Paul

WASHINGTON — Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions from senators in a Republican-led committee hearing about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The move injects new drama into the lingering tensions between Fauci and Republican lawmakers over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and accusations he lied about the origins of COVID-19, which he denies.

Fauci was set to answer lawmakers’ questions after being subpoenaed by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has long had a fraught relationship with the now-retired infectious-disease expert and led the charge seeking that he testify, again, under oath about his role in containing the pandemic.

Fauci’s decision to invoke the Fifth, at least for now, sidesteps calls for his prosecution if he is accused of lying at Wednesday’s hearing, part of a yearslong campaign for his arrest spearheaded by some Republicans in Congress. But it may also further inflame partisan divides that have festered for years about the origins and handling of the pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

Fauci, who helped lead the nation’s COVID-19 response, has become a target of those frustrations. But to his supporters he is an emblem of sound scientific expertise.

In his opening statement, Fauci said Paul has an “obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution.”

“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to prompt me to say something, anything, that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words, ‘behind bars,’” Fauci said, adding that while it pains him to do so, he is following his attorney’s advice by taking the Fifth.

Paul releases some of Fauci’s diary

Paul in his opening statement sought to build the case that Fauci helped produce the COVID-19 pandemic by approving funding of research on virus mutations and then covered up his complicity.

“Instead of an apology, you have for years avoided responsibility,” Paul said.

Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the committee’s ranking member, said that Paul’s hearing was a partisan exercise and that the hearing was looking backward instead of focusing on current national security challenges.

Leading up to the hearing, Paul released more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary covering the pandemic years. Pointing to some notes about early efforts at understanding how the virus emerged, Paul wrote on the social media platform X that what Fauci “wrote privately and what he told the country are two different stories.”

Some of the diary entries – including Fauci’s uncertainty in the pandemic’s earliest days as scientists around the world raced to understand the new virus and how best to curb it before vaccines could be created – already were reflected in a 2024 memoir and in interviews at the time.

But they have nonetheless drawn attention from people who blame Fauci for mask mandates, school closures and other policies they believe infringed on their rights as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

Ahead of the hearing, President Trump wrote on social media that he stopped relying on Fauci over the course of the pandemic because he felt Fauci made bad decisions on masks, shutdowns and other issues.

In a statement, Fauci’s attorney David Schertler said Paul’s accusations are “false and disgraceful, and we will examine all options to hold him accountable.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist before he entered public office, said Monday that his department gave the diary entries, which were created on a government computer, to the committee. He told a Fox News Channel host that he thought Fauci might lie before the committee, opening him to perjury prosecution despite his preemptive pardon from then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Scientists scrambled to Fauci’s defense ahead of the unusual hearing — the second time the longtime National Institutes of Health scientist has been back before Congress to discuss pandemic origins since leaving the government in 2022. While the COVID-19 pandemic introduced him to millions of Americans, he talked the nation through numerous outbreaks over decades, including HIV, Ebola and the 2001 anthrax attacks, while advising seven presidents.

Some disease experts criticize the accusations against Fauci

In a public letter, more than 150 infectious-disease experts and other scientists wrote that “no credible evidence has been produced to support these absurd charges” and that they are “urging our elected representatives in Congress stop these witch-hunts.”

The expected crux of Wednesday’s hearing was whether NIH-funded research in China may have played a role in how the pandemic started.

Many scientists believe the virus most likely emerged in nature and jumped from animals to people, coming to light when it spread at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. There’s no new scientific information supporting that the virus might instead have leaked from a laboratory, a theory Paul champions. A GOP-led subcommittee that studied the question in 2024 did not find any evidence linking Fauci to wrongdoing.

Fauci has long said publicly that he was open to both theories but that there’s more evidence supporting COVID-19’s natural origins, the way other deadly viruses including coronavirus cousins SARS and MERS jumped into people.

Republicans also have accused Fauci of lying about whether his agency funded what’s known as gain of function research — the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential real-world impact — at a lab in Wuhan.

The NIH for years gave grants to a New York nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which used some of the funds to work with a Chinese lab studying coronaviruses commonly carried by bats. But the definition of gain of function covers both general research and especially risky experiments to enhance the ability of potential pandemic viruses to spread or cause severe disease in humans. Fauci has previously stressed he was using the risky experiment definition and that “it would be molecularly impossible” for those bat virus experiments to have turned into the pandemic virus.

Trump, a Republican, last year paused some federally funded gain of function research, and on Tuesday his administration announced new rules to tighten oversight.

Neergaard and Swenson write for the Associated Press. Swenson reported from New York.

Last things first: Eve Babitz is a major minor L.A. writer who died five years ago at age 78. She spent nearly a quarter-century as a recluse, having suffered in 1997 a shocking and disfiguring accident while striking a match to light her Tiparillo. Her thin Indian skirt caught fire searing her panty hose into her flesh, leaving her with third-degree burns over more than half her body. She never published again, though many championed her gifts, including me. At the time of her misfortune, I was book editor of the Los Angeles Times. I had long admired her, especially the rollicking and indispensable “Slow Days, Fast Company,” first published in 1977, a charming and insightful series of stories bursting with pluck and sass. I recommended to John Carroll, the then-editor of the paper, that he make her a columnist and urged Babitz to write him directly. She did, and that letter from October 2000 is the last included in “Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were),” a book of letters expertly edited and chosen by Lili Anolik. Babitz tells Carroll that “what the paper needs is some writers that cause such an uproar, people will have to read it in order to stay abreast of the edge.” Babitz knew what she was talking about. She’d been living on that edge since she was a teenager at Hollywood High in the late 1950s.

The posthumous resurrection of Babitz’s writings is most welcome. Yet there is a risk of overpraising her merits. She was an unabashed booster of the glossy L.A. that became synonymous with a rising creative elite whose élan and narcissism she found irresistible.

Lili Anolik makes the case in her perfervid introduction: “The letters are everything you could want” and often “profound” and “frequently brilliant, invariably amusing.” She says they deserve to be put on the short shelf next to Virginia Woolf’s imperishable “A Room of One’s Own” for they are “every bit as candid, every bit as lucid, every bit as brutal, every bit as delicate as Virginia Woolf’s celebrated manifesto.”

If only.

