#Linda McCartney Foods

[laurolive]

Hilarious Journalism: A look back at the “Linda Tapes” The Daily Mail’s 2006 headline story (“Macca buys Linda tapes for £200,000”) is one WTH and SMH of an article.

Here’s a recap of what the “Linda tapes” were about:

In 1987-89, vegetarian writer and literary agent Peter Cox assisted Linda McCartney with her first vegetarian cookbook, Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking. He said that they made use of tapes to record recipes and ideas.

In Oct. 2006 — seventeen years after his collaboration with Linda — Cox told the British tabloid The Daily Mail that some of the tapes contained Linda’s emotional confessions: she felt trapped in her marriage and considered leaving Paul because of his controlling nature. [Daily Mail 28 Oct. 2006: “Linda wanted to leave Macca.”]

The following week, Nov. 4, 2006, The Daily Mail reported that McCartney met with Cox and paid him £200,000 in exchange for the tapes. [Daily Mail 4 Nov. 2006: “Macca buys Linda tapes for £200,000”.]

The first article (“Linda wanted to leave Macca”) was ridiculous enough — a tabloid story full of sensationalistic tabloid language. (Among the gems was Cox’s recollection that Paul’s eyes “were deader than any I had ever seen.” 😒 Did Cox meet Paul McCartney or Satan? 😈)

But the follow-up article, “Macca buys Linda tapes for £200,000,” was something else again.

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A headline spun out of thin air

Here is how The Daily Mail began the article:

MACCA BUYS LINDA TAPES FOR £200,000 Daily Mail.com Showbiz 17:00 EDT 04 Nov 2006, updated 05:47 EDT 05 Nov 2006 ��Sir Paul McCartney has secretly paid £200,000 to secure audio tapes which reportedly contain explosive allegations about his marriage to his first wife Linda. The recordings — which his second wife Heather Mills wants to use as part of her divorce claim that he was abusive towards her — were handed over to Sir Paul during an extraordinary cloak-and-dagger meeting in a Central London café. “Sir Paul bought the tapes from literary agent Peter Cox, who made them with Linda when he was co-authoring her 1989 book Linda McCartney's Home Cooking.”

How did The Daily Mail find out about this secret payment? Who was its source for this information?

When was this money paid? Where? How?

Where did the figure of £200,000 even come from?

The Mail quoted plenty of witnesses to the two men breakfasting together at a London café called Eat on Wed. 1 Nov. 2006, BUT it supplied no witnesses to any payment being exchanged or even discussed. We don’t even know if tapes were handed over; the witness saw only the transfer of an envelope.

WTH, Daily Mail? You gave us more details about what Cox and McCartney had for breakfast than you did about where you got your headline.

🤦‍♀️

The headline reminds me of this maxim:

What is presented without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

Just declaring out of the blue, without explanation or evidence, that McCartney paid Cox £200,000 for Cox’s tapes makes the declaration dismissible. It’s so devoid of confirmation that no reader can be expected to give it credence.

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I thought surely The Daily Mail was playing an inside joke for its own amusement by posting this OTT piece.

So McCartney and Peter Cox had an “extraordinary cloak-and-dagger meeting in a central London café.” Could someone explain to me how two persons have a cloak-and-dagger meeting (read: furtive, secretive) in broad daylight at a café frequented by the public? How clandestine could it be where patrons could recognize one of the parties and overhear practically everything he said? 🤭

SMH. Leave it to The Daily Mail to carry on like it exposed high level espionage when it merely observed one guy pass an envelope to another guy over coffee.

After the introductory paragraph(s), The Daily Mail ditched any pretense of having a report to back up its headline, and instead turned its attention to the REAL story: 20 paragraphs of McCartney complaining about what a bitch his soon-to-be ex-wife Heather Mills was.

Well, it seemed like 20 paragraphs, brought to us courtesy of eavesdropping café patrons.

That’s when I was convinced that The Daily Mail fabricated this entire piece from whole cloth, with the staff writers particularly flexing their comedic creative writing muscles.

According to one of the eavesdropping diners:

"Paul told him he had been followed by a journalist that morning but had lost him by getting the driver to double back a few times to give him the slip. He said his driver was up the road keeping a look-out."

