PAUL´S STEPMUM ON LIFE JUST OUTSIDE THE SPOTLIGHT

 

Ruth McCartney, Angie McCartney, Jim McCartney and Paul McCartney 

BACK in 1964, Merseyside – and the world – was gripped by Beatlemania. Fans would wait hours for just a glimpse of the Fab Four, screaming and fainting at their concerts. Reporters and photographers followed the band’s every move. But, away from the spotlight, Paul McCartney would sneak back to the Wirral, where his dad Jim and his stepmum Angie and her daughter Ruth shared a modest four-bedroomed house. “We lived quite a quiet life, when I think about it,” says Angie, 83. “Jim was a quiet conservative man who didn’t like a fuss. Yes, we used to have photographers and reporters outside, but inside it was all very simple.” 

Angie had been introduced to Jim by a mutual friend after her first husband, Eddie, sadly died. “I grew up in Liverpool, in Norris Green, and in those days everyone knew everybody’s business. I was a widow and it was just me and Ruth. “ was struggling to keep a job and pay our way when the earnings rule was £5 a week. If I earned more than that, I had to go to the Social Security people, declare it, and have my widow’s pension reduced accordingly. “More than that I was lonely. Ruth hadn’t been well – she had to have a kidney removed – and it was a very hard time. “One day, my sister Joan ran into Mike Robbins, in the newsagents near us in Norris Green. We had known him from when we’d been to Butlin’s – he was a redcoat and he’d married my friend Bette. Well, Bette called me, we got together, and unbeknown to me she put her matchmaker hat on.          READ MORE... HERE.

That Hippie Penny Lane