“Too L.A.: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were)” by Eve Babitz

(New York Review Books)

Regrettably, Anolik, who is almost singlehandedly responsible for Babitz’s literary exhumation, has so fallen in love with her subject as to almost blind her to Babitz’s defects, both with respect to her writing and to the life. With two previous books — “Hollywood’s Eve” (2019) and “Didion and Babitz” (2024) — prompted by Anolik’s riveting March 2014 Vanity Fair profile, Anolik has become Babitz’s greatest champion. Now with “Too L.A.,” a title taken from Babitz’s own over-oxygenated writing, she has gathered and edited a trove of letters. They brilliantly reveal Babitz’s eye for the deep shallow as well as explore the porous boundary between the largely self-inflicted injuries of her private life and the glittering sheen of her public persona. Babitz herself, on the strength of these 197 letters, only 30 of which she ever mailed, understood in a way Anolik doesn’t the limitations of her talents, even as she strives to slip the shackles of a mansplaining culture which at almost every turn tried to blunt her ambitions, both artistic and writerly, even as her editors and admirers sought (often with her ardent encouragement) to slip between her sheets.

Eve Babitz was born in 1943 to Hollywood neo-royalty. Her Brooklyn-born father, Sol, was first violinist for both the Los Angeles Philharmonic Symphony and then the 20th Century Fox Studio Orchestra. Sol would ultimately marry Lily Mae Laviolette, a beautiful Cajun Catholic shiksa willing to convert to Judaism. Eve’s godfather was Sol’s good friend Igor Stravinsky. When puberty burst upon her at age 14, Babitz’s blossoming made her a prime candidate for induction by the fast-track girls at Hollywood High who called themselves the Thunderbird Girls and cruised the Sunset Strip in their cool cars, looking for the main chance.

From left, Sol Babitz, Mae Babitz, Mirandi Babitz and author Eve Babitz gather at a launch party for her book “Slow Days, Fast Company” in 1977.

(Photograph by Paul Ruscha; courtesy of Mirandi Babitz / The Huntington Library)

At 20, Babitz posed nude playing chess with the fully clothed Marcel Duchamp to promote Duchamp’s retrospective exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum. At the time, Babitz was having an affair with the museum’s 32-year-old married director, Walter Hopps, which perhaps explains Babitz’s reluctance to have her face photographed so as not to give the game away to Mrs. Hopps, who attended the opening. A month later, Babitz confides in an (unsent) letter: “Everything’s so fabulous for me now I can’t believe it. There’s nothing like two boyfriends to do it for you every time. There are such fabulous boys around and they take you out on dates and to movies and I feel just like a teenager. (I’m recapturing my lost youth.) I get to get dressed up and I flirt outrageously and put people on and I do things like look soulfully out the window and man it’s just too hoozie for words. … If only all of this could last forever — not that it will, but I can.”

She spent the rest of her life torn between the excitements of everyday life — cruising the hangouts du jour (Barney’s Beanery in the early 1960s where she met many of L.A.’s up-and-coming artists — Ed Kienholz, Billy Al Bengston, Laddie Dill, Peter Alexander, and the Ruscha brothers, Ed and Paul, both of whom she’d bed, Paul becoming an on-again, off-again boyfriend whose bisexuality made for a sometimes tenuous connection; and after seducing Jim Morrison before he became famous and later the Troubadour in the late 1960s which was a happy hunting ground — Steve Martin, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, J.D. Souther, Country Joe Mcdonald, Jackson Browne, to name only a few, and then Ports restaurant where she anchored a corner table) — and the seductions of drugs — uppers, acid (which she seemed to ingest with an alarming frequency), pot, of course, and then by the mid-1970s, tragically, an Everest of cocaine. She had entered what she aptly called the era of “squalid overboogie.”

Eve Babitz and her frequent companion Paul Ruscha celebrate the 1977 release of Babitz’s seminal “Slow Days, Fast Company.”

(Photograph courtesy of Mirandi Babitz / The Huntington Library)

The name-dropping is relentless and if, like me, you have an insatiable appetite for hoovering them up, this volume will not disappoint. Still, there are many pages of vapid jottings — “I cleaned the house, did the laundry, and vowed to quit smoking” — that suggest why Babitz was a failure as a novelist (see her dud “Sex and Rage”) and a superb writer of short stories and essays that stylishly plumbed the depths of her own sensibility precisely in the degree to which she was uninterested in other people.

Nearly 30 years after she stripped to please her married lover and startle the unsuspecting Duchamp, the father of Dada, and eight years after she joined AA in 1982 — the year her beloved father died of Huntington’s disease at age 70 which ultimately would also kill her — and gave up drugs and alcohol and (almost entirely) writing as well, which had always been seen by her as enabled by dope of one kind or another, she boasted that, looking back, “Everybody wanted to be me — they looked at me with yearning faces, and said, ‘Boy, you sure had fun.’ ” She was not entirely wrong. She had struck many admirers both then and now, as the quintessential California girl, a daughter of Dionysus, whose devotion to pleasure was free of misgiving or regret. She detested the East Coast avatars of apocalypse, like Nathanael West, who saw only doom and gloom in sunny L.A. Babitz, by contrast, saw things sunny side up. If Joan Didion was unsettled and made anxious by the hot Santa Anas that regularly kicked up, Babitz luxuriated in them, recalling how she and her sister would as young girls rush to embrace them, spinning madly round and round. In a 1977 unsent letter to Joseph Heller, who had championed her work when she had sent him an unsolicited fan letter after having read “Catch-22” when it was first published and she was barely 20, she declares proudly: “I’m a gossip storyteller who likes L.A. rather than hates it.” She refers to her “shallow nature,” writing that “I feel like an upstream salmon, determined to reach the shallow water, no matter how fast the river is running the other way.”

Eve Babitz, the ultimate Hollywood reveler, on Sunset Boulevard in 1980.

(Los Angeles Times)

On the evidence of these letters, she had two great loves: Ahmet Ertegun, a principal founder of Atlantic Records, and Tom Dowd, renown recording engineer and producer who worked for Ertegun. Of the two, Ertegun had the edge, if for no other reason than he came with buckets of dough, making possible assignations at his regular bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel with limo pickup and dropoff services, and the best champagne and other assorted stimulants. Ertegun was effortlessly elegant and erudite, and there was no one he didn’t know and who wouldn’t return his calls. He was married, age 45, 20 years older than Babitz, when they fell for each other in 1969. She began sleeping with him even as she agreed to profile him for Jann Wenner’s newly launched Rolling Stone. The writing didn’t go well. Wenner wanted a tougher piece than she was willing to write. Ultimately, she abandoned the assignment, claiming (not unreasonably) that she didn’t see how she could write objectively about a man she loved.

