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In 1966, Maggie McGivern began a secret relationship with Paul McCartney, who was already dating Jane Asher. The relationship lasted for approximately three years. At the time, Maggie was working as a nanny for Marianne Faithful and John Dunbar’s son Nicholas. It was while taking care of Nicholas in Marianne’s Chelsea flat that Maggie first met Paul. He buzzed the intercom to ask for John, and when Maggie learned who he was, she invited him straight up.
Paul ran up the stairs and came in. Very casually I told him that John wasn’t really in – and that sent us both into hysterics. We were laughing and chatting. I had made a nice lunch for Marianne and a bunch of her friends but they never showed up. Paul and I sat together and ate it instead. I’ll never forget the meal – it was chicken casserole. It was such a funny introduction that it threw us both off guard. It could have been very embarrassing, but there was an immediate rapport and we just couldn’t stop talking. […]
It was a gradual thing. From that point on Paul kept coming up to the flat. he was very good friends with John but I knew he was coming to see me. He would ring and ask if anyone was there and if there wasn’t he would come up. We used to talk about lots of things but it was obvious to both of us that our other relationships were not going well.
Maggic McGivern – From The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997 – Quoted in Beatles Girls – Maggie McGivern (tripod.com)
On January 28, 1966, Paul was first publicly seen with Maggie at the launch party for Indica Books and Gallery, founded by John Dunbar and Barry Miles with funding from Peter Asher.
At the launch party for the Indica Books and Gallery, held on January 28, Paul was seen with Maggie McGivern, a twenty-year-old nanny hired by Marianne Faithfull and her husband, John Dunbar, for their baby son, Nicholas. The former model and Marquee Club disc jockey was wearing a crop top and had her dark hair in pigtails. By April their affectionate friendship would develop into a full-blown affair. “She was a very earthy, working class girl,” observed Dunbar. “Unlike Jane.”
McGivern had a boyfriend at the time, so the fact that both she and Paul were cheating on their partners meant that their meetings either had to be clandestine or were engineered “accidental” encounters at public functions. This loose arrangement suited them both. “I was doing my thing, and Paul was seeing me when he could,” she told me. “I didn’t question where he was going or what he was doing. It was one of those things. When we were together, we were together. The fact that it was secret suited me down to the ground.”
From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner
Miles was there, and a few other people like John Dunbar and Marianne who knew about our relationship. But we managed to disappear out of that party. I can’t remember where we went but we disappeared. In those days everyone was quite loyal. More to Paul rather than to me because I was an unknown entity. It wasn’t like today where news of such a liaison would be everywhere within three minutes.
Maggie McGivern – From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner
Six months later, towards the end of recording the “Revolver” album, Paul organized a listening party of demo tapes with John Dunbar and some friends, including Maggie McGivern. That night, Maggie and Paul’s friendship blossomed into a romantic relationship.
There was something in the air that night and that’s how it all started. He ended up staying the night and we went to bed. It was wonderful. The next morning was one of the most precious moments of my life. We didn’t say much but it was such a tranquil, pleasant feeling – made all the more so because we left things unsaid. He stayed with me until lunchtime and we chatted and larked about. Everything with Paul was so natural. From that moment on he used to come round regularly. […]
Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regents Park or go for drives in the country. We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become and overnight superstar – I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.
Maggic McGivern – From The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997
In September 1966, Paul and Maggie, making sure to have different travel arrangements, spent a week-end in Paris along with John Lennon and Brian Epstein.
It was a marvellous holiday… just walking around the streets of paris. My abiding memory is of me, John and Paul lying under the Eiffel Tower, gazing up at it. We couldn’t go up because we would have been recognised, and we were masters of the art of avoiding people…
Maggic McGivern – From The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997
When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him He used to find me wherever I was, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me.
Throughout the relationship I never pursued him — I just didn’t think about him having other women. My view on relationships has always been that if something works, it works. If it’s meant to be, let it be. Besides which, I had a busy life, and I was very busy living it.
Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regent’s Park or go for drives in the country.
We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become an overnight superstar — I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.
Maggic McGivern – From The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997
From Beatles Girls – Maggie McGivern (tripod.com):
“I don’t believe celebrities when they say they can’t keep affairs secret. We managed it quite well for more than three years… Throughout the relationship we never met in obvious places. We would go to places like auction rooms in South Kensington, and say ‘whoops – fancy meeting you here’… I never told any friends we were seeing each other – that was an unspoken rule. My mum and dad knew, but not in any detail.”