The Daily Mail can’t help aggrandizing its own reporters at McCartney’s expense. For all his caution to avoid journalists, that ol’ clueless McCartney, as per The Mail’s portrayal, failed to see that they were right under his nose. That crack team from The Daily Mail had stealthily infiltrated the café and were ready to pounce on unsuspecting patrons for quotes.

[a customer said,] "… they took the table next to me. Paul didn't seem to be worried about who was listening or he wouldn't have spoken the way he did.” “One diner said: ‘… the next minute Sir Paul was telling him all these things that left me unsure of where to look.’”

Good thing McCartney and Cox took a table out in the open. Good thing too that McCartney spoke loudly enough for fellow diners to hear him, or else The Daily Mail wouldn’t have had this story to give us. 😜

McCartney was reported to have said this:

“It's just my luck to have all these problems. I am really miserable, bullied actually. It just p***** me off, it is such c**p. I am being described as a b****** and it's just not true'."

What language! The Daily Mail writers must have had a good chuckle pretending that the publication for which they work is too refined to display low-class words like “pisses,” “crap,” and “bastard.” At the same time, though, it’s not so refined that it can’t regularly publish unverified hearsay.

Then we have this from a witness who also heard McCartney speaking to Cox:

“He said no one had told him what Heather was really like when he married her. He said his daughter Stella was the only one who warned him. Then he said, "She (Heather) really hates Stella".

Ah, if only anyone had warned him, he would have surely listened and called the whole thing off. PMSL. 🤣 He didn’t even listen to his own daughter. Paul “Imma do what I want” McCartney brought this one on himself, I’m afraid.

“Last week it was claimed that Stella had to be restrained from launching a verbal assault against Heather...”

That wording makes it look like The Daily Mail was set to post that Stella had to be restrained from launching an assault against Heather, but then an editor changed it at the last minute to verbal assault. I can’t help visualizing, though, how one restrains a woman from opening her mouth. 😉

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As I stated, this article reads like fiction to me. Does this sound at all like the Paul McCartney you’ve listened to and read in other interviews?

you all have read other Paul McCartney interviews Did Paul McCartney really say any of what was quoted in this article?

I thought no way would McCartney meet with Cox in public just to chat, let alone chat about such personal matters.

But…

When photos of the two men at the café surfaced, I had to admit that they must have had a personal meeting after all. Since that part was true, I guess the article couldn’t have been a TOTAL invention.

Maybe the conversation was trustworthy, even if not 100% accurate; I’m just not sure. I must say, though, that it warmed my heart to read about Paul finally regarding his 2nd wife with clear eyes and acknowledging that Stella was right. 👍

And please Daily Mail, I beg you, if you wrote anything else that was true here, let it be this quote: “One diner said: ‘They spoke about Linda at first and it was clear that both of them really adored her.’” ♥️

_____________________________

The Daily Mail article was originally accompanied by these photos of the two men together at the café, which have been reproduced on the web site Celebitchy [link]. The photos seem to support that the pair did meet in person.

Wed. 1 Nov. 2006. Paul McCartney and Peter Cox met for breakfast 10:00 a.m. (for half an hour) at the café Eat in SoHo Square, London. Peter Cox’s identity confirmed from the photo on his wikipedia page [link].

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SMH to see that some people have brought up this tabloid fiction (Macca paid Cox £200,000 for tapes) in Beatles forums over the years and have taken it seriously.

Moreover, they maintain that, since Paul bought the tapes, he must be guilty and doesn’t want the truth to come out.

People need to go to the source and read the original article more critically and see it for the phoney baloney it is.

The Daily Mail’s headline made no sense. As the article stated, Cox was already legally barred from making the tapes public or quoting them. What good would it do McCartney to buy them? Cox could have made copies of them for all he knew.

🤷‍♀️

Again, WTH Daily Mail? It’s like you’re pointing arrows at your own report and saying, “This is so tabloid. Don’t believe everything you read!”

… and maybe that was the point.

In this particular article, and I’m sure others, The Daily Mail had a core story, which it surrounded with obvious tabloid elements, which I think were inserted to protect itself from libel lawsuits. The core story here looked to be McCartney’s unfiltered opinions on Heather Mills.