Babitz courted danger with heedless bravado and exemplary recklessness. She once had the moxie to rid herself of a would-be rapist: When told not to scream, she said with unimaginable sangfroid: “Why not?” The man bolted. It might be said of Babitz, as Oscar Wilde said of his life, that she spent her talent on her writing and reserved her genius for her life. Sculpting her natural gifts of wit and brazenness into a living artwork dazzled all who came within her orbit. Her lust for life was palpable. The letters are proof. She came at people without fear. She left them without apology. She was the boss of herself. She was the girl who seemed to have it all. The only thing she lacked was inexperience.

Wasserman, a former book editor of the Los Angeles Times, is publisher of Heyday Books, a nonprofit, independent publishing house founded in 1974 in Berkeley. He is the author of “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even if It’s a Lie: A Memoir in Essays.”

Sussex have announced that former Kent boss Matt Walker will take over as their new head coach for the 2027 season.

The 52-year-old will take charge on 1 November, succeeding Paul Farbrace, who is switching roles to become Sussex’s new Director of Cricket.

Walker spent eight seasons as head coach at Kent, guiding them to promotion to Division One in 2018, T20 Blast success in 2021 and the One-Day Cup in 2022.

He has also coached in the England men’s set-up and is currently batting coach at Warwickshire and assistant coach with MI London, formerly known as Oval Invincibles, in The Hundred.

More to follow.

BROOKS Nader stole the spotlight at a World Cup final party in New York sporting a thigh-skimming mini skirt and matching crop top.

The American model, 29, chose the striking white co-ord, which showed her toned abs and tanned thighs, for her night out at Zero Bond bar in Lower Manhattan ahead of the clash between Spain and Argentina.

Brooks, who recently showcased her figure in a trendy bikini, oozed glam in her two-piece and ramped up her look with thigh high-heeled boots.

The Baywatch actress styled her blonde hair into loose waves flowing over her shoulders and kept her make-up fresh.

She flashed a smile as she entered the party, hosted by Todd Graves, for the Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers event.

She was joined by actress Jessica Alba, who donned a black bandeau dress, and Jake Paul in all-white attire.

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Earlier in the night, Brooks took to Instagram to share behind the scenes glimpses of her getting ready for the night.

She stripped topless for a snap to praise her “dream team” as she posed in front of a cabinet filled with cosmetics.

The IMG Model then covered her modesty with her hands for another sizzling selfie.

Brooks then pulled on her co-ord and captured herself in the midst of a blow dry.

After her lively night, Brooks revealed she was working the following day on the Baywatch set.

Brooks was announced as one of the Baywatch reboot castmembers back in March.

She will be playing Selene, a captain of the Zuma beach lifeguards, according to Fox.

In her latest caption she wrote: “And we’re back, time to save some lives”.

Paul Lambert believes former club Celtic are “nowhere near good enough” without further recruitment – but has guarded against “panic”.

Striker Camilo Duran is the sole summer arrival so far for the Scottish champions, while midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has signed a new contract after a short-term deal last term.

But forward Kelechi Iheanacho and former left-back loanee Marcelo Saracchi, who had been linked with returns, will not be back in Glasgow this season.

Iheanacho has joined Bursaspor as a free agent, while Saracchi bade farewell to Celtic fans on social media and said he and his agent “did absolutely everything within our power to make a return to Glasgow happen”.

Furthermore, German centre-half Maik Nawrocki has been sold to Lens.

“The squad’s not strong enough,” Lambert told BBC Radio Scotland’s Sportsound.

“I’ve seen Celtic, they’re nowhere near good enough at this moment in time, nowhere near it. Everybody recognises it.

“They’ll compete, but I don’t think they’re strong enough to go and win it [the league] again at this moment in time. The problems were there last season, so they’re not going to change again this season.

“The squad was very, very limited on what it was last season. They won’t get away with that again – the manager knows it.”

RADIO and TV broadcaster Paul Gambaccini has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

The BBC Radio 2 and Greatest Hits Radio presenter, 77, shared a heartbreaking statement confirming he is suffering from the illness.

He said: “As Freddie Mercury once sang, you can’t turn back the clock, you can’t turn back the tide. Ain’t that a shame.

“In early 2025 I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“There’s no denying it’s a serious condition with an uncertain future, but for now life goes on as normal and I continue to broadcast The Paul Gambaccini Collection on BBC Radio 2 from 8-10pm on Sundays, and my shows on Greatest Hits Radio.

“I’m grateful for the kindness and support I’ve already received.

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“I will be as open as I can as things progress.

“For now, I wish to be given the space to keep on broadcasting the music I love to the listeners I love even more.

“These are the days of our lives.”

Alzheimer’s disease is named after the doctor who first described it in medical literature, Alois Alzheimer.

The condition affects one in six people over the age of 80 and it is thought that around 850,000 people in total are suffering in the UK alone.

A hallmark of the disease is the build-up of amyloid beta proteins in the brain, which causes plaques.

The plaques then result in the loss of connections between nerve cells in the brain – and ultimately the death of those cells and a loss of brain tissue.

Those with Alzheimer’s also have a shortage of key chemicals in the brain, which help transmit messages.

A lack of these chemicals means the brain is unable to process certain messages how it would have previously.

While there is currently no cure for the disease, some treatments can help boost these chemical messages, and ward off some of the symptoms.

But it is ultimately a progressive disease which means more symptoms appear and worsen over time.

Since his diagnosis, Gambaccini and his husband Christopher Sherwood have been receiving support from the Alzheimer’s Society.

Charity chief executive Michelle Dyson said: “Paul’s experience shows that there can be life after a dementia diagnosis – his fans will be delighted at his decision to carry on hosting his shows.”

She added: “Receiving a dementia diagnosis can be frightening, but it can also open the door to receiving treatment and support.

“We hope that by sharing his diagnosis, Paul will encourage others to spot the symptoms and reach out if they are worried about themselves or a loved one.