Girls all over the world had dreams of marrying Paul McCartney, but this one girl that was actually close enough to possibly achieve it never gave it a moments thought. She was beginning to see Paul as a “permanent fixture” in her life but never planned any further than just spending time with him when and where she could.
“I know it sounds strange but I didn’t really regard it as a big deal. They were mad times and the world was changing. People look back on it now as an era- but all we were doing was living it. I knew in my heart that Paul was a real family man – working at Marianne’s we used to spend hours just looking at little Nicholas. It was obvious Paul wanted children but, at that stage, I was in no way ready for it. I was a free spirit.”
As well as taking care of Nicholas, Maggie was involved in modelling and acting. Her frequent modelling assignments abroad meant that Paul had to make all the effort of going after her which is unusual in Rock’n’Roll relationships. He was no longer touring with The Beatles so it turned out that he was the one sat at home waiting for a convenient moment to see her while she jetted around the world.
“When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him. He used to find me wherever I was and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me. Throughout the relationship I never pursued him – I just didn’t think abut him having other women. My view on relationships has always been that if something works, it works. If it’s meant to be, let it be. Besides which, I had a busy life and I was very busy living it.”
After working for John and Marianne for 18 months she left to set up an antiques stall in Chelsea Market, but spent little time in the flat she was now sharing in Chelsea as she was still busy modelling and even had a part as an extra in the cult sixties film Blow-Up. Paul supposedly wanted her to appear in the Beatles TV film Magical Mystery Tour but couldn’t find her in time to ask her as she was already away on an asignment.
They had been together a year now and things between Maggie and Paul were staring to get quite serious. They were no longer just arranging meetings around London, she was now spending a lot of time over at his house.
“By this time I knew that I was in love with him, and I knew he loved me, too… I used to spend many nights at his house in St John’s Wood. It was a beautiful Regency house, and his garden was full of Alice In Wonderland characters built in stone. We spent many romantic times there. At the end of the garden was a glass-topped, circular, domed building where we meditated. I’ll never forget the first time he showed me that place. We went inside the dome and he told me to stand on the floor. Suddenly, the floor started rising and there I was, up in the air, looking at the stars. That’s what it was like, you see. By the time he and The Beatles were into the Maharishi and that whole scene, so was I – there were amazing parallels in our personalities.”
In 1968, Paul’s realtionship with Jane Asher was having major problems. Maggie had moved into her own place and Paul seemed to be trying to create a normal steady relationship with her where they could go to places together and spend time with his inner circle instead of the scattered solitary meetings in quiet locations they had enjoyed previously.
“By September 1968 I had rented a flat on my own in Fawcett Street, Chelsea. I really wanted to live alone. I hadn’t been there long when one day I got a telegram at my flat from Paul. It said: ‘Flying to the sun. Car picking you up at 8pm. Love Paul’. I was so excited because I had no idea where we were going. A car drew up and we went to pick up Paul at St John’s Wood. As he came out he took an Instamatic Camera from a fan, who was camped outside his house, and told us he was borrowing it to take on holiday. Paul had hired a private jet so no one would spot us. There was a proper lounge, no rows of seats – we were drinking champagne and laughing and joking with a male cousin of Paul, and his American girlfriend. I kept asking him where we were going but he refused to tell me.”
Paul had booked a holiday in Sardinia with a hotel room overlooking the ocean and frequent visits to restaurants where they were “treated like royalty”. A banquet in their honor was held by one prestigious party where all of the guests were in evening wear and Maggie walked in wearing a T-shirt dress to be confronted by a room full of ladies in ballgowns. “Paul and I just collapsed in giggles. We thought it was hilarious”.
Many happy hours were spent lazing around on the beach, and this was where their relationship began to take a different course.
“We were lying on the beach just being young and in love. Paul turned to me, smiling, and out of the blue he just said: ‘Have you ever thought about getting married?’. I said, ‘yes, I suppose, one day…’ and I thought nothing more of it. Looking back, it was obviously the wrong answer. When I said one day I I meant in six months, maybe, but not never. But Paul was always slightly insecure and probably saw me as such a free spirit that he thought I was never going to settle down… I suppose I assumed that we would end up together but at the time I was just enjoying it all. In the ‘Sixties there was just so much going on that I didn’t have time to sit and think about the future. I suppose that, with the pressures of fame, Paul was craving security.”