If Mills had sued, The Daily Mail could argue that the half-humourous tone of the piece, its unsubstantiated headline, and its implausibilities were proof that its show business section peddles unconfirmed celebrity gossip and is not meant to be taken seriously. It is strictly for entertainment purposes, and its readers know to take its articles with a grain of salt. Instant defense.

At least that’s one theory to explain this bizarro article to myself.

_____________________________

And finally, here are 3 other sources that bolster the conclusion that McCartney did not buy Cox’s tapes

No. 1

Peter Cox’s 2007 interview with John Buckman, in which he said he never sold the tapes. Per Cox’s wikipedia page 2007 to 2021 [link]:

“The ‘Linda Tapes’ “Media interest in Sir Paul McCartney’s divorce from Heather Mills McCartney resulted in much speculation concerning the contents of tape recordings made by Linda McCartney and Cox during their time together. Despite reports to the contrary, Cox has denied selling them and has called most press speculation wildly inaccurate.”

John Buckman [link] established Peter Cox’s wikipedia page on 19 Oct. 2007. He claimed that much of his material came from a private interview he did with Cox [link - Comment 1].

The statement was removed from Cox’s page on 3 Dec. 2021 [link] when it was found to contravene wikipedia rules that prohibit contributors from using their own research as a source. See endnote 1.

No. 2

Philip Norman’s 2016 biography, Paul McCartney: The Life, states that Cox didn’t give McCartney any tapes when they met in person [Norman 2016, p. 771, search term: Cox]:

“The Daily Mail subsequently reported a clandestine meeting between him [Paul] and Peter Cox…. at which Cox had handed over a large brown envelope. According to the Mail, this contained audio tapes she’d [Linda] made with Cox on which she’d talked of her victimisation by Paul, and which he was now buying for £200,000 to prevent them being used against him in the divorce. 

“In fact, the envelope contained only a copy of Cox’s book, Why You Don’t Need Meat, containing a foreword by Linda that Paul had never seen.”

Since Cox didn’t hand any tapes over to McCartney, presumably McCartney didn’t pay £200,000 for something he didn’t receive.

I have to ask, though, who was the source of this “fact” that the envelope contained only a book? BTW, see endnote 2 about accessing Norman’s book online.

No. 3

This 2017 development cautions against trusting original stories published by The Daily Mail.

In 2017 wikipedia banned The Daily Mail from being used as a source, describing it as unreliable and citing its “reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication.” [Link] Although this ban occurred over a decade after Cox’s original allegations appeared in The Daily Mail [“Linda wanted to leave Macca”], it has been applied retroactively to Cox’s own wikipedia page. See endnote 3.

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GOT SOME ENDNOTES HERE

(1) Peter Cox’s wikipedia page

Wikipedia rules: A contributor can’t use his own original research or self-published content as a source for any wikipedia entry, and certainly not in a living subject’s page [link].

(2) Accessing Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman (2016) online

The book can be downloaded from scribd.com if one signs up for a 30-day free trial [link]. 

The U.K. version, titled Paul McCartney: The Biography but otherwise identical, is searchable on the internet archive [link]. Enter a search term to read any pages containing that term. 

Hint 1: To read the pages preceding or following your searched item, enter the applicable page number as a search term. 

Hint 2: There may be restrictions on the number of pages you can view in an hour (“Limited Preview” message); just try again later.

(3) The Daily Mail’s poor reputation led wikipedia to ban it as a source in 2017. This also affected Peter Cox’s wikipedia page.

The sections of Cox’s page titled Involvement with Linda McCartney and The “Linda Tapes” (both viewable here), which had been part of Cox’s page from 2007 to 2021, were both removed by 3 Dec. 2021 (link1, link2) because the only source cited for them was The Daily Mail (specifically its original story about the tapes [link]).

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©️ laurolive, laurolive.tumblr.com, www.tumblr.com/laurolive, www.tumblr.com/blog/laurolive, 2024

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[gardenwalrus]

its funny because i’ve been a vegetarian since i was a kid so i actually did mostly think of paul as linda mccartney’s husband when i was a lot younger

[superbeans89]

This explains so much

[javelinbk]

They did not generally host Christmas parties, but they did entertain in a manner of speaking. And though their guest lists were extremely limited, they could sometimes be filled with stunning surprises. I remember one year when Paul and Linda McCartney turned up at the Dakota for Christmas lunch. I’d never met either of them, and I’d been given no indication they were coming—I’d assumed John and Yoko and I would be spending the day alone with Sean. But here were the four of them—John and Paul and Yoko and Linda—together again for the first time in years.