“The earlier someone is diagnosed, the better the chances are that they can continue doing the things they love and live independently for longer, and plan for the future.”

Known as “The Great Gambo” and “The Professor of Pop”, New York-born Gambaccini has presented regular programmes on BBC Radio 1, 2, 3 and 4.

He was a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s long-running arts programme Kaleidoscope.

He’s also hosted the Classic FM series Paul Gambaccini’s Hall Of Heroes, the Radio 4 music quiz Counterpoint, Pick Of The Pops on BBC Radio 2, and America’s Greatest Hits on Greatest Hits Radio, as well as the Paul Gambaccini Collection on Radio 2.

Gambaccini was inducted into the Radio Academy Hall of Fame in 2005.

The Alzheimer’s Society offers support to everyone affected by dementia at alzheimers.org.uk and has a support line on 0333 150 3456.

A dementia symptoms checklist can be found at alzheimers.org.uk/checklist.

The Boston Celtics are trading 2024 NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and a slew of draft capital in yet another blockbuster offseason move, a person with knowledge of the terms said Wednesday.

Boston also gets two first-round picks and two second-round picks, according to the person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade had not yet received league approvals.

It brings Brown’s tenure in Boston to an end after five All-Star appearances in a 10-season run that saw him play in more wins — counting regular-season and playoff games — than any other player in the league.

And it is another huge move being made via trade this summer, after Giannis Antetokounmpo went from Milwaukee to Miami, Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Ingram headlined a swap between the Toronto Raptors and the Clippers, and Ja Morant got traded to Portland by Memphis.

The trade breaks up what has been one of the league’s most successful 1-2 punches in Brown and Jayson Tatum, who helped carry the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title. Tatum missed most of last season while recovering from an Achilles tear that happened during the 2025 playoffs.

The 76ers also agreed to a $39-million, four-year deal with veteran forward Dean Wade.

Powell agrees to deal with the Bulls

Norman Powell has agreed to a two-year deal that could be worth up to $45 million with the Chicago Bulls, a person with knowledge of the talks said. Powell also received some interest from the Detroit Pistons, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contract can’t be finalized until July 6.

The Bulls hold a team option for 2027-28. Powell spent this past season in Miami, where he became an All-Star for the first time and averaged 21.7 points in 58 games.

Vucevic agrees to rejoin the Magic

Nikola Vucevic is headed back to the Orlando Magic, agreeing on a one-year deal for just under $4 million, a person with knowledge of those talks confirmed.

Vucevic is second all-time on the Magic list in rebounds, third in points and fourth in games played. The 35-year-old center now joins a young core led by Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner. Orlando lost Moritz Wagner, Franz’s brother, in free agency to Brooklyn on a two-year deal.

Celtics to add Conley, Robinson

Mitchell Robinson just won a title with New York, and now the center will chase another in Boston.

The Celtics agreed to a $47.4-million, three-year deal with Robinson, a person with knowledge of that agreement said. And veteran guard Mike Conley Jr. also is headed to the Celtics on a one-year deal, a second person with knowledge of that agreement said.

Etc.

Forward John Collins agreed to a three-year contract with the Detroit Pistons, a person with knowledge of those negotiations told the AP. ESPN reported the deal is worth $51 million. He started his career in Atlanta, spent two seasons in Utah and played for the Clippers last season. … The San Antonio Spurs added forward Tobias Harris on a two-year deal worth about $31 million. … The Indiana Pacers have agreed to terms with Kelly Oubre Jr. on a two-year deal worth about $17 million.

June 23 (UPI) — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he has subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci after the former infectious diseases official backed out on an agreement to testify on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hill reported that this is the first subpoena issued by Paul as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us that he will not voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so,” Paul wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “Therefore, today we have issued a subpoena for him to publicly testify.”

The post on X included a photo of Rand appearing to sign the subpoena.

Paul has repeatedly clashed with Fauci over policies and recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The senator accused Fauci of covering up U.S. research at a lab in Wuhan, China, which he said caused the coronavirus outbreak.

“We’ve been negotiating with him for material and for testimony,” Paul said in an appearance on CNBC on Tuesday.

“This has gone on for some time. He slow-walked us and slow-walked us. Finally agreed to come in voluntarily … then last week he says he’s not coming in.

“With this subpoena power, we will bring him in, unless he fights this in court.”

Fauci was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during the COVID-19 outbreak until 2022. He was also a top medical adviser to Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the crisis.

A U.S. intelligence analysis initially found there was insufficient evidence to prove COVID-19 was leaked from a research lab in Wuhan. In 2025, the CIA adjusted its stance.

“CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin-based on the available body of reporting,” an unnamed CIA representative said in a statement in January 2025.

During testimony in 2024, Fauci said he was open to both perspectives.

“I have repeatedly stated that I have a completely open mind to either possibility and that if definitive evidence becomes available to validate or refute either theory, I will readily accept it,” he said during his opening statement before a House committee hearing.

Paul Avery, a journeyman actor best known for his role on “All My Children,” and his wife, Sheila, have died following a house fire. He was 81 and she was 77.

The couple’s death was confirmed by their daughters Parker Sanchez and Kyle Avery, who said the fire broke out in their home in Blairstown, N.J., early last Tuesday morning. While firefighters were able to reach Paul and Sheila inside the Mohican Road home, the couple succumbed to smoke inhalation.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Paul had a recurring role playing Hughie the bartender at Foxy’s on the ABC daytime soap “All My Children” for 12 years. He also acted in the 1978 film “Superman,” “Three’s Company,” “Soap,” and appeared in more than 300 commercials. He also acted in theater productions and produced plays in both New York and Los Angeles.

According to his daughters, the actor joked that his “elastic face” landed him multiple national commercials that ran concurrently. Casting directors looking for a “Paul Avery type” would turn the actor away because he was in too many commercials.

“He had a teeny tiny part — one line in Superman — but boy did he make a meal out of that,” Sanchez joked.

Kyle Avery added that at the Oscars, they played a clip from “Superman” that featured Paul reciting his line.

“His good friend ran into the kitchen and made him an Oscar out of tinfoil and handed it to him,” she said. “But I think the thing that he was proudest of was that he could make a living as an actor.”

