Paul McCartney has a moped accident in Wirral, Liverpool

On the evening of December 26, 1965, Paul McCartney was involved in a moped accident while visiting his family in Liverpool. He and his friend Tara Browne, the 20-year-old Guinness heir, whom Paul had invited to spend Christmas in Liverpool, decided to ride motorised scooters to the home of one of Paul’s cousins in the Wirral, not far from where Paul’s father lived.

Riding along dark country lanes, Paul was momentarily distracted by the moon. In that instant, he lost control of his moped, which went down, throwing him onto the road. Paul sustained facial injuries in the fall: he chipped a front tooth and badly cut his upper lip. Aside from a bruised and swollen face, however, he escaped without more serious harm. After regaining his footing, Paul and Browne continued on to his cousin Betty’s house to seek help.

At the time, news of the accident was not widely publicised. The Beatles did not announce the incident, and it attracted little press attention. It occurred during the band’s Christmas break, and Paul’s injuries were not considered serious.

Several months later, attentive fans began to notice the aftermath. In the promotional films for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”, filmed in May 1966, Paul’s chipped front tooth is clearly visible, and his upper lip still appears slightly swollen in close-up shots. Paul later addressed the matter in a June 1966 interview with New Musical Express.

In later years, this relatively minor accident was recycled as supposed “evidence” within the 1969 “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy theory.

Paul’s own recollections of the accident are also somewhat uncertain. He recalled being distracted by a full moon, yet the full moon in December 1965 occurred on the 8th (the full moon in December 1966 fell on the 27th). He also stated that he began growing a moustache to hide the scar, although he would not do so until January 1967. It appears he may have combined two separate events, one occurring in December 1965 and another in December 1966.

It was quite a serious accident at the time. It probably sounds daft, having a serious accident on a motorised bicycle, but I came off hard and I got knocked about a bit. My head and lip were cut and I broke the tooth. I was only doing about 30 at the time, but it was dark and I hit a stone and went flyin’ through the air. It was my fault all right. It was a nice night and I was looking at the moon!

Paul McCartney – From interview with New Musical Express, June 24, 1966

I had an accident when I came off a moped in Wirral, near Liverpool. I had a very good friend who lived in London called Tara Browne, a Guinness heir – a nice Irish guy, very sensitive bloke. I’d see him from time to time, and enjoyed being around him. He came up to visit me in Liverpool once when I was there seeing my dad and brother. I had a couple of mopeds on hire, so we hit upon the bright idea of going to my cousin Bett’s house.

We were riding along on the mopeds. I was showing Tara the scenery. He was behind me, and it was an incredible full moon,- it really was huge. I said something about the moon and he said ‘yeah’, and I suddenly had a freeze-frame image of myself at that angle to the ground when it’s too late to pull back up again: I was still looking at the moon and then I looked at the ground, and it seemed to take a few minutes to think, ‘Ah, too bad – I’m going to smack that pavement with my face!’ Bang!

There I was, chipped tooth and all. It came through my lip and split it. But I got up and we went along to my cousin’s house. When I said, ‘Don’t worry, Bett, but I’ve had a bit of an accident,’ she thought I was joking. She creased up laughing at first, but then she went ‘Holy…!’ I’d really given my face a good old smack; it looked like I’d been in the ring with Tyson for a few rounds. So she rang a friend of hers who was a doctor.

He came round on the spot, took a needle out and, after great difficulty threading it, put it in the first half of the wound. He was shaking a bit, but got it all the way through, and then he said, ‘Oh, the thread’s just come out – I’ll have to do it again!’ No anaesthetic. I was standing there while he rethreaded it and pulled it through again.

In fact that was why I started to grow a moustache. It was pretty embarrassing, because around that time you knew your pictures would get winged off to teeny-boppery magazines like 16, and it was pretty difficult to have a new picture taken with a big fat lip. So I started to grow a moustache – a sort of Sancho Panza thing – mainly to cover where my lip had been sewn.

It caught on with the guys in the group: if one of us did something like growing his hair long and we liked the idea, we’d all tend to do it. And then it became seen as a kind of revolutionary idea, that young men of our age definitely ought to grow a moustache! And it all fell in with the Sgt Pepper thing, because he had a droopy moustache.

I was originally trying to grow a long Chinese one, but it was very difficult. You have to do a lot of work waxing it, and it takes about sixty years – I never did get one of them.

John had a moustache cup. It had a little hole underneath the lip so you could drink tea from it without getting your moustache in it — rather fetching!

Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

I did once have an accident in Liverpool where I fell off a moped and busted my lip open, and we had to get the doctor round to my cousin Betty’s house. That was around this same time, when I was twenty-something and going out on the moped from my dad’s house to Betty’s house. I was taking a friend, Tara Guinness. He died later in a car accident. He was a nice boy. I wrote about him in ‘A Day in the Life’: ‘He blew his mind out in a car / He didn’t notice that the lights had changed’. Anyway, I was with Tara and had an accident – fell off my moped, busted my lip, went to Betty’s, and she said, ‘Get a doctor, get a doctor. It needs stitches.’

So they got this guy, and he arrived stinking of gin. This guy was so drunk. ‘Hello, Paul. How are you?’ ‘Great.’ ‘Oh yes, that’s going to need stitches. I’ve brought my bag.’ So he brings his black bag and now he’s got to try and thread a little needle, a curved surgical needle, but he’s seeing three needles at least.

I think I said, ‘Let us do it.’ And we threaded it for him. I said, ‘You’re just going to do this with no anaesthetic?’ He said, ‘Well, I haven’t got any.’ I think I might have had a slug of scotch or something. He just put the needle in and pulled it round. And then the thread came out and he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I have to do that again.’

So he had to do it a second bloody time, and I was trying not to scream. To be honest, he really didn’t do a marvellous job, and I had this bump in my lip for a good while after. I can still feel it. And I was black and blue and really quite a mess. So I decided to grow a moustache. Then the other Beatles saw it and liked it, so they all grew moustaches too. John got so into it that I think somebody bought him a moustache cup with a little lid that sort of stops the moustache from getting wet when you drink.

Paul McCartney – From “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present“, 2021

Meeting Paul McCartney was every teenager’s dream in the 1960s – and for North Wales school girl Deirdre Mahon the dream came true – not once, but three times.

Deirdre, who was a pupil at the former Loreto College on Llandudno’s West Shore, ended up being given egg and chips by Paul and his family in Heswall on Boxing Day 1965 – and spent Boxing Day 1966 and Valentine’s Day 1967 with the Beatle.

Deirdre, a mum-of-one and gran-of-two who now lives in South Wales, said: “I want to share this story because it highlights the fact that Paul and his family are such amazing, lovely and down to earth people. I would so love to meet Paul again one day.”

Deirdre said: “I was 15, from Crosby and at a convent boarding school in Llandudno – so very young and naive. I don’t remember how me and my friend, who accompanied me on some visits, got Paul’s father’s address in Heswall but we did, and we used to visit him during school holidays. Eventually, he got to know us and was so friendly and welcoming. He used to invite us in for a cup of tea and a chat: ‘Make sure you get a good education, girls, Paul did.'”

She recalled their first meeting on Boxing Day 1965.

“This was the first time we met Paul,” she said. “My friend and I decided to go to Heswall to wish Jim a happy Christmas. I had a feeling Paul might be there, so I had bought him a packet of Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes, knowing that was the brand he smoked. As we approached the front door we saw a British racing green Aston Martin parked in the front. I knew it! With a trembling hand, I knocked on the door. Jim answered. ‘Hello girls, happy Christmas!’ I said ‘I’ve bought Paul a little Christmas present and was wondering if you could give it to him the next time you see him?’ ‘Just a moment,’ he said. A minute later I could see this figure approaching, and I said to my friend ‘Oh my God, it’s Paul!’ He said: ‘Hello, what are you doing standing there? Come in!’ We stayed with them all afternoon and into the evening. I can’t remember everything but I do remember how they made us feel so welcome – amazing when I think back on it, two 15-year-old girls interrupting their Christmas. Although we were a little overwhelmed at first, as the time went on it just felt natural to be part of their family gathering.

“At one point Goodbye My Love by The Searchers came on the TV. Paul commented on how he loved the song and wished he’d written it. His dad then asked Paul to play us the tune that he’d been tinkering with on the piano. So, he started playing this song which was in its ’embryonic’ stage. He said he wanted the harmony to be similar to the Beach Boys. He started singing it, stopping and starting, explaining how he wanted it to sound: ‘She’ll be there, my hands running through her hair…’ Of course, it became Here, There and Everywhere. We couldn’t wait for the next album (Revolver) to come out to see if it was on there. We recognised it immediately!

“Paul’s stepmother Angela and her daughter, Ruth, who was nearly six, were there too. Ruth explained to us, as she took a big step forward, that she was Paul’s STEPsister!

“Jim asked us if we thought Paul had a good voice, and in a dreamy way we said ‘Oh YES!’ Jim thought, then said, ‘Well, he hasn’t got a great voice but he does sing with feeling’.