…The lunch didn’t take place at the Dakota; we decided to eat at Elaine’s on Eighty-Eighth Street and Second Avenue. But everyone congregated in the white room first, where Yoko and Linda immediately gravitated to each other and just started talking. Paul and John seemed very convivial at first. They seemed like they might have just bumped into each other a month before, like not much time had passed.

…With all due respect to its late proprietor, Elaine Kaufman, the food from her kitchen was infamously unpalatable. Somehow, Elaine’s could turn a basic dish like chicken parmigiana into a goopy soup; the scampi there was so overcooked, you’d need the Jaws of Life to pry the shrimp from the shell. After perusing the small-printed menu, nobody at our table could find anything they wanted to risk ordering.

“You know,” Linda finally offered, “there’s a great pizza place not far from here. Maybe they could deliver?”

I had a hunch this would be a social faux pas—but I was also quite certain Elaine wasn’t going to eject John and Paul and their wives from her restaurant for any reason. I found a pay phone in the back and ordered a couple of pies. They were delivered to the kitchen, where they were removed from their cardboard boxes and decoratively placed on Elaine’s own platters.

Excerpt From ‘We All Shine On’, Elliot Mintz

[king-of-the-birds]

PAUL'S BALL

a launch party for wings

He produced a handwritten invitation, leaving space to write in the invitee's name, as well as a number, which would be used for a raffle drawing toward the end of the evening. (The prize was a magnum of champagne; the disc jockey Jeff Dexter was the winner.) (..) The recommended dress was "glam."(..)

Some 800 musicians, reporters, friends of the band and music business honchos were invited.(..)

As always at such events, there was ample carping, which a reporter for Rolling Stone duly cataloged. After describing the Empire Ballroom as decidedly unhip, a leftover from the days when the Joe Loss Orchestra would play foxtrots, and young ladies shopped for husbands among the dancers, the writer noted that while the wine and cheese were free, everything at the bar was for sale.

(…)

Eyebrows were raised when, instead of a Wings performance, partygoers were treated to fox-trots, waltzes, quicksteps, and congas, played by McVay's band-along with what McVay remembered as arrangements of sixties and seventies hits, including a Beatles medley and some Beach Boys tunes. They were raised higher still when the heavily sequined and coiffed Frank and Peggy Spence Latin and Ballroom Formation Dancing Teams filed onto the floor to demonstrate their artistry.

"I'm beginning to think that Paul actually digs all this" one guest quipped to the Rolling Stone reporter, "that he actually likes dance bands, ballrooms, and buffet food. That's incredibly camp, you know, incredibly camp. Have you seen his suit? It's like a clown's costume, the jacket is about five sizes too big, and it's not even been finished."

(from the McCartney Legacy Vol. 1)

Paul: A press launch is always a good excuse to have a night out, so we invited friends and journalists, played the album, danced and had a few funny people come on to entertain. I wore an outrageous big check suit that I thought would be good. When I went to collect it from the tailor that morning he told me that it wasn’t finished. I said, ‘Maybe not, but it’s a look!’ So I went to the party with the cotton and the stitching showing, and everyone said, ‘Your suit’s not finished.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know. Great, huh?’

(from Wingspan, 2002)

Some of the guests that attended were Jimmy Page, Elton John, Sandy Denny, Mary Hopkin, members of the Who, the Faces, Deep Purple, Ginger Baker, Henry McCullough, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Graham Bond, Sandie Shaw, the Greek synthesizer wizard Vangelis, the actors Malcolm McDowell, and Terence Stamp, some of the Monty Python troupe, Sir Joseph Lockwood, the head of EMI, Allan Clarke, of the Hollies, and (Benny) Gallagher and (Graham) Lyle.

After the party a fan encountered Paul:

He went skipping (yes it is true) down the road with Linda and just as he turned the corner to a side street, I took courage and called him back. He stopped and said “yeah” so I ran to catch him up and breathlessly asked him for his autograph. The funny part is my pen was at the bottom of this large bag of mine! He stood patiently watching me with arms folded as I rummaged elbow deep. I asked him if he had a pen as I just couldn’t find mine; he said no (which isn’t surprising as he had this crazy suit on that had no pockets).