While on the sands, the couple were also photographed together by a photographer who sold the picture to a Sunday newspaper back in Britain. It appeared along with a report describing Maggie as Paul’s new girlfriend. She confirmed that they had been going out together, and suddenly their relationship was no longer a private affair.
“On the way home we were singing Those Were The Days and falling around laughing. I went back to Paul’s house with him – I distinctly remember waltzing around the rooms with him.”
The couple continued to see one another but it soon became clear that their discussion on the beach had led Paul to go looking for the security he craved elsewhere.
“One day, a little after we returned from Sardinia, I rang Paul – and Linda answered the phone. I had seen a newspaper story about him having lunch with her before that, but I wasn’t the type to ask questions or get jealous. I remember Paul telling Linda to get off the phone and I asked him who she was and what was happening. He said: ‘I don’t know the scene, man. I don’t know what’s going on’.”
A while later Maggie recived a very late night and perculiar visit from Paul.
“He was really down and I couldn’t sem to get a word out of him. He was crying and I knew he had been stressed. I stood and held him and asked him to tell me what was wrong. Then suddenly he jumped up and said he had to go. Somehow I knew when I closed the door that night I wouldn’t see him again.”
Only two days had gone by before Maggie discovered that Paul and Linda had married when she saw the headline on a newspaper billboard on King’s Road.
“My heart just thumped. I couldn’t believe it. He never told me he was getting married and he never told me our relationship was over. I didn’t contact him for ages. I had never pursued him and I wasn’t going to start then. Not many people knew we were going out together in the first place so there was no point in telling them it was over. Obviously, I told my mum and dad but not even they knew the depth of my suffering and depression. Looking back, I think I was in serious shock and it didn’t come out properly until years later… I’m the type to move on and live my life and not regret anything, but obviously I still feel the pain. I kick myself for that day on the beach in Sardinia.”
In the early seventies, Maggie began a relationship with another musician, Denny Laine, and after Denny joined Paul’s group Wings she came into contact with Paul again.
“It was a very emotional meeting and we had a great big hug. We were standing there gripping each other when their was a tap on his shoulder. We turned round and it was Linda. Paul told her who I was and she said she had heard about me. Ther was, of course, an unfriendly atmosphere and we didn’t get a chance to have a real conversation.”
Maggie was dating Mel Collins when she ran into Paul again. It was a difficult meeting and Maggie recalled “a lot of sarcastic comments towards me.”. Thankfully she was very happy with her current love life and in 1974 fell pregnant with her and Mel’s child, Naiama. The couple married and six years passed before she bumped into Paul during a Christmas shopping spree in Harvey Nichols with her young daughter. Maggie was was just admiring herself in the mirror after trying on a new dress in the store when Paul walked past.
“I was looking at myself in the mirror when a voice said: ‘That looks great’. It was Paul… he was buying Christmas presents for Linda. We got talking for a little while and then just said our goodbyes. We never discussed the relationship or anything like that.”
It seemed that their earlier spark together that had created such a great rapport was now completely gone. But in 1984 she bumped Paul for the last time at a film studio and discovered that they could still get on very well when his wife was not there with him.
“He’s a different person when he’s with her. But, to give Linda credit, although we were still uneasy we chatted amiably about horses and things like that. I suppose after years of marriage and several children, there was no need for any nastiness.”
Maggie has now dyed her long dark hair a shade of honey blonde and lives in Brighton where she works as a Rollerblade Instructor. The story of her life with Paul only really came out properly when her mother, Everlyn, confirmed it to the Daily Mail in 1997. Maggie reluctantly agreed to an interview in order to clear up a few incorrect facts, saying that she would always care for Paul and desperately wanted to avoid upsetting him and his wife Linda, who was ill at the time.
SOURCES: 1997 interview, various Beatles and McCartney biographies, general books on the London scene during the swinging sixties.
Paul McCartney’s secret love affair
Millions of words have been written about The Beatles — but little, if anything, is known of a girl called Maggie McGivern. Yet now it can be revealed for the first time that she is the woman who had a secret affair with Paul McCartney for more than three years.
They were the years songs such as Paperback Writer, Strawberry Fields Forever and All You Need Is Love were enchanting the world. More pertinently they included the years in which he had his relationship with actress Jane Asher, and when he met the woman who would become Linda McCartney.