Paul Avery was born Oct. 8, 1941; and Sheila Avery was born May 22, 1949. Paul was raised in Indianapolis, served in the Vietnam War in his 20s and moved to Los Angeles and then New York by his late 20s to try to make it as an actor. Sheila was raised in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to New York where she worked as a registered nurse but also had a background in theater.

She studied the craft in college, performed on a USO tour in Vietnam and worked as a costume mistress.

According to the couple’s daughters, the two brought their Midwest charm and sensibilities to the East Coast.

The couple met while living in an apartment building filled with other journeymen actors in the late 1970s.

“They were all part of this theater community, people who would go from regional theater to regional theater with the season,” Kyle Avery said. “They were a whole troupe of people who’d be in New York for part of the year, but then they’d go and be in Lakewood, Ohio, or Kansas City or Chicago, just following the theater.”

Sheila was previously married to John Quincy Bruce Jr., also an actor in the New York theater community and the father of Sanchez. Sheila and Paul got together in 1982 and married in 1984. They celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary in April.

Paul was a jack-of-all-trades and master of many. He was a small plane pilot who often flew into a tiny airport in Blairstown, N.J., which is how the couple discovered the town they’d call home. There, they opened a bookstore, Cabbages and Kings. Paul also launched a magazine: the Warren County Companion. According to the couple’s daughters, Paul was the first internet service provider in town. He also penned film reviews for the New Jersey Herald and some for the New York Times as well.

Sheila found what her daughters called the “perfect job,” which brought together her work as a registered nurse and background in theater: speaking in schools about domestic violence and sexual assault. She also became a counselor who worked with survivors, and a trainer who worked with volunteers, teaching them how to interact with victims.

“People who took her training 20 years ago have been contacting us and saying, ‘Your mother changed the way I thought about the world, she is the basis for my feminism,’” Sanchez said. “It’s been so fascinating to hear the ripple effects of young women who took that training from her, and who are now middle-aged women who are still thinking about her.”

The daughters said that their parents were community icons who were dedicated to service. “They had a sense of duty to the people around them,” Kyle Avery said.

“They loved to throw parties,” Sanchez said. “They hosted an annual event called Faux Giving and they would have these insane traditions, like we would have a head-measuring contest and measure the circumference of people’s heads, and then a winner gets to eat their pie first, and a badge.

“Whoever had the smallest head, everyone there would shout, ‘Pin head! Pin head!’ at this person, and it was the silliest thing in the world, but everyone who attended that event, even if they came one time, would talk about it forever.”

Kyle Avery added, “They were incredibly memorable.”

“They were community builders, they were people who wanted to nourish you in every way, and they were so good at it.”

They are survived by their children: Kyle Avery; Parker Sanchez and her husband, Pablo; Paul Avery’s son from a previous relationship, Stuart Sutherland; and their grandchildren, Avery, Duncan and Liana.

Ronda Rousey and Jake Paul have taunted the UFC and Dana White for failing to break Most Valuable Promotions’ MMA record audience figure with the White House event last week.

US broadcaster Paramount said UFC 250 Freedom on Sunday reached 7m people in the US on Paramount+.

Netflix said Rousey’s 15-second demolition of Gina Carano in May had a US average audience of 9.3m and a US “peak audience” of 11.6m.

Paul, who co-founded MVP with Nakisa Bidarian, wrote on X: “As a boxing promoter it feels good waking up today being the biggest MMA promoter.”

Paul has a history of taunting UFC president White, and the MVP-promoted Rousey v Carano event was positioned as a “takeover” of MMA by boxer Paul.

Rousey, who chose to fight on an MVP card rather than the UFC because of fight purse demands, reacted to news of the viewing figures by targeting UFC chief business officer Hunter Campbell.

“Lmao [laughing my ass off]! Kiss my ass, Hunter Campbell,” Rousey said.

UFC White House, which had two title fights and was held on the south lawn of US President Donald Trump’s home, averaged 8.2m viewers across the US and Latin America.

Paramount said 17m people watched at least one minute of the event in those countries, including 15.3m in the US.

It said the live audience figures were verified by Nielsen, the industry standard in reporting TV viewership metrics, and Adobe Analytics.

Streaming giants Netflix did not release any figures other than for the US and did not say whether the numbers were verified by Nielsen or any other party.

Paramount suggested the UFC would release further global figures for the White House event.

American Justin Gaethje gave the Trump-fronted event a fairytale ending on the president’s 80th birthday by upsetting the odds to beat Ilia Topuria in the main event.

Gaethje, a Trump supporter, claimed the UFC lightweight title for the first time at the age of 37.

Tottenham Hotspur have agreed a £52m deal with Brighton for Dutch defender Jan Paul van Hecke.

The 26-year-old started in his country’s 2-2 draw with Japan on Sunday at the World Cup.

Van Hecke has a year left on his current Brighton contract and showed no inclination to extend the deal.

Brighton had already turned down one offer for a player who joined them from NAC Breda in 2020.

However, they have now accepted Tottenham’s offer, which should clear the way to Van Hecke rejoining former Brighton boss Roberto de Zerbi in north London.

The deal also includes a significant sell-on clause with Brighton profiting further should Spurs sell the player.

Van Hecke made 131 appearances for the Seagulls and started 36 out of 38 Premier League games for Fabian Hurzeler’s side last season as they secured an eighth-place finish. That secured European qualification for only the second time in the club’s history.

Tottenham have already strengthened De Zerbi’s squad in an effort to improve markedly on successive 17th-placed finishes.

Scotland defender Andy Robertson has already signed from Liverpool, with Argentinian centre-half Marcos Senesi agreeing a move from Bournemouth.

THE friction between Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in 1970 will be brought to life in the upcoming Beatles biopic.

But I can reveal there is tension among the two actors playing the pop legends, too.

Oscar-nominated Barry Keoghan is playing drummer Ringo, alongside Gladiator II star Paul Mescal as Macca.

Sources on the set of the film, directed by Sam Mendes and due for release in 2028, have noticed that the relationship between the two Irish actors has become strained.

One said: “Barry has been rubbing people up the wrong way.

“His timekeeping is not always up to scratch and he often references that he is a parent — despite not living with his son.

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“He also brings his brother Eric on set as his assistant, which doesn’t always bring out the best in his character.

“Barry is professional and can bring out the best in any script.