(Kathy Turner – From Meet the Beatles for Real: Wings Party)

[tavolgisvist]

I then introduced Mr. Klein to the other Beatles. If Paul is suggesting that I was trying to rush him and the others into engaging Klein or pushing him down their throats, that is a wrong impression. At all times, Mr. Klein had shown himself on top of the job. The only other major contenders for the manager’s job were the Eastmans – father of McCartney’s wife Linda, and her brother. I had opposed the idea of having as manager anyone in such a close relationship with any particular Beatle.

(John Lennon, 'The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-200' by Keith Badman)

AK: I can tell you what I did. I took the time to analyze the situation somewhat Machiavellian and determined the best way for me to meet John. <…> But the appointment that I made was based upon a telephone call that I made to John, followed up by a desire on both John and Yoko’s part to protect themselves. Because I think they felt that they were going to lose control if the E … See, you’re not aware, the Eastmans were already there, signed. <…> Other than the phone call I made, I would never, I wasn’t calling people and saying, listen, I’d like to see [John]. I was doing it more surreptitiously from the outside. I didn’t want them to feel pressure, because I felt that they would respond to pressure by running away. <…> SG: Then, what happened? You finally got to meet with John and Yoko, and there was an all-night session at the Dorchester hotel. And something happened in that all-night session at the Dorchester that totally won their allegiance to you. AK: This is January ’69. Yes, I mean, I’ve read what John has said. I mean, he said it in Rolling Stone. He just felt that he and Yoko both just knew … I think they wanted someone who was on their side for them. It was never for the Beatles. John said, listen, the Beatles are represented by the Eastmans, will you represent me and Yoko? SG: The Beatles’ legal affairs were represented by the Eastmans? * AK: You see, you have to read that piece of paper. SG: The piece of paper the Eastmans had with the boys? AK: Oh yes. All signed. SG: All of them signed it? AK: Yes. And Apple. <…> SG: You stayed up all night talking? AK: Yeah. I went to the extent of having vegetarian food made for him, unbeknownst to them, they would have eaten anything. I remember we talked about ourselves. We were just trying to get to know one another. They were very nervous. I was nervous. How do you really get into it then? We just did. Lennon and Yoko, I would rather not say what won them over for me. I would think that a principal thing was the fact that they really wanted someone for themselves. Apart from the Beatles. That’s really what it was. John is a very practical human being and the conflict was there, and it was his band and he was losing control, and he didn’t want to. He wanted to be protected. It was as simple as that.

(Allen Klein, 1980, interview with Peter Brown and Steven Gaines, All You Need Is Love, 2024)

Klein’s brass-tacks knowledge of the business and take-no-prisoners tactics appealed to Yoko Ono, who insisted Lennon have a dedicated protector. “Yoko told me that when she and John came to me, they were looking for a real shark—someone to keep the other sharks away,” Klein told Playboy. “Now she says sometimes I’m too moral.” <…> Klein was eager to find opportunities and enhance Harrison’s and Starr’s careers, but it was Lennon’s light that drew him, personally and professionally. They bonded. “Allen was there for John. They had the same sense of humor—John was so insightful, so wickedly funny. And Allen loved John’s songs,” Steckler said. Klein was fully aware that he’d broken the hustler’s cardinal rule, but he couldn’t help himself. “I fell in love with Lennon,” he admitted.

(Allen Klein.The Man Who Transformed Rock by Fred Goodman)

add to this

[torchlitinthedesert]

Transcript under the cut.

Paul

"Life had just started to get a bit messy when Linda became pregnant with Mary. Allen Klein [the American business manager] was involved iwtht he Beatles and, over the year, things seemed to get more chaotic and worrying. Then, the miracle: our Mary. The chaos got pushed to one side and all I cared about was being a dad. But there was still a lot of unpleasantness flying around, so in the end I said: "Let's get out of here, go to Scotland and be a family." It wasn't planned, but Mary came at exactly the right time. She changed my perspective to a degree where I could look at what was happening with the Beatles and think, "Does it really matter?"

