Having looked at Jane’s presence in Paul’s recent projects, it might be an idea to have a quick squint at the odd little connections, or possible connections, between them in the preceding years. Jane’s decision to keep schtum (after a couple of early interviews), and Paul’s consequent reticence to discuss her, means that any connection between them feels quite poignant.

* A 1986 interview for ‘Entertainment Now’, stands out, with interviewer Barbara Howar going where few others have:

“Probably your great love before you married Linda was Jane Asher….”

Paul visibly flinches, moves his head back and looks a bit unsettled

“…you put me on the spot, Barb”

The gist of Barbara’s point was that he was drawn to kind but strong women. He bats that away a bit saying he doesn’t really analyse his relationships. Fair enough.

* In 1988, Jane was a guest on BBC Radio 4’s long running programme ‘Desert Island Discs’.

Guests are asked to select eight audio recordings. Jane only chose a couple of pop records, one of which was Paul’s song ‘Woman’. The discussion, of course, focused on it being a Peter and Gordon record and Paul wasn’t mentioned. She could, of course, have picked any non-Paul P&G record. She said of it:

“There’s one of theirs I particularly like, ‘Woman’….i love it”.

* Between 1996 and 2002, Jane had three novels published, each a dark, psychological thriller. In a previous post we had a look at ‘Losing It’ and a character’s description of the living arrangements when her boyfriend moved into her family home.

In a work of fiction, she’s pretty clearly describing the time when Paul lived at Wimpole Street, yeah?

Her novel ‘The Question’ includes a few characters with Paul-associated names: Eleanor, John, Ruth and George the dog!

The plot centres on the fallout from the discovery of infidelity and betrayal. The discovery is prompted by Eleanor seeing her husband’s bright yellow tie. The yellowness of the tie is emphasised before we get the detail of it being swirly patterned.

“She had no realistic hope of changing the fact that the yellow snake would still be there, coiled, waiting, on the velvet surface”

“Talking of yellow - I love Mr H.'s new tie. All those swirly things on it - very unlike his usual.”

When Paul and Linda married in March ‘69 (“Linda and I were eventually married in Marylebone registry office, which is a strange little twist”), Paul sported a bright yellow tie. When they went on to the wedding blessing at St John’s Wood Church, Paul had changed neckwear to a swirly patterned number.

Dedicated followers of fashion would have noted that Paul had previously been seen in public wearing those ties. I’ve been told that the teen mags of the day said the ties were gifts…Anecdotal, so can’t confirm.

* When her mother Margaret died in 2011, Jane set up an online JustGiving page for Dementia UK in her memory. The page showed a contribution and comment from George Martin. It also showed a sizeable donation from a ‘Paul’ and this comment:

“Margaret was always such a good friend to me and I will never forget her lovely wit and gentle good humour”.

* In 2017, Paul and Jane both appeared, separately, in the mockumentary ‘Brian Pern: A Tribute”. Paul is really good in it, natural and funny. Jane stars as Pern’s ex-wife Cindi and pretty much steals the show, having some of the best lines in the film and delivering them brilliantly.

fun bits from the vanity fair interview:

-john and paul exchanged bread recipes

-paul looked into john and yokos apartment from his room??

-lots of phone calls in the 70s

-entire hugging segment

Which I think some people took, possibly, as coldness. But I never took it as that. 'Cause I understood even then what it was like when something that terrible happens.

When The Beatles broke up he had to grow up. But in a way I feel like my dad passing was probably the real growing up moment.

They had a once in a millenium chemistry that I don't think we're likely to see again.

Milky way over the mountain lake - Alpine Haute Route, September 2023

Photo by: nature-hiking

"I still have a very soft spot in my heart for brass bands, it’s a roots thing for me. And no wonder if my grandfather’s semen had a load of bass pores in it, my dad must have passed them on to me."

“Starvation in India doesn’t worry me one bit, not one iota. It doesn’t, man. And it doesn’t worry you, if you’re honest. You just pose. You’ve only seen the Oxfam ads. You can’t pretend to me that an Oxfam ad can reach down into the depths of your soul and actually make you feel for those people."

“We had great times and the guys loved Martha. John particularly because he’d never seen me with a pet. He’d come around to my house and there was this woolly thing licking him. That was me.”

"John liked the double meaning of “please”. “Please” is pretty please. “Please have intercourse with me. I beg you to have intercourse with me.” He liked that, and I liked that he liked that."

"The last interesting dream I had was of a sexual nature. Pretty cool, though, dreams of a sexual nature when you’re married. Your married head is in the dream saying: “Don’t do this. Don’t go here.” And just to let you know, I didn’t. It was still a good dream."

“It was always obvious Brian was gay and we could talk to him about gay things, but he would never come out with, ‘Hello, Paul, you’re looking nice today.’ I was quite obviously un-gay, due to my hunting of the female hordes. I think we all gave that impression."

"At night my mom would pass our bedroom door in underwear, which was the only time I would ever see that, and I used to get sexually aroused. Just a funny little bit. I mean, it never went beyond that but I was quite proud of it, I thought, “That’s pretty good.’ It’s not everyone’s mum that’s got the power to arouse."

Although Cynthia is in the foreground of McCartney’s picture, John is its focus. There is an intimacy to these images that McCartney today recognises as particularly potent: ‘It’s a Beatle taking a Beatle . . . there’s something a little bit incestuous that I like."

"I mean, I would never have looked at John Lennon and kinda said, "I love you", because it wasn't about that, you know, it was nothing about that. But in a song, in the particular way they're written today, I kinda easily say, "I love you", almost as a throw-away, because it doesn't seem embarrassing in that context. I can always deny that it was ever written about him. Burn the tapes, and delete the…"