“At teatime we got up to go but they insisted we stay and join them. They apologised that they didn’t have enough steak to go around and would egg, chips and peas be OK!

“When it was eventually time for Paul to go back to London he said he’d give us a lift back to Liverpool (what a guy!). As we drove along, I can’t tell you the wonderful feeling when we stopped at traffic lights – seeing the look on people’s faces and them do a double-take, realising Paul McCartney was driving. What a perfectly wonderful Boxing Day!”

From The North Wales schoolgirl who met Paul McCartney three times and ate egg and chips at his dad’s home – North Wales Live (dailypost.co.uk) – January 19, 2020

NO FIGHT, SAYS INJURED BEATLE

Beatle Paul McCartney denied last night that his gashed eyebrow and cut lip were the result of a fight. He said he had fallen off his moped during his Christmas stay with his family near Liverpool.

From Daily Mirror – December 31, 1965

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALL THOSE BEATLE RUMORS INCLUDING EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO PAUL’S TOOTH!

WHEN Paul McCartney and the rest of the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on June 5th to sing Paperback Writer and Rain (as pre-taped a few days earlier at the EMI record studios in London), pandemonium struck. Who’d ever believe that a thing so small as a millimeter of porcelain could wreak such havoc?

What happened was this: as the cameras panned in on Paul while he was singing the first tune, it revealed beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mr. McCartney had definitely chipped off the inner tip of his left front tooth! It was also pretty clear (if you have good eyes) that the left side of his upper lip was ever so slightly enlarged. Within 24 hours after the show, thousands of letters poured into 16 Magazine writing everything from “I don’t care if he’s scarred, I still love him —” to “What has happened to my Paulie, and what is he going to do about it?”

Well, if you are a careful 16 reader, you will remember that it was printed here several months ago that Paul flipped on his mo-ped while biking up in Wirral one weekend, and had to have several stitches taken inside his mouth — no serious harm done. However, the fact that Paul had chipped his tooth was kept — for some strange reason — a super-secret by Paul, the Beatles and the NEMS press office. Ultimately, 16 decided to ask Beatles manager and close friend Brian Epstein just exactly what was going on. Here is what Brian had to say:

“Last December, Paul injured his lip and chipped a tooth in the mo-ped accident. He honestly thought no one would notice the chip, for it is so small. I told him three times he should do something about it. It is in a place where there are no nerve ends, so there is no pain. Paul assured me that he would have the tooth capped, but — unfortunately — he has not done so. (Could he be afraid of the dentist?) It is my opinion that he will just let it be.”

And in 16’s opinion that if Paul doesn’t want to have the tooth fixed — that’s fine. His fans’ll go right on lovin’ him to death, anyway. As for the rumor about Paul getting hitched — well, don’t face it. He’s finished decorating his home in London and Jane was there all the while helping to supervise. The decorators referred to her as “the future Mrs. McCartney.”

From 16 Magazine, 1966

BEATLE LAND

Of all The Beatles, Paul has always been the biggest believer in theatrical-type disguise! As I was saying last week, he and a friend decided to go for a spin on a couple of mopeds around his father’s place in the Wirral last July. Paul put on an old raincoat, beret (to hide his Beatle mop), false moustache and glasses.

“How on earth will you be able to see through those?” asked his father. The glasses had thick lenses.

“I needn’t wear these all the time,” decided Paul, slipping them in his pocket. “I’ll shove them on if I have to stop for petrol or anything.”

Inevitably the moped ran low on petrol and Paul had to pull in at a service station. Problem was he couldn’t find the right pump for the special moped two-stroke fuel mixture because the lenses blurred his view! At last he found the right pump. A girl attendant came over. At once Paul put on one of his special accents.
“Fill ’er up, please,” he said in a mock American accent.

“Sure, Paul,” the girl replied at once.

“What the… how did you recognise me?”

“I’d know that voice anywhere, luv!”

If he’d used his own voice and not worn such fantastic clothes, I guess Paul would have got away with it. You’d be amazed how different a Beatle looks with his hair brushed back. That’s as far as Paul should have gone — just the beret to keep his long hair pulled back off his face.

Paul still has those two mopeds, by the way. He uses them every time he visits his father.

A couple of weeks after the tour, he went up to Liverpool just before Christmas. This time there was a lot of ice on the roads around the Wirral district and Paul skidded violently. He came tumbling off and cut his lip. The gash healed up quickly but Paul had to have stitches put in his mouth and it was quite painful for a week or so. […]

From Fabulous208 – July 16, 1966

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years

With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group.

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