The saga begins early in 1966 when Maggie was working as a nanny for Marianne Faithfull and her husband, John Dunbar, a Cambridge graduate and artist. Their son, Nicholas, had been born the previous November. Marianne had a third-floor flat in Chelsea, in the heart of what was then Swinging London, the capital city of the Sixties. For more than three years The Beatles had been storming the pop charts — and society.
Help! was the sensation of the previous summer and the double-sided Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out was in the charts. Beatlemania was everywhere and Maggie, through her new job, would quickly get used to rubbing shoulders with the famous.
One day when the buzzer rang on the intercom for the flat, she didn’t recognise the voice from the ground floor. The young man asked if John was around. ‘Who is it?’ said Maggie. ‘Paul McCartney,’ said the voice. ‘Oh — come up…’
‘Paul ran up the stairs and came in,’ she recalls. ‘Very casually I told him John wasn’t really in — and that sent us both into hysterics. We were laughing and chatting.
‘I had made a nice lunch for Marianne and a bunch of her friends but they never showed up. Paul and I sat together and ate it instead. I’ll never forget the meal — it was chicken casserole. It was such a funny introduction that it threw us both off guard. It could have been very embarrassing, but there was an immediate rapport and we just couldn’t stop talking.’
Maggie, whose once-dark hair is now dyed honey-blonde, told how she and Paul became closer in the months that followed, even though they each had a separate relationship. Maggie had a photographer boyfriend and McCartney was seeing a pretty young actress called Jane Asher, living for a time in her parents’ house before she moved in with him.
‘It was a gradual thing,’ says Maggie. ‘From that point on Paul kept coming up to the flat. He was very good friends with John but I knew he was coming to see me. He would ring and ask if anyone was there and if there wasn’t, he would come up. We used to talk about lots of things but it was obvious to both of us that our other relationships were not going well.’
It took six months before their association, as Maggie puts it, turned from friendship to love. The Beatles had been recording their Revolver album, released at the end of summer 1966.
One evening McCartney, John Dunbar and some friends returned from Paris with some demo tapes of the album and played them for Maggie. ‘There was something in the air that night and that’s how it all started,’ she says. ‘He ended up staying the night and we went to bed. It was wonderful. The next morning was one of the most previous moments of my life. We didn’t say much but it was such a tranquil, pleasant feeling — made all the more so because we left things unsaid. He stayed with me until lunchtime and we chatted and larked about. Everything with Paul was so natural. From that moment on he used to come around regularly.’
By this stage The Beatles had stopped doing live performances and tours but McCartney was putting just as much effort into recording. Maggie was frequently abroad on modelling assignments.
‘When we were having our love affair, I hardly phoned him,’ she says. ‘He used to find me wherever I was, and that was fine as far as I was concerned. He did tell me that Jane Asher had moved in with him at his house in St John’s Wood and I remember saying that it meant nothing to me.
‘Throughout the relationship I never pursued him — I just didn’t think about him having other women. My view on relationships has always been that if something works, it works. If it’s meant to be, let it be. Besides which, I had a busy life, and I was very busy living it.
‘Our relationship was a secret from day one, at first because we didn’t want Jane to find out, and later because we preferred it like that. We hardly ever went to parties. We would occasionally go to restaurants but normally we’d walk his dogs in Regent’s Park or go for drives in the country.
‘We craved isolation and I for one did not want to become an overnight superstar — I certainly wasn’t ready for that emotionally.’
Secrecy, of course, was vital for the continued success of their relationship. Maggie, who now lives in Brighton and works as a rollerblade instructor, says: ‘I don’t believe celebrities when they say they can’t keep affairs secret. We managed it quite well for more than three years.’
She described a trip to Paris in 1966 with John Lennon and The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. All of them flew into France separately — Lennon had been filming abroad and Epstein had been away on business. Maggie and Paul, she says, traveled apart ‘as part of keeping the relationship secret’. During the five-day trip the foursome stayed at the same Paris hotel where she and Paul shared a luxury suite. ‘It was a marvelous holiday,’ she says. ‘… just walking around the streets of Paris. My abiding memory is of me, John and Paul lying under the Eiffel Tower, gazing up at it. We couldn’t go up because we would have been recognised, and we were masters at the art of avoiding people.
‘Throughout the relationship we never met in obvious places. We would go to places like auction rooms in South Kensington, and say “whoops — fancy meeting you here”.’
By this point, Maggie saw Paul as a permanent fixture in her life, but gave no serious thought to marriage or children.