If you were a dad in the late 1960s, you were part of taht first wave who got involved with the whole process of pregnancy and birth. One afternoon I remember going down to the local Family Planning Association and picking up a booklet called You Are Having A New Baby. I loved reading it: "At this-many-weeks, your baby will be as big as an orange." And then being there at the birth! In my dad's day, that would have been unheard of.

My first solo album came out in 1970 and I decided to use one of Linda's photos of me and Mary on the cover. This tiny head poking out from the inside of my jacket. These days you wouldn't do it because it feels dangerous to put pictures of your kids out there, but back then we weren't bothered. A lot of musical acquiantances warned me that being a dad would change my professional life. You can't take kids on tour, you can't have them in the sutdio. My professional life did change because I was no longer in the band, but I was still writing and recording. For the first Wings tour in 1972 we simply packed a load of nappies and toys and took the kids with us.

Later, when they were at school, I'd have a word with the headmaster. "Look, we'll be away for six weeks and I don't relish the thought of getting a call in Australia saying something happened to one of the kids." The school gave us a list of the lessons they'd be missing and we took a tutor with us, which the kids hated. They saw it as a six-week holiday. Like all parents, we were dreading the rebellious teens, but the most rebellion we had from Mary and Stella was having to listen to Wham! all day long. Looking back, I guess that wasn't too bad.

In 1998 Mary and the kids lost their mum and I lost … Linda. I knew it was my job to be “strong Dad who keeps it together”, but you can’t do that the whole time unless you completely hide your feelings. Eventually my emotions started leaking out. That’s when the roles were reversed and the kids rallied round me. We got through it, but we all struggled because she was the glue that held everything together.

Linda would have been so happy to see how far vegetarianism has come since we started the food business [in 1991]. And now Mary’s continuing the tradition with her own vegan cooking show. Yes, I’m proud of what I’ve achieved musically, but I’m also proud that Linda played such a big part in bringing vegetarian food into people’s homes.

Christmas and new year were a big family thing when I was a kid, so I keep the tradition going. Me and Nancy [Shevell, whom he married in 2011] like to go to Mary’s, the grandkids running around with their new toys. I do it for them as much as me — I want them to experience the same joy I felt at their age. That connection with family is what keeps me sane. I’ve got my fingers crossed for 2022. Like everyone, I’m hoping we’ll get a chance to do some of the things we’ve missed out on, see the people we love. It’ll be nice to have a bit more normality.

Mary

My earliest memories are split between London and the farm in Scotland. The excitement of city life versus absolute solitude. It was still exciting but in a different way: riding ponies, climbing trees, helping Mum in the kitchen. And the sound of Dad’s guitar.

It makes me laugh now, but there were some afternoons when we’d be watching cartoons and Dad would wander over with his guitar. He’d sit down and start playing this beautiful music, messing around with melodies and songs. We’d all give him an evil stare. “Dad, we’re watching telly. Go in the kitchen.” One time he said: “Do you know how many people would love to be sitting here now, listening to me play guitar?” I just shrugged. “But we can’t hear The Wombles.”

Being a vegetarian family in the late 1970s marked you out as different. Everybody said it was all Mum’s idea and she’d forced Dad to stop eating meat, but they did it as a team. I remember them discussing recipes and Dad saying he still wanted something he could slice for his Sunday roast. Mum was always excited about cooking and she inspired me. Dad’s pretty good in the kitchen — he’d make a great sous-chef. If you ask him to sort out the mashed potato, it’ll be the best you’ve ever tasted. He’s meticulous, just like he is in the studio.

Of course people made fun of Mum and Dad for being veggie. They made fun of Mum for a lot of things, saying she wasn’t a real musician, she wore odd socks and charity-shop jumpers. The real problem was that she didn’t fit the mould of the woman they wanted Paul McCartney to marry. They wanted someone who went to all the chichi parties, but Mum was more interested in feeding the animals on the farm.

Mum and Dad insisted we went to the local comprehensive school, which made me feel a bit awkward at the time. I’d be in school for a term, then off on tour. When I came back, all my friends had made new friends. Now, when I look back, I realise what a smart move it was. It kept us grounded.

Dad was almost too enthusiastic when it came to helping with homework. On my own I could knock it off in half an hour but Dad would get out the encyclopaedia, he’d be cross-referencing and drawing graphs. The teachers must have got suspicious when I gave in these ridiculously detailed essays. Dad said education changed his life and he wanted to pass that love of learning on to us.

