When Paul McCartney received a knighthood in March last year, his wife Linda ordered stationery made up with his new title. She also bought a silver pocket watch and engraved it in her own hand: "To Paul - my knight in shining armour - Linda." McCartney wears the watch every day. Linda was unable to attend the ceremony at Buckingham Palace. She had been diagnosed as having breast cancer 18 months earlier and was too ill to go. Three of her children - Mary, Stella and James - took her place. Little more than a year later she was dead. "Lin was the most down-to-earth person I've ever known," says McCartney. "Sometimes I'd tease her and call her Lady McCartney, but it was all low-key and just between the two of us. "Linda was happier if we were going to bed early with a meal than going to a huge function. She hated the shackles of social etiquette. It was a part of her upbringing that she never liked." Linda was born in New York but spent most of her strict childhood in the rich suburb of Scarsdale. Her father, Lee Eastman, was a successful show-business lawyer, but she was particularly close to her mother, Louise, who died in an aircraft crash when Linda was 18. After her mother's death, Linda went to the University of Arizona in Tucson to study art history and discovered a sense of freedom in the desert state. "Arizona was freedom for her. She roamed a lot out there when she was at school and realised you could be free in the world. She threw off her strict upbringing and found herself in a magic, special place." Linda died in her husband's arms at the McCartney family's ranch in Arizona six months ago Their children were with them. "It was a help that when it happened, it happened in a good place," says McCartney. "Towards the end, when we knew it was getting serious, I said to her: 'We are in your favourite place on earth.' She was comforted by that. She was very peaceful when she died." McCartney had barely spent a night apart from Linda during their 30-year marriage. "The hardest thing about losing Lin is how much I enjoyed being with her," he says. Linda almost didn't marry McCartney. He'd had to persuade her long and hard to be his wife. Linda arrived at the Marylebone registry office in London on March 12 1969 and giggled throughout the ceremony. "I loved it that she was so irreverent," says McCartney. "You start as you intend to continue and we were going to have fun, not become these staid, conventional people just because we'd got married. You need humour. That's what attracted me to Linda in the first place. "Linda and I got married in a fever. We were really quite a crazy couple and we used to call it our funky period because we were very free spirits. "I needed freedom from the constrictions of the Beatles and Linda grew up wanting to be free." McCartney and Linda had met two years previously at The Bag O'Nails, an exclusive rock club in London. At almost 25, he was handsome, rich and blessed with a phenomenal musical talent, as famous as only a Beatle could be. Linda was tall with long, blonde hair and a friendly smile. "I thought she was a beautiful girl and that I would try to say hello. As she was leaving The Bag O'Nails, I stood up and got in her way. I said: 'We're going on to another club. Would you like to join us?' Luckily, she said yes, so we got to know each other." At 26, Linda was a year older than McCartney. A divorcee with a young daughter, Heather, she was working on a photographic assignment in London. They met again a year later when McCartney was in the US. He invited her to join him for two days in Los Angeles, where they stayed in a bungalow in the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. "Linda happened to be coming out on an assignment so we spent a few days together. We spent a lot of time in bed. It was the kind of place where you wanted to stay in bed if you had a nice girl. We also fancied each other. We were lucky. "The difference for me with Lin was that she was a woman. That was the word I thought of when I first met her. I'd met a lot of girls, but she was all woman, which I liked a lot. "A little time went by and I was going out with other girls, but I was at the age where I was beginning to think about marriage. "I believe there's an age when you think: 'If I'm going to do it, it might have to be soon.' "Every time I ever thought about it there was only one person who came to mind. But I kept thinking: 'Well, I'm not sure. We like each other. I really fancy her. But I'm not sure if that's right for marriage.' "Eventually, she came over from America one time and I didn't let her go back. I asked her to stay with me. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't. "I was in a bit of a state when I first knew Lin. There were a lot of drugs and I was living on my own, totally overdoing it, boozing away. It was a case of: 'Yeah, hey, have some more drugs . . . Have you got some? . . . Try this one . . . I don't mind if you do.' "It was the '60s, the hard-core '60s, and it was really starting to get to me. "Looking back, I can see I was doing too much, but I didn't think so at the time. I just had trouble getting my head off the pillow sometimes. "Linda would say: 'Let's just cool it down.' She was a huge help. She started to put some sense back into my life. She put some order into it." McCartney may have loved Linda, but the fans didn't. They spat at her, screamed and sobbed outside the registry office on the morning of the wedding, and broke into the family home at St John's Wood in London, stealing some of her most precious photographs. "You forget fan stands for fanatical," says McCartney. "But some of them were. They thought they were going to marry me. It was their dream. So when I was spoken for, I said: 'Hey girls, you can't hang round here any more. Go to the concert, buy the records, but there's no point hanging round here.' "Linda and I got all our wild oats out of the way before we got married. We told each other about our pasts. We were very open about it. It was painful, but we cleared the decks. Then it was a case of: 'Now we have a marriage maybe now we don't need to play the field.' And we didn't, which was beautiful." McCartney turned increasingly to his wife as the Beatles started to break up. "It's like you're in the army together, you come out, you get married and your army buddies disperse. If you're lucky your new missus is your new army buddy. We all found new partners and I was particularly happy with mine." Then Allen Klein was installed as the Beatles' manager against McCartney's wishes. "I was very anti the new guy. I didn't like the smell of him," says McCartney. "But John was particularly infatuated with him and the other guys went with John. I was left kind of isolated. "I had a choice: to go with Allen Klein, or, as I saw it, to fight to save all I'd ever achieved with the Beatles. I fought. "I got the smell of people sacking people, of terrible knives in the backs of people ganging up on people - of feeling redundant and useless. "And I took all the problems home. That's what most of my rows with Lin were about. I'd come back from a meeting and say: 'Oh, the band's breaking up' . . . 'John said he's leaving the band' . . . 'They're stopping this record coming out.' "That's why I felt guilty after her death for starting those rows." Linda was McCartney's salvation. Their life together moved from the ill-tempered disputes in London to the calm isolation of their farm in Scotland. "She gave me confidence. She said: 'You're great, you're OK.' We liked doing very simple and down-to-earth things. "During the time we spent up there I did a lot of sheepshearing. I helped with the shearing and mowing the fields - and went horse-riding. That was the biggest thing. Linda taught me to horse-ride. "Through nature in Scotland, through riding and through her support, I did manage to get it back together. "The worst that could have possibly happened has, as far as Linda's concerned," says McCartney. "Now I have to remember her spirit and carry on - I still have a family, I have my kids.
GO TO LIVERPOOL ECHO'S WEBSITE...http://www.liverpool.com/echo/
VOTE FOR "The man on the Flaming Pie" on Liverpool Echo's website!!!!!...."Voting in the tenth annual SCOUSEOLOGY AWARDS is now under way, and for the first time the Internet is being used as part of the vote-gathering exercise. The awards are local "Oscars" in the fields of sport and entertainment and will be presented at the Liverpool Crowne Plaza hotel on November 20.