“But he can test the boundaries off-camera.”

Paul and Ringo, the last surviving members of the band, clashed in 1970, shortly before the group split in April that year.

Paul was preparing to release his first solo album, McCartney, just a few weeks before The Beatles album Let It Be was due to come out.

His bandmates wrote him a letter asking him to delay it, and Ringo hand-delivered it to Paul’s home in London.

Paul, who is now close friends with Ringo, later admitted it was the only time he threw someone out of his house.

The new screen project is a series of four biographical films based on the lives and careers of each member of The Beatles.

The four intersecting biopics, written by James Bond screenwriter Jez Butterworth, will tell the story of the group from their humble beginnings in Liverpool to becoming the biggest band on the planet.

Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn will portray George Harrison and Harris Dickinson stars as John Lennon.

Earlier this week, Harris and co-star Paul went to the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, where they were filming.

Of the four films, Mendes explained: “Each one is told from the particular perspective of just one of the guys. This is a chance to understand them a little more deeply.”

Even so, it sounds like there’s another meaty story behind the camera.

Reza’s sharpe move

MADE In Chelsea couple Reza Amiri-Garroussi and Bella Sharpe have got back together.

The pair, who first dated in 2024, have been spotted together in London.

It comes as Reza’s ex Ruby Adler announced her engagement to multi-millionaire Luxe Listings Sydney star Gavin Rubinstein after just a year of dating.

An insider said: “Reza and Bella split due to the pressures of filming Made In Chelsea. But now they’re taking a break from the show, they’ve reconnected.

“Reza always wanted to give the relationship another chance. With Ruby out of the picture, there’s nothing to stop them.”

Hopefully it’ll be second time lucky for these two.

CHLOE’S PRICE IS RIGHT

TOWIE’S CHLOE BROCKETT is dating a new man – her co-star’s ex.

I can reveal the reality star is courting Essex lad Daniel Price, who used to romance Yazmin Oukhellou.

Chloe recently split with Love Island champ Jack Fincham.

A source said: “Chloe and Daniel have kept their relationship quiet. They are enjoying getting to know each other. He treats her well and she is happy.”

It’s not the first time Yasmin and Chloe have shared the same taste in men after they both had trysts with James Lock.

Small world . . .  

BEBE AND JASON ON THE BALL

POP’S finest didn’t let the relentless rain dampen their spirits yesterday as they took to the stage to perform for Capital FM’s Summertime ball at London’s Wembley Stadium.

Bebe Rexha belted out hits in a denim corset teamed with a fluffy pink cardie, Jason Derulo ripped his shirt off to bust out some signature moves, and superstar DJ Fatboy Slim got fans dancing.

Lola Young was back on fine form as she sang her anthem Messy and expressed her gratitude to the crowd for their support.

Opening up about her sobriety on the socials this week, she wrote: “Sometimes I feel like I am grieving an old version of myself that I have chosen to let go of. Even though I chose a path that is better and safer, there are days where it still all feels wrong.”

 HOPEFULS GIVE XTINA ROLE A BURL

CHRISTINA AGUILERA has cast three young stars to share the lead role in her upcoming production of Burlesque The Musical.

British newcomers Natalia Jacques and Gracie O’Brien will portray Ali, the waitress-turned-dancer played by Christina in the 2010 movie.

American Cecilia Petrush will also star in the role.

Writer and director Steven Antin said: “When Christina brought Ali to life in the film, she created something truly iconic.

“Bringing Burlesque from screen to stage is about honouring that legacy. These three exceptional actresses step into those heels not to imitate Christina, but to continue the legacy she began.”

Burlesque The Musical returns to London this September at the new West End venue The Arts At Marble Arch.

Netflix boosts brand

NETFLIX has added rape- accused Russell Brand’s hit film St Trinian’s on to the streaming service.

The actor and comedian starred in the 2007 movie about rebellious schoolgirls alongside Colin Firth and Rupert Everett.

Netflix added the flick under “comedies” last month.

Brand starred as crook Flash Harry who taught the schoolgirls about “the seven laws of crime”.

He is accused of three rapes, three sex assaults and an indecent assault on six women from 1999 to 2009.

His trial at Southwark Crown Court is due to start in October and is expected to take up to eight weeks.

The former TV and radio presenter denies all charges against him.

Rupert, who played headmistress Camilla Fritton in the film, claimed Brand behaved “perfectly well” on set.

He said: “There were a lot of beautiful women on St Trinian’s and there was never any scandal to do with Russell Brand.”

Sean sis: it’s real deal

LOVE Island star Sean Fitzgerald has uncovered a perfect match in Lola Deal, according to his sister.

Gaelic footballer Sean, who is in a couple with former police detective Lola, sealed their romance with a kiss at the villa in Majorca earlier this week.

The hunk’s sister Katie revealed: “I absolutely adore Lola.

“She is gorgeous, so sweet, kind, and the smile she puts on Sean’s face is really nice to see.

“As of right now in the villa, I think Lola is best suited to him.”

She said of her brother: “I would just like to see more of his goofy side that we all see at home.”

JEANIE IS OUT FOR B*WITCHED

THEY rose to fame in the late Nineties wearing double denim – but Irish pop band B*Witched have revealed that the outfits in their 1998 hit video C’est La Vie were not actually planned.

Twin sisters Edele and Keavy Lynch, who supported their brother Shane and his Boyzone bandmates last night, sat down with Biz on Sunday’s Emily ahead of their performance at London’s Emirates Stadium.

Edele said: “The day before we were doing the C’est La Vie video, our clothes got stolen from the record company and they never knew where they went.

“So in a panic they ended up going to Levi’s in the morning to just grab some clothes.”

She added: “I still have my outfit from the 1998 tour and I still fit into it. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing at this point. My eldest daughter borrows stuff all the time and I’m always coming across it.

“In the winter she wears this white fluffy jacket which I wore for the To You I Belong video.”

The twins, along with bandmates Sinead O’Carroll and Lindsay Armmaou, released their single Firefly on Friday ahead of an EP in August – but as they gear up for their 30th anniversary, they don’t plan on hanging up their jeans any time soon.

Edele explained: “We’ve realised that if we turn up without denim, we might as well not sing.”

Asked about the possibility of being in a campaign with Levi’s, the singer said: “I think they are missing a trick.”