I look at Dad and think, after all he’s been through, how has he managed to stay in one piece? He has found a way of keeping a level head, no matter what else is happening in his life. My own personal theory — I’ve not talked to Dad about this — is that he needs normality because that’s what inspires him. Real life and real people. That’s where all the music comes from.

Every year that goes by I seem to find a new level of admiration for what Dad has achieved — and Mum too. My husband and I have this game where we try to get through a day without coming across a reference to Dad or the Beatles. What usually happens is that I get to around nine o’clock, then something comes on the radio or I see an ad for the new Beatles documentary.

I do listen to the Beatles at home, but it’s the Wings stuff I play the most. Mum’s not around any more, but when she’s doing her backing vocals I can still hear her and Dad together. There’s a song called I Am Your Singer — that always gets me. “When day is done, harmonies will linger on.”

[mumintroll]

ive got no normal food left in my cupboards so my dinner is two linda mccartney sausages for starters sesame ramen for mains and alcohol free rekorderlig for dessert 😭

[etherealspacejelly]

Soft asks- 15 & 22!

15. Comfort food?

probably pasta. usually with tomato sauce and linda mccartney meatballs. and a shot ton of cheese

22. Name of your favorite playlist?

Gen Z nostalgia songs to hype you up. its full of 90s, 00s and 10s pop songs that i grew up listening to :]

[teenagefeeling]

so apparently a couple years paul, mary, and stella mccartney put together a cookbook of linda's recipes and i checked it out from the library today and i was leafing through it and it actually looks quite good. so many vegetarian cookbooks out there with 40 kale salad and hummus wrap recipes but like the mccartneys seem to be offering me real food which is exciting

[saint-mona]

I like to think I throw out my own Linda McCartney vibes.

I live in the country, grow my own food, raise a few kids AND I'm perpetually stoned through it all.

We're basically the same person....

[thebeatlelove]

Question for Linda McCartney/Linda McCartney Food Fans!!

So a while back I stumbled upon a Linda McCartney cooking video on YouTube. And I absolutely loved it, so I tried to find more cooking videos similar (where she is in a kitchen cooking to the audience). I have had absolutely no luck finding anything :(

So I just wanted to know did Linda McCartney ever make anymore of these cooking videos? Did these air on television or were they exclusive to an online/physical release. I was hoping to find a VHS or DVD of her cooking videos, since it was the 90s and VHS tapes were popular. But that route also led me nowhere. If anyone knows anything about these cooking videos please let us know in the comments. Thanks!

[i-am-the-oyster]

Linda McCartney's advice for getting your man to help in the kitchen (1989)

MEN

Let's face it - most day-to-day home cooking is still done by women. But that doesn't mean that it should be - or always will be. So here are some tips to entice a reluctant spouse into the kitchen. .. First, try putting them in charge of the 'kitchen garden' (it doesn't matter if this is only on your windowsill or porch). Once they've grown some food, encourage them to take part in its preparation. . . Dad's Special Vegetable Curry, Tomatoes Stuffed with Cottage Cheese and Basil, Leeks Vinaigrette, or Green Beans Savoury are all dishes that men can supervise, from the garden to the table!

Men often seem to enjoy the 'technical' processes in the kitchen - for example, bread-making. We never used to have homemade bread in our house, until there was a bread strike a few years ago. Paul went to the local baker and asked him for some live yeast, came home and made the most incredible bread, and he's been making it ever since. We all adore it, and there's nothing that smells more wonderful in the house than fresh bread baking.

Pickles, marmalade, sauces, dressings, jams and even home-made wine are all ideal for men to get involved with.

Even if your man simply sits reading the paper while you cook, encourage him to read it in the kitchen! At the very least, he'll realize just how much time and effort goes into making his meal, and what a wonderful time you can have doing it!

Ask your man to encourage the children to pick up some kitchen skills - even if it's only how to sweep and wash up! This will help to prevent the children from growing up unskilled and with the wrong attitudes. It will also give your man and the kids a chance to be together in a family atmosphere.

Don't push your luck, but if possible, arrange things so that one meal per day (or week, at the very least) is his sole responsibility. This gives you a break so that you truly enjoy the meals you do make. It also gives him the chance to develop his own style and, er, expertise! (Well, it gives him the chance to practise!) A lot of men I've met love cooking, and are very good at it.

