust, even forty years later.

“She was so extraordinarily beautiful that I nearly laughed out loud. Her body was a true miracle of construction—the work of an eningeer of genius. It needed nothing except itself. It was smitten by its own passion. She was unquestionably gorgeous. She was lavish. She was a dark, unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much.”

In a world where women still worry that they are “too much”—too big, too loud, too demanding, too exuberant—Taylor was a reminder of what a delight it can be, for men and women alike, when a women really does take full possession of her powers. Burton's nickname for her was “Ocean.” Sometimes, it seemed too small.

On my wall, I have a shot of Taylor in her late forties. She is with David Bowie—outdoors in LA, at a guess. Bowie is emaciated—at the height of his cocaine addiction, but still, clearly, both powerful and beautiful. He has his arms around Taylor's waist—a thicker, rounder waist than her corseted days in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof;
she is heavy, like wet roses. She looks like a banquet. As she puts a cigarette to Bowie's mouth, her face is both lascivious and maternal—her lips are half-open; you can practically hear her coo, “Here you go, baby.” In that one shot, she makes David Bowie—
David Bowie—
look like a helpless teenage boy.

She was a storm front of a woman, in sapphires. Tonight, I will drink cold, cold champagne in her memory. Then eat a diamond.