'Paul McCartney is dead' explained with seven-word admission

Paul McCartney uttered a devastating seven-word admission about rumours he had died in a car accident on his way home from working on a Beatles album. After the band split in 1969, rumours began to abound that it was down to Paul being killed in a 1966 car crash on the way home from recording Sgt. Pepper, with the other band members conspiring to cover it up.

It was claimed he had been replaced by a lookalike, with conspiracy theories abounding that the band were "letting fans know" what had happened through cryptic hints. These included Paul not wearing shoes on the Abbey Road album cover, and allegations that John Lennon said "I buried Paul" at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever.

Now, decades later, Paul has opened up on the rumours - admitting "in so many ways, I was dead".

He told The Guardian: "The strangest rumour started floating around just as the Beatles were breaking up - that I was dead. We had heard it long before, but suddenly, in that autumn of 1969, stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all its own, so that millions of fans around the world believed I was actually gone."

He even asked his wife Linda "how can I possibly be dead?"

Paul wrote for the publication: "But now that over a half century has passed since those truly crazy times, I'm beginning to think that the rumours were more accurate than one might have thought at the time. In so many ways, I was dead...

"A 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover."

He worried over "crises that seemed to be exploding daily", and beat a "hasty retreat" to a sheep farm in Scotland with his wife and daughter.