Most important of all, have fun. Enjoy the whole process of preparing, presenting and eating your food. I promise you it will be tastier, healthier and infinitely more satisfying!

[blackcofffeekiller]

Right guys, I spent almost £30 on a food shop for the next 2 weeks and here's what I got:

- turkey sausages 8x2

- breaded chicken breast 4x2

- snack bars (2 different boxes of flavours, 6 in a pack)

- a tub of gum

-bread rolls (for tonight)

- Linda McCartney mozzarella burgers 2x2 (for tonight - for the family and I).

I aimed to get high protein so I would snack less. The plan is to have turkey sausages for lunch with a snack bar and a drink and the breaded chicken breast for dinner with either wholemeal pasta or white rice.

[shit-talk-turner]

Louise sees herself in Linda McCartney and sees Alex as Paul🙄 // does she know that Linda was a pioneer in her own field? She was the first female photographer whose work was included on the cover of Rolling Stone. Paul didn't like it when John brought Yoko to studio and thought that it was a man's work but when he married Linda he started writing songs with her and worked with her as a member of his band. She was the one who encouraged him to continue making music when the Beatles broke up. They were together for almost 30 years and apparently they only spent a few days apart, when Paul was arrested in Japan for having half a pound of marijuana in his luggage lol. They had three children and he wrote some of the most beautiful songs for her. They became one of the most famous advocates for veganism and she had her cookbooks and food line. Louise has achieved none of this and I don't think she ever will

^

[severeprincesheep]

Monday 21 February 2005

A row erupted yesterday after an expert said youngsters brought up as strict vegetarians suffered mental and physical problems that could affect them for the rest of their lives.

Nutritionists in Britain dismissed the findings of the US study as " rubbish", and the report prompted Sir Paul McCartney, whose first wife, Linda, put her name to a range of meat-free food, to telephone the BBC to dismiss the claim.

Lindsay Allen, from the University of California at Davis, found just two spoonfuls of meat a day given to children on a vegetarian diet could produce a dramatic and permanent improvement in their physical and mental development. The study took place in Kenya, where children are fed almost exclusively on staple crops. Their diet lacked many of the micro-nutrients essential for the growth of brain and muscle tissue, Professor Allen said. "It's applicable to the West as well. There have been studies on vegetarian women [in Europe and the US] and their children are very developmentally delayed," she added.

Although some vegetarian parents gave their children food supplements, many vegans, who ate no animal products, reared their children on the same food they ate themselves, she said. She told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington: "There is absolutely no question that it's unethical for parents to bring up their children as strict vegans. Even when they were adolescents these children who were fed as vegans when they were young still had delayed development or permanently impaired development,"

Professor Tom Sanders, research director of nutrition and dietetics at King's College London, criticised her for extrapolating from a group in a developing country that had a relatively deprived diet. "Taking people who have limited food choices and adding animal products will provide elements missing from their restricted diets. But where you have a good choice in developed countries, you can select a balanced vegan diet even for children," he said.

Professor Sanders made a study of vegan nutrition which followed children from conception to the age of 26, to show that the development of vegans was normal. "Their diet in developed countries contains plenty of wheat, soy, pulse and salads, and provided they avoid Vitamin B12 deficiency by eating fortified foods or supplements, they are not at any disadvantage," he said. He admitted that a vegan diet for children under the age of five might pose a risk of malnutrition if there was too much reliance on vegetables.

Sir Paul, a strict vegetarian for 20 years, said he had raised his children as non-meat eaters with no ill-effects.

"It has been a good thing for me and my children, who are no shorter than other children," he said. Britain's 500,000 vegans and vegetarians had half the mortality rate of the general population, he added.

Stephen Walsh, of the International Vegetarian Union, said that "to conclude from this particular plant diet that all plant diets are poor, and that the only way to correct the problem is through animal products, is frankly ludicrous".

The study in Kenya involved 544 children with a typical age of seven. Some were fed an extra two ounces of meat a day, while others were given a cup of milk. After two years children fed meat had muscles up to 80 per cent bigger than those with an unsupplemented diet and also showed the biggest improvement in intelligence, activity and leadership skills, Dr Allen reported.