Macca’s Eleanor Rigby remains an enigma

Eleanor Rigby’s real identity remains a mystery after Sir Paul McCartney distanced himself from a document that claimed to prove that the inspiration for the famous 1966 Beatles song was a scullery maid. An accounts register from the City Hospital, Liverpool, dated November 30, 1911, which shows the pay received by an E. Rigby, with her signature, is due to be auctioned for charity in London this month.

Annie Mawson, chief executive of the Sunbeams Music Trust charity, says she was sent the document in a brown paper envelope bearing a “Paul McCartney World Tour” stamp, after she had appealed to the singer for an item to raise funds.

Previously, Macca said the name Eleanor was inspired by Eleanor Bron, the actress who starred in the Beatles film Help! in 1965 and that Rigby came from the name of a wine merchant. Yesterday, Sir Paul said: “Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictitious character that I made up. If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that’s fine with me.”

When Steven Berkoff calls, we listen. “I want everyone to get down to the new exhibition by Peter Howson, the great Scottish war artist,” the actor says. “No other British artist approaches him but he doesn’t get the attention of those rich Hoxton painters. Perhaps because he doesn’t go twittering around town like Tracey Emin.” It’s at Flowers East gallery. Don’t keep Mr Berkoff waiting.

“I’m finishing with Destiny Calls in January,” Cilla Black tells us at the party for the tenth birthday of Claridge’s Bar. The matchmaker was criticised by Ofcom for plugging her £1.50-a-minute “psychic” phone line a lorra, lorra times on This Morning. “I believe in it but they won’t have it.” The service offers one-to-one conversations with tarot readers. Didn’t she see it coming, chuck?

Postscript

Samuel L. Jackson has admitted to a worrying obsessional crush on a British national treasure. “I’ll watch anything with Helen Mirren in it. Especially when she was young. I mean, come on! I love Helen. I watch The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover at least four times a year,” he tells Word magazine in the December issue.

John Cleese explained his new hairdo on Richard & Judy’s New Position. While talking about a previous hip operation, he announced: “As we’re talking operations; I’ve had a hair transplant! It’s because I have got a very strange-shaped skull, very pointy and I don’t like wearing wigs!”

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