KATE’S SEACRET TALENT

KATE MOSS has made her debut as an artist this week by unveiling her first watercolour for sale.

The supermodel painted a green and blue seahorse, left, which is being shown alongside new pieces by Rolling Stone bandmates Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards, Hollywood actress Sharon Stone and Guns N’ Roses legend Slash.

The collection is being auctioned online to raise funds for Doodle Drop For Coral, a new campaign led by Project Zero, the ocean conservation charity co-founded by Ronnie’s son TYRONE WOOD.

Kate has signed her seahorse by hand, writing: “Love, Kate Moss”, alongside a tiny heart.

The current bid stands at £285.

A nude portrait of Kate was painted by the late British artist Lucian Freud in 2002. It sold for £3.5million.

Tyrone told me: “Kate’s seahorse is one of those pieces that makes you smile.”

NIGELLA LAWSON has revealed the secret ingredient she tucks into that keeps her skin looking young and plump.

The Great British Bake Off judge, left, said: “I’m a great believer in butter. I just eat what I want.

“I’m not punish-ing myself trying to look like a model. I just waddle over and enjoy myself.”

Speaking at London’s Japanese restaurant Nobu, Nigella insisted she will not jump on the tweakment bandwagon, adding: “Cosmetic work is a tyranny. I just think there’s no point.”

Remind me to include a tub of Lurpak on my shopping list.

WHO can blame Paul McCartney for glancing in the rear-view mirror on his latest record? 

At 83, the likely lad from Liverpool, who became a Beatle and Britain’s best-loved songwriter, is due a moment of reflection.  

He looks at it this way: “As a writer, you often write about things in the past, even if it’s just yesterday.” 

Or even, as Macca can’t resist saying, if that past “always seems so far away”.  

“That’s another nice idea. I think I might have done that one,” he adds in acknowledgment of his immortal Beatles ballad Yesterday. 

His 20th solo studio album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, finds him casting his mind back to innocent times before The Beatles changed his life for ever. 

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Five of the 14 tracks visit the simple pleasures of youth — As You Lie There, Days We Left Behind, Down South, Home To Us (a first ever duet with Ringo) and Salesman Saint — and, as you’ll discover, each comes with a captivating back story. 

Here, the master storyteller, whose previous character studies include Eleanor Rigby, The Fool On The Hill and She’s Leaving Home, turns the spotlight on himself for what might just be his most personal song cycle yet. 

On The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, Sir Paul makes you believe in HIS yesterdays. 

Asked why much of his latest work deals with memories, he replies: “I think writers, including me, ask themselves that. 

“When you think about, say, Charles Dickens, what’s he going to write about except stuff he knows and stuff he remembers? Then he can gussy them up.” 

And do recent Beatles and Wings reissue projects have an impact on the way he fashions a song these days? 

“No,” answers McCartney emphatically. “The thing that pulls it all together is me — it’s my brain making music.  

“I don’t think, ‘Wow, oh yeah, let’s do this. This is a Beatles idea, or this is a Wings idea’. I don’t think like that. It’s all current. It’s me. This is what I do.” 

Listen to The Boys Of Dungeon Lane and you’ll understand what he’s getting at.  

Despite first picking up a guitar nearly 70 years ago, he’s still making eclectic, freewheeling music, brimful of ideas, even if many lyrics are bathed in nostalgia. 

The album was recorded over the past five years, when time permitted between touring and other commitments, in the company of in-demand American producer Andrew Watt, known for his work with Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and, ironically, The Beatles’ chief Sixties chart rivals, the Rolling Stones. 

“We just enjoyed it,” says Macca of his sessions with Watt. “We were like a couple of Boys Of Dungeon Lane — little boys in a sandpit — and we were having fun.” 

So, with the help of telling observations from the man himself, given to me by his team, let’s take a deep dive into the key tracks. 

As You Lie There begins proceedings in memorable style with an intimate spoken word passage delivered over minor key acoustic strums. 

McCartney intones: “I used to walk past your house. Every night I’d look up at your window. The light was on. I saw your silhouette on the blind. Do you think of me? Do I ever cross your mind?” 

The song, with its squalling rock refrain, recalls a teenage crush from the time Macca lived at 20 Forthlin Road in the Allerton area of south Liverpool, in the house where he and John Lennon first discovered their spark of creative chemistry. 

“Up in one of the ­windows, there was a girl I ­fancied called Jasmine,” he says of his tale of unrequited love. “But I didn’t know how to approach her. I never spoke to her. 

“The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed — I was on the toilet — so I missed Jasmine.” 

Aside from the sweet story behind the lyrics, As You Lie There is important because it is the song that kickstarted the whole process, just as the world was emerging from the Covid pandemic. 

McCartney says: “The album really started when my manager said, ‘Would you like to meet Andrew Watt?’ 

“I knew he was an active young producer, and I liked some of his stuff. I said, ‘Yeah, great’. He said, ‘Well, it’s just a cup of tea. Go down to his studio’.” 

The pair hit it off and what began as that cuppa at Watt’s basement studio — located in his Beverly Hills residence once owned by Charlie Chaplin — soon turned into something much more significant. 

Macca described his songwriting process, how he would try “to find  

a really weird chord”, to give him “a little inspiration”. 

To his delight, he realised that Watt, a big guitar collector, “had figured that if I was coming down, it would be handy to have a left-handed guitar. 

“I struck this mad chord,” he continues. “I still have no idea what it is, then I changed one note, then another. Suddenly we  had a three-chord sequence and Andrew said, ‘We should record this’.” 

As the song took shape, they considered bringing in Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers on drums but Watt suggested that McCartney, a more than proficient drummer, should play them himself.  

He says: “I really enjoyed drumming to it, so I put down the drum track, then obviously the bass.  

“Then Andrew put the guitar lick down, because he’s a good guitar player. And over a few days, we made As You Lie There. That started the journey.” 

The “journey” included recordings in various LA studios as well as Macca’s own Hog Hill Mill in Sussex and his old Beatles stomping ground, Abbey Road. 

Of all the ensuing songs, first single Days We Left We Behind sets the tone — and is also significant for yielding the album title. 

“This is very much a memory song for me,” says McCartney. “I was just thinking about those days I left behind.” 