WHEN IT'S RIGHT TO TEST ANIMALS, BY SAD PAUL BY IAN MIUGHER
Sir Paul McCartney was criticised last night after saying that some experiments on animals were " absolutely necessary" ..His surprising words came after his wife Linda had to take drugs thought to have been tested on animals to treat her breast cancer. The former Beatle is a strict vegetarian and campaigner for animal rights, as was Linda who died in April aged 56.In an interview with Des Lynam on BBC Radio 2, Sir Paul said: "I'm finding out now that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation - some of it I suppose absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people."I suppose a limited thing is unavoidable but it is very difficult for me to think like that because I favour the rights of the animals." Animal rights campaigners expressed disappointment at Sir Paul's comments, with one organisation labelling him "naive" Neil Lea, of the Animal Rights Coalition, said: "He is talking rubbish. There are no circumstances in which animal experimentation should take place. Because of who he is, thousands of people will be taken in by his words." He added: 'animals react differently to drugs than humans. Therefore there is no benefit. I am waiting for a kidney transplant and I am taking some medication. Even though they have been tested on animals, because I will react differently to them, I consider myself a guinea pig." After the interview, a spokesman for Sir Paul denied that the former Beatle had " done some form of U-turn on his views on animals Referring to the medication that was used to treat Linda's breast cancer, Sir Paul told Lynam: "If a drug has got to be used on humans then legally it has to be finally tested on an animal ... this was difficult for Linda when she was undergoing her treatment." Sir Paul revealed that Linda had been kept in the dark about how the drugs she took may have been tested on animals. He said: "It's funny we actually met up with some bloke who didn't experiment on animals but looking into it now though, 1 think they probably did have to."I think the Drug Administration in America requires it before it goes to humans. I'm finding all this out now" He added "During the treatment, a nice answer is a nice answer and if they say 'It's 0K to have this because we didn't test it on animals,' you are going to believe them." Sir Paul came close to tears when talking about life without Linda. "We fancied each other something rotten. That's all it was. To me she was always still my girlfriend. Our kids used to laugh at us we'd be standing in the middle the kitchen kissing and stuff and they'd say, 'Look at the state of you two!' Yesterday a couple living in Sir Paul's childhood home told of their shock when he dropped in unexpectedly Mrs Patricia Stanley and her taxi driver husband John were about to pop out to the pub when the ex-Beatle knocked at 12 Ardwick Road, Speke, Liverpool, at 10 one night in August. Mrs Stanley who gave him a tour of the house, said: "You could have knocked John over with a feather. Paul said he had passed the house several times before but had only just plucked up the courage to knock. "He didn't put on any airs and graces. He looked common as muck - wearing flip-flops with crumpled trousers and T-shirt."
Paul McCartney is NOT going soft on vivisection.
In a separate statement, McCartney later reaffirmed his opposition to such testing. "I am totally against experiments on animals," the singer said, according to the BBC. "I don't know of a case where it is necessary and I haven't been persuaded of any case."
That's the word from the camp of the ex-Beatle today (MPL) as it blasts wire service reports that painted him as softening his animal-rights activism.
"At this still difficult and sensitive time it would be wrong to draw conclusions from [the Press Association's] 'interpretation' that Paul has done some form of U-turn on his views on animals," publicist GEOFF BAKER says in a statement. The source of the controversy: An interview McCartney gave to BBC Radio 2.
Dispatches from Britain said McCartney used the chat to reveal cancer-stricken wife Linda had been treated with animal-tested drugs. "I'm finding out now that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation," McCartney told BBC Radio 2. "Some of it I suppose absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people."
McCartney's people have no problem with the quote. They have a problem with reporters not picking up the other stuff he said in the interview.
