Heather had argued she needed £3,250,000 a year to live on, which included items such as £499,000 a year for holidays and £39,000 a year for wine, even though, as the judge noted, she doesn’t drink. She required, so she said, £627,000 a year for her charity contributions, a sum which included £120,000 for helicopter flights and £192,000 for private flights. The judge described this as ‘ridiculous’.
She also needed £542,000 a year for security to protect herself and Beatrice. By comparison, so we learned, Paul has been managing with virtually no security — a surprising revelation, when we all know what happened to John Lennon and also to George. It appears Paul has no bodyguards or security personnel at his London home; and on his Sussex estate he simply relies on farm workers to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.
In Paul’s statements, he describes how none of his children while young — all of whom had gone to state schools — had had any bodyguards or security except, for obvious reasons, while with him on world tours.
The full addresses of his Sussex home, where he has what the judge described as ‘a modest property’ set in 1500 acres, and of his London home are both given in the document. Keen Beatles fans will know these details already, but any suspicious characters, ignorant of the addresses, will feel grateful to the judge.
In one interesting aside, when explaining that most of his music income today comes from material written long before Heather came along, Paul admits that his music during the years of his marriage, 2002–2006, has not done welclass="underline" ‘I have created new work during the marriage, which, though critically acclaimed, has not been profitable.’
We also got a long list of his possessions, his houses and works of art, including paintings by Picasso and Renoir, and business affairs, most of which would not have been known by even the keenest fans.
The judge, while admitting that Heather was ‘devoted to her charitable causes’ and was a ‘strong-willed and determined personality’, also considered her not to be an honest witness but instead inaccurate and not impressive. He saw her as her own worst enemy with ‘a volatile and explosive character’ and who suffered from make-believe. Paul, however, in his opinion, was honest and accurate.
Before the case, some of Heather’s personal accusations about Paul had leaked into the papers, such as his use of drugs and alcohol and his abusive behaviour. These stories were referred to only in passing by the judge, who made it clear that they were not relevant, as his concern was to the financial settlement.
His final judgement was to award a total of £24.3 million to Heather — about £100 million less than she had first wanted. Paul therefore came out of it much better than he might have feared financially — and also with his good character intact, even if he’d had to reveal certain details that I’m sure he would have preferred kept private.
The strains and pressures and unhappiness caused by the breakdown — for both of them — must have been enormous. The best part of two whole years had been spent on statements, meetings with lawyers and accountants, investigations, countering allegations, smears, ending up with having their life and love exposed to the whole world. It came out, for example, just how generous Paul had been in that first heady year after they met, lavishing so much money on Heather and her family and concerns in the way of houses, loans, donations.
Many of the facts and details revealed by the judge will be used by biographers of Paul in years to come. But most of all it provided a field day for the press.
Why did it happen? Why did Paul, normally so careful and canny, used to checking out people and their character and stories — unlike, say, John, who tended to believe almost anyone who came to his front door — why did Paul, of all people, get himself into this situation? A mixture, presumably, of lust, love and loneliness after the death of his beloved Linda.
Among revelations about other people in the Beatles story, the most surprising, nay amazing, recent revelation concerned Mimi Smith, John’s Aunt Mimi, the lady who brought him up. Mimi played a major part in his early life and in the book I went along with John’s and her family’s image of her as a strict, snobbish, puritanical, old-fashioned and authoritarian figure. That was also how I found her in my many interviews with her. She was clearly a strong individual who didn’t swim with the tide. She’d been a widow for a long time, having been married to the rather dull and unambitious-sounding George, who’d once been a milkman, though Mimi maintained he’d been a dairy farmer.
Mimi died in 1991. Then, in 2007, John’s half-sister Julia Baird, in her book, Imagine This: Growing Up with my Brother John Lennon, came out with the assertion that Mimi, while living in Liverpool and bringing up John, had for some years been secretly having an affair with one of her young lodgers, a student 20 years younger than herself, who later emigrated to New Zealand. Julia never liked Mimi, so at first I rather doubted this allegation, suspecting it could be fantasy, but it’s now been accepted as true by many Beatles experts. Mimi, of course, being dead, cannot refute it.
I still find it hard to believe. Mimi, of all people. Shows you just can’t tell by outward appearances or apparent attitudes. Such a shame John never knew, when you think of all the reprimands he’d had to suffer from Mimi for his behaviour and his morals. I can imagine John’s astonishment, hear him now saying, ‘Fookin’ hell,’ then collapsing with laughter, rubbing his specs as the tears rolled.
Another revelation in a similar vein has come out about George, in a book written by his first wife Pattie Boyd. In it she says that George had an affair with Maureen, Ringo’s wife. In both cases the marriages were collapsing. I somehow didn’t find this gossip quite as surprising or revealing as the Mimi story.
With all these titbits now coming out about affairs and relationships, and with presumably more to come, it’s always noticeable that the main participants are almost always dead, like Mimi, George and Maureen. They therefore can’t deny, explain, give their side of it. Perhaps we need a judge to investigate, look at the known facts, decide what happened, and then of course give us the benefit of his wisdom.
Meanwhile, the two living Beatles are going strong — and for a long time to come, we hope. They both appeared and performed in Liverpool in 2008 to celebrate the city’s year as European City of Culture.
Each is as busy as ever, but Ringo’s busyness has been mostly abroad, mainly in the USA where he has done many very exhausting tours with his All Starr Band. The lineup has varied over the years and he’s also done one-off appearances with well-known musicians. He’s regularly produced albums. He did say in 2000, when he reached 60, that he was hanging up his drumsticks, but it didn’t happen. He doesn’t need the money, of course, just the fun. He is still married to Barbara and appears to live mainly in the USA and in Monaco.
Paul has also been regularly producing new albums, which do well, get nice reviews, but — by his own admission — don’t sell as well as in the old days. Memory Almost Full in 2007 was enjoyed and admired by all his fans, and most people could see in it memories and emotions sparked off by Linda — at a time, of course, when he had even greater reasons to remember her.
He has also produced poetry, paintings, children’s books and classical music. His Ecce Cor Meum was named the UK’s classical album of the year in 2007. Now that the trauma of Heather is behind him, perhaps he’ll go on to be even more productive and creative in the years to come. He has said that he is now going to do his last world tour as a performer, spread over two years, so that he can spend more time with his daughter Beatrice as she grows up. But we shall see.