Paul.

‘You expect to see women crying . . . but when it’s your dad, it shakes your faith in everything,’ he said.

Somehow Jim struggled on, caring for his teenage sons. Mary and Jim had wanted Paul to go to university, but soon music filled his world.

As with all those who lose a parent when young, thoughts of his mother never left Paul McCartney.

Nine years after her death he would, without the help of any of the other Beatles, write and record his most famous song, Yesterday.

Loves of his life: Paul with first wife Linda McCartney, right, and on his wedding day to wife Nancy Shevell, left



Once again it was a melody that came to him in, he believes, a dream. The lyrics, however, might be telling.

‘I said somethinga rock at his side, helping create the close family life that had been cut short in his teenage years.

Their first daughter was named Mary, after his mother, and when, following the birth of Stella, a son was born, he was called James, after Paul’s father.

For 30 years Paul and Linda were inseparable, so when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in the early Nineties it must have seemed that a terrible blight of history was repeating itself.

Tribute: Two of McCartney's most famous songs, Let It Be and Yesterday, were about his mother

By that time, Paul was vastly rich, but still managing to live as normal a family life as possible for a man who had once been a Beatle and who still toured the world.

Linda was the