A forty year old mystery looked to have been solved after it emerged that, in April, an elderly down and out had forced his way into multimillionaire musician Sir Paul McCartney’s London residence claiming to be the real Paul McCartney and spinning an incredible tale of kidnapping, brainwashing and amnesia . Having apparently climbed in through an open bathroom window, the intruder cornered the ex-Beatle in his study. “It was terrifying, he had him by the throat and was shouting abuse at Sir Paul – he kept screaming that Sir Paul had stolen his identity and gibbered on about how he had been brainwashed into thinking that he was someone called ‘Desmond Jones’ and had spent nearly forty years working as a market trader!” explains fifty six year old security guard Glyn Frebnob, who witnessed the incident. “Of course, I called the police immediately – I was convinced this tramp was going to kill Sir Paul!” A four hour siege ensued, as the tramp barricaded himself into the study, with Sir Paul as a hostage. “In between demanding to see Ringo Starr, he continued to berate Sir Paul,” recalls Frebnob. ”We could hear him shouting things like ‘Frog Chorus – I’d never have written shit like that you bastard!’ and accusing Sir Paul of ruining his reputation. He seemed particularly upset by ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’.” The siege was finally broken by the arrival of legendary former Beatles producer George Martin and actress and former McCartney girlfriend Jane Asher. Incredibly, after speaking with him, they both confirmed the intruder’s identity as the real Paul McCartney. “I was gobsmacked! I mean, he just looked like some horrible old tramp – wild eyes, huge lice-ridden beard and smelling of piss,” says Frebnob. “Next thing we knew, Sir Paul was being led away in handcuffs and this dosser is put in charge of his entire fortune! Mind you, once he’d shaved and had a bath, there was no doubting that he was the spitting image of Sir Paul!” According to George Martin, it was the intruder’s recollection of a certain incident in the public toilets at Charing Cross Station in 1964 which convinced him of the man’s true identity. ““He knew details that only someone who was in that cubicle with me could possibly be party to!” the producer later revealed to Frebnob. “Interestingly, the man I thought was Paul McCartney has always denied the incident ever took place – clearly, he is an impostor!” Similarly, Jane Asher was convinced by the man’s recollection of a nude cake orgy in 1965. “He described in intimate detail how he’d taken me from behind with a chocolate éclair, creaming my buttocks in the process,” she told the security guard. “Since 1966 the man purporting to be Paul has incorrectly claimed that it was a jam doughnut.”

Not surprisingly, these claims have been called into question, with sceptics pointing out that Frebnob was sacked by McCartney in May and that neither Martin nor Asher have been prepared to confirm their part in the incident. “Obviously, the establishment, record companies and the like want to hush it up! Imagine the embarrassment if it emerged that they’d let the Queen knight an impostor, for instance,” he retorts. “Also, it is significant that only a month after the real McCartney was reinstated, he started divorce proceedings against ‘his’ wife Heather!” However, Frebnob’s claims have received support from an unexpected source – the late George Harrison. At the behest of a national newspaper, medium Mary Bassworth has summoned McCartney’s one time band mate at a series of séances held in the front room of her terraced house in Cardiff. “I originally tried to contact John Lennon,” she explains. “But he was too busy holding a ‘bed in’ with Linda McCartney in protest at God’s failure to end all war on Earth.” Despite being second choice, George proved more than willing to reveal the amazing truth about Paul McCartney. “It’s true – in September 1966 we had to replace Paul with a double! We had no choice, the real Paul was completely out of control,” explained Harrison, speaking through the eighty two year old medium. “He’d fully embraced the new sexual freedoms of the sixties and the opportunities that wealth and fame had brought him – he was experimenting wildly, bedding everything that moved, usually under the influence of drugs and alcohol. We were worried at the bad publicity it might bring the band – we’d managed to cover up his indiscretions until then, but we knew that sooner or later something would get out!” The final straw came when a drunken Paul drove away from a Kensington animal-themed sex party and crashed his car. “It wasn’t the drink which caused him to crash, but the fact that he was apparently performing some perverse sex act with a live walrus on the front seat of the car,” claims George’s spirit. “The walrus was killed outright whilst Paul was left suffering amnesia. John saw this as an ideal opportunity to solve the problem once and for all!” With the aid of the British Secret Service (The Beatles were one of the UK’s top overseas money-earners and the government could ill-afford to lose such a valuable export), the real Paul was brainwashed and given a new identity as a market trader, whilst a surgically-altered double replaced him in the band. The walrus was secretly buried on a hill in Surrey.

“John thought it would be funny to actually tell everyone the real Paul’s fate in a song accredited to McCartney,” the ethereal Harrison says. “You can hear it in ‘Obla-di, Obla-da’ . It is all there – the new name, the market barrow, even the fake wife, Molly, the Secret Service provided!” Sadly, things didn’t work out exactly as the song envisaged; there would be no two children for Molly and ‘Desmond’, as the market trader, troubled by inexplicable nightmares and flashbacks, turned increasingly to drink and prostitutes. “Molly left him and the market stall went under,” George’s shade mournfully recalls. “He lost his home and lived on the streets for a few years, before suffering a blow on the head during a mugging – miraculously, his memory returned!” The fake Paul – actually Billy Sheppard, winner of a Butlin’s McCartney look-a-like contest in 1965 – has also spoken out, threatening to sue the real McCartney for his share of the star’s fortune. “Look, I worked bloody hard for forty years being him – without me The Beatles would have been finished, and there’d have been no Wings,” he defiantly told the press from his jail cell, where he awaits trial for fraud. “Besides, I wasn’t just Paul, I was simultaneously Vivian Stanshall – he was usually too pissed to perform – not to mention a stint as Cliff Richard when he was in rehab for sex addiction!” Sheppard also claims to have impersonated John Lennon for a while in the 1970s, whilst Lennon went undercover to hunt down the killers of former Beatles manager Brian Epstein (whose murder had been made to look like suicide). “That’s why they concocted that whole Lennon-McCartney feud, so they would never have to be seen together,” he says. “Mind you, before I’d do it, he also had to arrange that temporary separation from Yoko – I told him there was no way I was shagging her!” Sadly, the only other living person who might be able to shed any light on the veracity of any of these claims, has been no help whatsoever. “Listen, it is no good asking me – I was completely off me face from 1965 to 1992,” Ringo Starr has told reporters. “I can’t remember a bloody thing – apparently I was the voice of a talking railway engine for a while. Jesus! What was all that about,eh?”