The knighted rocker went on to tell the BBC that he and Linda were under the impression that the drugs she was administered were not the product of animal trials. He said he later learned that British law requires animal testing of certain cancer drugs, although he never specified whether those were the ones given to Linda. **************************************************************
Some of the nation's leading scientists and researchers today thanked Sir Paul McCartney in an open letter today for recognizing the important role animal research plays in advancing medical discovery for serious diseases. The letter praised Sir Paul for his recent statements that some animal research is ``absolutely necessary.´´ The letter was released by the Foundation for Biomedical Research (FBR), and was signed by world renowned heart surgeon and FBR Chairman Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., and Nobel Laureates David H. Hubel, M.D. and Peter C. Doherty, Ph.D. According to the UK news service PA News, Sir Paul, a high-profile supporter of the animal rights movement and vocal critic of animal research, ``softened´´ his position on the issue after his late wife Linda ``had to take drugs tested on animals´´ to treat her breast cancer. Sir Paul´s statements were contained in an interview with Des Lynam on BBC Radio 2, scheduled to air this evening at 5:00 pm in the UK. In the interview, Sir Paul stated: ``I´m finding out now that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation -- some of it, I suppose, absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people.´´ He added: ``If a drug has got to be used on humans then legally it has to be finally tested on an animal.´´ Sir Paul's statements bear particular importance during this month of October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In their letter, Drs. DeBakey, Hubel and Doherty stated: ``Those of us in the medical community were gratified to hear the comments you made recently on BBC radio regarding animal testing ... We commend you for your willingness to reconsider your stance on this issue, and we hope it encourages other public figures to investigate the complexities of medical research before condemning the role of animal research.´´ ``What happened to Linda McCartney was a terrible tragedy, and our hearts and prayers go out to Sir Paul and his family,´´ stated Frankie Trull, president of the FBR. ``Sadly, millions of women around the world are currently suffering from breast cancer, a disease that claims the lives of one out of every eight women in the United States alone. Through the use of animals, we hope to one day find a cure for this deadly killer.´´ FBR is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of human and animal health by promoting public understanding and support of the ethical use of animals in scientific and medical research. The following is an open letter to Sir Paul McCartney, from Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., David H. Hubel, M.D., and Peter C. Doherty, Ph.D: Those of us in the medical community were gratified to hear the comments you made recently on BBC radio regarding animal testing. In your interview with Des Lynam, you said you have come to realize that some animal experimentation is ``absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people.´´ We applaud your recognition of this truism, particularly during October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As you mentioned in your interview, scientists and physicians are morally and legally obligated to establish the safety of all medical treatments before applying them to people. But the importance of animal research goes far beyond safety. Animal studies have been at the root of most medical advances this century, including the vaccines for polio, insulin to treat diabetes, heart surgery techniques, chemotherapy, organ transplantation, genetic research, and countless other breakthroughs. The reason animal research and safety testing remain necessary is that we still have incurable afflictions, like breast cancer. We are making progress, but researchers must rely on every means available to understand these diseases. Physicians and researchers are virtually unanimous in their conviction that animal research is one of those indispensable sources of information. Those opposed to animal research insist, against all contrary evidence, that animal research is unnecessary and cruel, and that alternatives like cell cultures and computer models could be substituted. This view is, unfortunately, wishful thinking, for although nonanimal techniques play an important role in medical research, they have serious limitations. In addition, the medical research community shares your dedication to animal welfare. It's important to remember that the health of research animals plays a critical role in the science being conducted, and that much of the research has led to breakthroughs in veterinary medicine as well. We send our condolences for the loss of your very talented, compassionate wife. We commend you for your willingness to reconsider your stance on this issue, and we hope it encourages other public figures to investigate the complexities of medical research before condemning the role of animal research.
Sir Paul McCartney has given his first
broadcast interview since the death of his wife Linda in
April.
Paul McCartney talks to Des Lynam on BBC Radio 2 Speaking to
Des Lynam on BBC Radio 2, the former Beatle tells of the
dilemma he faced when he realised the drugs taken by Linda to
treat her breast cancer may have been tested on animals.
Sir Paul is a strict vegetarian and campaigner for animal
rights, as was Linda who died in April, aged 56.
He said: "I'm finding out now that there is quite a lot of
animal experimentation. Some of it, I suppose, absolutely
necessary when you come down to the final tests before people.
"I suppose a limited thing is unavoidable, but it is very
difficult for me to think like that because I favour the
rights of the animals."
Talking about the medication used to treat Linda's breast
cancer, he said: "If a drug has got to be used on humans then
legally it has to be finally tested on an animal ... This was
difficult for Linda when she was undergoing her treatment."
Sir Paul revealed that Linda had been kept in the dark about
how the drugs she took may have been tested on animals.
He said: "During the treatment, a nice answer is a nice answer
and if they (the doctors) say, `It´s OK to have this because
we didn´t test it on animals´, you are going to believe them."
Later, in a separate statement, Sir Paul stressed his
opposition to animal testing, saying: "I am totally against
experiments on animals. I don't know of a case where it is
necessary and I haven't been persuaded of any case.".During
the Radio 2 interview Sir Paul comes close to tears when he
talks about how hard life is without Linda.