Maggie was 20 and McCartney 23 when they met. At the time, she says, she had no conception of the enormity of the scene in which she was involved. ‘I know it really sounds strange but I didn’t really regard it as a big deal. They were mad times and the world was changing. People look back on it now as an era — but all we were doing was living in it.
‘I knew in my heart that Paul was a real family man — when I was working at Marianne’s we used to spend hours just looking at little Nicholas. It was obvious Paul wanted children but, at that stage, I was in no way ready for it. I was a free spirit.’
Maggie worked for Marianne and John for about 18 months before leaving to set up an antiques stall in Chelsea Market. Even without that direct line to the famous, however, she still saw a great deal of McCartney.
She had a shared flat in Chelsea, but she was still busy modelling, and had appeared as an extra in films, including Blow-Up, which was released in 1966.
At one stage, she says, Paul had wanted her to be a chorus girl in The Beatles’ production of Magical Mystery Tour, which was screened on TV over Christmas 1967, but he couldn’t locate her and chose another girl, also called Maggie.
By now their relationship was becoming serious, she says: ‘By this time he knew that I was in love with him, and I knew he loved me, too.
‘I never told any friends that we were seeing each other — that was an unspoken rule. My mum and dad knew, but not in any detail.
‘I used to spend many nights at his house in St John’s Wood. It was a beautiful Regency house, and his garden was full of Alice In Wonderland characters built in stone. We spent many romantic times there. At the end of the garden was a glass-topped, circular, domed building where we meditated. I’ll never forget the first time he showed me that place.
‘We went inside the dome and he told me to stand on the floor. Suddenly, the floor started rising and there I was, up in the air, looking at the stars. After that we used to spend a lot of time together on the raised platform looking at the stars.
‘That’s what it was like, you see. By the time he and The Beatles were into the Maharishi and that whole scene, so was I — there were amazing parallels in our personalities.’
One day the couple went to the Indica Gallery in London with a group of showbiz friends, where John Lennon met Yoko Ono.
‘We spent more time with John and than we did with George and Ringo — we hardly saw them at all.’
In the summer of 1968, McCartney’s engagement to Jane Asher ended. Later, it emerged that she had arrived back at their house to find him with another woman — not Maggie, but an American called Francie Schwartz.
–
Maggie says: ‘By September 1968 I had rented a flat on my own in Fawcett Street, Chelsea. I really wanted to live alone. I hadn’t been there long when one day I got a telegram at my flat from Paul. It said: “Flying to the sun. Car picking you up at 8pm. Love Paul.”
‘I was so excited because I had no idea where we were going. A car drew up and we went to pick up Paul at St John’s Wood. As he came out he took an Instamatic camera from a fan, who was camped outside his house, and told us he was borrowing it to take on holiday.
‘Paul had hired a private jet so no one would spot us. There was a proper lounge, no rows of seats — we were drinking champagne and laughing and joking with a male cousin of Paul, and his American girlfriend. I kept asking him where we were going, but he refused to tell me.’
The plane landed in Sardinia but Maggie had no idea where she was until she spotted a sign. They had a hotel suite overlooking the ocean.
Much of their time was spent in restaurants where, she says, they were ‘treated like royalty’. At one banquet in their honour, they walked into a room full of women dressed in ballgowns. Maggie had a T-shirt dress. ‘Paul and I just collapsed in giggles,’ she says. ‘We thought it was hilarious.’
Most of their time, however, was spent on the golden sands. Indeed, while they were on the beach, two things happened which changed the course of their relationship.
First, they were spotted by a photographer — a picture of them together appeared in a Sunday newspaper back home. The report described her as his ‘new girlfriend’.
Maggie confirmed that they had been going out together — and suddenly the world knew of their secret liaison.
More significantly, perhaps, it may have changed the way they viewed themselves.
Maggie explains: ‘We were lying on the beach just being young and in love. Paul turned to me, smiling, and out of the blue he just said: “Have you ever thought about getting married?”
‘I said: “Yes, I suppose, one day . . .” and I thought nothing more of it. Looking back, it was obviously the wrong answer. When I said “one day” I meant in six months, maybe, but not never.
‘But Paul was always slightly insecure and probably saw me as such a free spirit that he thought I was never going to settle down.
‘On the journey home we were singing Those Were The Days and falling around laughing. I went back to Paul’s house with him — I distinctly remember waltzing around the room with him.’
Paul and Maggie continued to see each other in the following months but the subject of marriage was never mentioned again, she says.
‘I suppose I assumed we would end up together but at the time I was just enjoying it all. In the Sixties there was so much going on that I didn’t have time to sit and think about the future. I suppose that, with the pressures of fame, Paul was craving security.’
He would find it, it transpired, with an American blonde called Linda Eastman.
Maggie says: ‘One day, a little while after we returned from Sardinia, I rang Paul — and Linda answered the phone. I had seen a newspaper story about him having lunch with her before that, but I wasn’t the type to ask questions or get jealous.
‘I remember Paul telling Linda to get off the phone and I asked him who she was and what was happening. He said: “I don’t know the scene, man. I don’t know what’s going on.” ’
–
By late 1968 and 1969, The Beatles had massively increased the following of the Flower Power and hippie movement in Britain. It was a time of freedom, free love, drugs and music.
But for McCartney it was also, it seems, a time of emotional confusion.
Maggie remembers McCartney arriving at her flat late one night. ‘He was really down and I couldn’t seem to get a word out of him,’ she says. ‘He was crying and I knew he had been stressed. I stood and held him and asked him to tell me what was wrong. Then suddenly he jumped up and he said he had to go. Somehow I knew when I closed the door that night I wouldn’t see him again.’
A couple of days later she was walking along the King’s Road when she noticed four words on a newspaper billboard: ‘Paul and Linda marry.’
‘My heart just thumped,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t believe it. He never told me he was getting married and he never told me our relationship was over. I didn’t contact him for ages. I had never pursued him and I wasn’t going to start then.
‘Not many people knew we were going out together in the first place so there was no point in telling them it was over. Obviously, I told my mum and dad but not even they knew the depths of my suffering and depression.
‘Looking back, I think I was in serious shock and it didn’t come out properly until years later.’
Until yesterday, Maggie has never felt able to discuss her true feelings about the relationship and the separation. The remarkable story emerged only after her mother, Evelyn, confirmed details to the Daily Mail.
Maggie agreed to speak only reluctantly — she said she would always care for Paul, and desperately wants to avoid upsetting him and his wife Linda, who is fighting cancer.
–
Subsequently Maggie started a relationship with rock musician Denny Laine and it was through him, after he joined McCartney’s group Wings, that she saw Paul again, in 1971 or 1972.
‘It was a very emotional meeting and we had a great big hug. We were standing there gripping each other when there was a tap on his shoulder. We turned around and it was Linda. Paul told her who I was and she said she had heard about me. There was, of course, an unfriendly atmosphere and we didn’t get a chance to have a real conversation.’
The next time Maggie ran into Paul she was seeing her husband-to-be, Mel Collins, whom she married in 1974 after falling pregnant with their daughter, Naiama. This meeting was also difficult, she says. ‘There were a lot of sarcastic comments towards me.’
Six years passed before she saw him again. Maggie was shopping with her daughter at Harvey Nichols in London when she decided to try on a designer dress.
‘I was looking at myself in the mirror when a voice said: “That looks great.” It was Paul . . . he was buying Christmas presents for Linda. We got talking for a little while and then just said our goodbyes. We never discussed the relationship or anything like that.’
It was only at a later meeting, at a film studio in 1984, that she remembers rediscovering some of their earlier rapport. But it vanished when Linda appeared. Maggie says: ‘Paul’s whole demeanor changed — he’s a different person when he’s with her.
‘But, to give Linda credit, although we were still uneasy we chatted quite amiably about horses and things like that. I suppose after years of marriage and several children, there was no need for any nastiness.’
That was the last time Maggie saw McCartney, but she admits to thinking about him almost daily.
‘Marriage? I’m the type to move on and live my life and not regret anything,’ she says, ‘but obviously I still feel the pain. I kick myself for that day on the beach in Sardinia.’
From The Daily Mail, April 12, 1997
From The People, April 13, 1997:
This gorgeous brunette was Beatle Paul McCartney’s secret lover – and left a lasting mark on the Fab Four’s music.
Vogue model Maggie McGivern stole Paul’s heart, then told him to get lost.
Heartbroken Paul’s tears were the inspiration for his haunting ballad The Long And Winding Road.
Now, nearly 30 years on, unpublished pictures of the young lovers have been discovered.
The fascinating snaps shed light on a hidden romance when Paul was at the peak of his creative genius.