"We fancied each other something rotten. That's all it was. To
me she was always still my girlfriend," he said.
"Our kids used to laugh at us ... we'd be standing in the
middle of the kitchen kissing and stuff and they'd say `Look
at the state of you two!´ and I would say `It´s allowed isn´t
it? We´re married´.
"I just always fancied her and that's what is so difficult
about losing her."
10/23...Paul McCartney: Staying the Course (Paul is NOT going soft on animal experimentation)
Paul McCartney is not going soft on vivisection.
That's the word from the camp of the ex-Beatle today as it blasts wire service reports that painted him as softening his animal-rights activism. "At this still difficult and sensitive time it would be wrong to draw conclusions from [the Press Association's] 'interpretation' that Paul has done some form of U-turn on his views on animals," publicist Geoff Baker says in a statement. The source of the controversy: An interview McCartney gave to BBC Radio 2. Dispatches from Britain said McCartney used the chat to reveal cancer-stricken wife Linda had been treated with animal-tested drugs. "I'm finding out now that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation," McCartney told BBC Radio 2. "Some of it I suppose absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people." McCartney's people have no problem with the quote. They have a problem with reporters not picking up the other stuff he said in the interview. The knighted rocker went on to tell the BBC that he and Linda were under the impression that the drugs she was administered were not the product of animal trials. He said he later learned that British law requires animal testing of certain cancer drugs, although he never specified whether those were the ones given to Linda.
Was Linda McCartney, a staunch animal-rights activist, treated with animal-tested drugs before she died? In his first broadcast interview since the death of his wife in April, Paul McCartney talked today on the BBC's Radio 2 about his dilemma over that question. "I'm finding out that there is quite a lot of animal experimentation," McCartney said on air. "Some of it, I suppose, is absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people." So is McCartney, himself an animal-rights supporter, softening his stance? Apparently not. In a separate statement, McCartney later reaffirmed his opposition to such testing. "I am totally against experiments on animals," the singer said, according to the BBC. "I don't know of a case where it is necessary and I haven't been persuaded of any case."
Leading doctors and scientists have sent an open letter to Sir Paul McCartney defending the testing of new medicines on animals. Sir Paul, a strict vegetarian and animal rights campaigner, told the BBC that he had been hesitant to agree to the use of drugs on his wife Linda when he realised they may have been tested on animals. Lady McCartney died of breast cancer in April this year. In the letter, 11 top doctors and scientists argued that it was "scientifically and legally necessary to test new medicines on animals". They said that some of the century's most important medical advances, such as insulin to treat diabetes, polio vaccines, organ transplants and cancer treatments, depended on animal research. The signatories included fertility expert Professor Lord Winston and leading surgeon Professor Sir Roy Calne, of Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Testing is 'crucial' The letter says: "There are many areas of medical research in which animal studies remain crucial. "We are sure that all of us would prefer it if there were no need to use animals in medical research. "A lot of effort has been put into developing non-animal-dependent research methods but, until we reach the day when animal experimentation is unnecessary, we must avoid holding back medical progress." The letter recognised that Sir Paul and his wife "took a stand for the welfare and rights of animals". It goes on to say: "We support animal welfare and understand that we have a responsibility and a duty to ensure that animals are not used in unnecessary experiments, that when animals are used we will safeguard their welfare as much as we can, and that we will continue to develop non-animal methods of medical research and testing." 'I suppose it is necessary' Sir Paul, who was speaking on the Des Lynam show on BBC Radio 2, said that he had discovered that animal experimentation was widespread. He said: "Some of it, I suppose, is absolutely necessary when you come down to the final tests before people. "I suppose a limited thing is unavoidable, but it is very difficult for me to think like that because I favour the rights of the animals." In a separate statement, Sir Paul said: "I am totally against experiments on animals. I don't know of a case where it is necessary and I haven't been persuaded of any case."