And bitter-sweet memories have come flooding back for Maggie, now a 53-year-old rollerblade instructor in Brighton, Sussex.
If it hadn’t been for the row which drove them apart she might have become Mrs McCartney – and the history of the Beatles would be very different.
Maggie bitterly regretted losing the Beatle who ended up marrying Kodak photo heiress Linda Eastman.
She says: “Not even my mum and dad knew the depth of my depression.”
Maggie was in her early 20s and one of the Sixties in-crowd when she met Paul. She was a DJ at the trendy Marquee club in London’s Soho and a model for top fashion magazines.
Her striking looks and talents opened plenty of doors and she appeared on Top Of The Pops as a dancer.
She also ran an antiques stall at Chelsea market next to one run by Patti Boyd, then married to George Harrison.
‘We both went into hysterics’
Maggie met Paul for the first time at Sixties singer Marianne Faithfull’s house where she was doing a stint as a nanny.
Thirty years on Maggie recalls how Paul came looking for a friend of Marianne’s but found love with her instead.
“Paul ran up the stairs and came in. Very casually I told him Marianne’s friend wasn’t in and that sent us both into hysterics.
“There was an immediate rapport and we just couldn’t stop talking.”
Their love blossomed while Paul was still engaged to actress Jane Asher – whose brother Peter was half of hit singing duo Peter and Gordon.
Paul’s two-year relationship was one of the best kept secrets in showbiz.
In the summer of 1968 Paul, then 26, took 24-year-old Maggie on holiday to Sardinia.
Paul chartered a small jet so they could have some privacy and escape the high-profile pressures of London.
Maggie says: “We were lying on the beach just being young and in love.
“Paul turned to me, smiling, and out of the blue he just said: ‘Have you ever thought about getting married?’
“I said, ‘Yes, I suppose one day …’ and I thought nothing more of it.
“Looking back it was obviously the wrong answer.
“Paul was always slightly insecure and probably saw me as such a free spirit that he thought I was never going to settle down.”
The subject of marriage was never raised again.
At the time the Beatles recorded Hey Jude the couple had a blazing row and Maggie told Paul she wasn’t interested in him any more.
The break-up inspired Paul’s The Long And Winding Road, recorded in January 1969 for the Let It Be album which was in the charts for 59 weeks.
Only months earlier The People had discovered the secret affair and interviewed Maggie.
She showed our reporter rings on her fingers and said: “Don’t worry – I bought them all myself. Paul didn’t give me any of them. But you never know.
‘My heart just thumped’
“He’s a very nice boy. I wouldn’t go out with him if he wasn’t nice
“We don’t really go out for a wild night but we enjoy each other’s company”
Paul eventually found the security he craved – with Linda.
Maggie was shocked to discover on a newspaper billboard that he was marrying the blonde photographer. She says: “My heart just thumped. He never told me he was getting married and he never told me our relationship was really over.
“Not many people knew we were going out in the first place so there was no point saying it was over.”
“Looking back, I think I was in serious shock and it didn’t come out properly until years later.”
The rare photos of the couple were discovered at the home of Maggie’s parents during a recent clear-out.
They stumbled across the kind of memorabilia that will fascinate 1960s pop historians.
Maggie’s mum and dad cannot understand why the affair was shrouded in mystery.
Maggie’s mum Eve says: “Paul continued his relationship with Maggie for two years in the Sixties.
“At the time the Beatles recorded Hey Jude they had a serious row which ended with Maggie telling Paul to get lost.”
Maggie regretted her split from one of the world’s most eligible bachelors and did her best to patch things up. But by then Paul had been swept off his feet by Linda.
Eve adds: “They married and the association with Maggie was mysteriously hushed up – as it had been for the two years they had spent together.”
Eve, who lives in Hampshire with husband George, says: “We spoke to Paul several times on the phone. He used to ring up to make dates. He was very nice.
‘Paul followed her and spoke’
“He never had the chance to come and see us – he was always flying around the world or recording.”
Maggie later married musician Mel Collins, then separated.
Two years ago she bumped into Paul by chance as she taught youngsters to rollerblade.
Eve says: “Paul has got a farm in Sussex. Maggie was rollerblading on the seafront at Brighton and Paul was on the other side of the road on his bike.
“He followed her and then eventually spoke to her.”
Then Paul got on his bike – and took the long and winding road back to Linda.
Last updated on November 25, 2023
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