Whenever he goes to Liverpool these days, to visit the city’s Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) for instance, he notes that “the back entrance to the airport is in Dungeon Lane”. 

He remembers trips down that lane “as a little kid, because I used to wander off, just on my own, with my little bird book”. 

It was the keen ornithologist’s gateway to stunning Mersey Shore, an area teeming with wading birds just a short distance from suburban Speke where he lived between the ages of five and 13. 

“Speke is quite working class,” says McCartney. “We didn’t have much at all but it didn’t matter because all the people were great and you didn’t notice it. 

“It’s my wife Nancy’s favourite track on the album. When we play it to people, we say, ‘You don’t need to cry’, and then you look up and see that they are.” 

When asked how he settled on the album title, Macca says you could ask the same question about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

“It’s just some words I like. We were thinking Along The Mersey Shore could be good. But then I liked The Boys Of Dungeon Lane — it’s a bit more, ‘What’s that about?’ ” 

McCartney says Days We Left Behind “involves a bit in the middle about John and Forthlin Road”. (The McCartney family moved there in 1955). 

It suggests that he and his much-missed songwriting partner in The Beatles “wrote a secret code, to never be spoken”. 

This leads us to the folkie Down South which, says Macca, is “another one about reminiscing”.  

“I often think about John and George,” he continues. “We used to hitchhike in the days before The Beatles. It was in the days when you could — now I warn my grandkids, ‘Don’t do it’, because there are too many nutters out there.” 

He remembers: “I got a tip from someone who said, ‘You start off in Chester — because that’s where all the lorries are and they’re all going straight down south. That’s a good place to get your first lift’.” 

With Harrison, seven months his junior, coming along for the ride to places like Harlech in Wales, it was a perfect chance to do some “bonding” with his future bandmate. 

And speaking of bandmates, what about the rousing Home To Us, which, for good reason, is the only track McCartney doesn’t play the drums on. 

During one of his breaks from sessions with Watt, he “talked to Ringo about Andrew”. 

“Then Ringo went round to Andrew’s studio and drummed a bit. Next time I saw Ringo, he said, ‘Well, he didn’t do anything with it.’  

“I asked what he’d expected and he said, ‘Well, you know, a track’.” 

When Macca finally heard his old mucker’s efforts, he suggested to Watt: “We SHOULD make a track and send it to Ringo. So, we did.” 

On writing the Home To Us lyrics, he reveals: “This song is done totally with Ringo in mind. I’m talking about where we came from.  

“In common with a lot of people, you come from nothing and you build yourself up. Ringo was the one who came from the most ‘nothing’ in The Beatles. 

“He was from the Dingle and that was well hard. He used to get mugged coming home from work. 

“Even though it was crazy, it was ‘home to us’ and I made the song around that idea.” At first, Ringo only sang a few lines of chorus, but Macca rang him and said he’d “love to hear him sing the whole thing”. 

“Next, we took my first line, Ringo’s second line and we had a duet — something we’d never done before.  

“We also wanted backing vocals, and I had the idea it would be nice to hear girls. Chrissie Hynde and Sharleen Spiteri are mates — and they did it.” 

The last of McCartney’s memory songs is the most poignant, Salesman Saint, which pays tribute to his midwife mother Mary who died when he was only 14 (the “mother Mary” of Let It Be) and his salesman/amateur musician father Jim. 

He says: “This song is me remembering my mum and dad. I was born in World War II and I often think, ‘Bloody hell, it’s tough enough having a baby now but imagine if we were all conscious that bombs could be falling any minute’ — and Liverpool was getting heavily bombed.  

“I was thinking about them bringing up this kid in those circumstances. My dad happened to be a cotton salesman, and my mum was a nurse. They did it. They managed it and they brought up me and my brother [Mike]. 

“Got us to doctors, got us to school and did all these things under those circumstances. At the end of the song, there’s music I’m trying to make from their era.” 

So now you’ve heard about all the songs inspired by McCartney’s youth but there are NINE more tracks to digest. So here, in Macca’s own words, are his thoughts on those: 

Lost Horizon: “This one came about when our dearly beloved and now sadly deceased studio manager, Eddie Klein, was logging some old cassettes of mine.  

“He asked me if I remembered Lost Horizon and I said, ‘No’. He said, ‘It’s good, you should listen to it’. So, we remade it faithfully to the cassette version — just with a more modern sound.” 

Ripples On A Pond: “It’s a love song. Like a few of the songs, we started this in my studio in Sussex. I said to Andrew, ‘You’re supposed to be a pop producer and we’re making all these records that don’t sound like that to me so, come on, let’s pop this one up!’ ”  

Mountain Top: “My wife is a real live music fan and if there’s anything on she’s like, ‘Can we go?’ So, we go to Glastonbury every year and I started fantasising about some young girl tripping — she’s magic mushroomed out. The things you write songs about!” (Nancy delivers the closing spoken words.)  

We Two: “A lot of Beatles records were made on a four-track Studer machine, including A Day In The Life. It’s such a classic now. I’ve got one in the studio and we use it sometimes. Andrew loves all these recording legends of the past. I showed him the Studer and he said, ‘Can we use it now?’ Luckily, it’s in full working order so we did We Two on it. It’s a little love song.” 

Come Inside: “Going to side two now. We start it off with a rocker love song. It’s straightforward — but with verve.” 

Never Know: “When I was in LA, I always liked the idea of Laurel Canyon and that scene. The days of Joni Mitchell, the Eagles — all that hanging out, getting stoned and playing guitars. So that was the vibe that started off Never Know.” 

Life Can Be Hard: “I had a little instrumental chord sequence during Covid — and there was a little baby in the house, my wife’s niece’s new baby and it was a thrill. For a lot of people, Covid was terrible if you weren’t with family.  

“Anyway, this baby used to like these chords, and it became a song. Life can be hard, but that’s when we put it together again. It’s a positive message.”  

First Star Of The Night: “I was on tour and had a day off, which was precious. We were in Costa Rica and it rained hard — all day heavy, tropical rain. I was thinking about being out by the pool, but you really couldn’t go out.  

“I thought, ‘I know, I’ll write a song’. I had my guitar with me. So, this starts out, ‘Even when it’s raining’, but then I switched it to, ‘Even when it’s raining inside’, just to give myself somewhere to go with the song.” 

Momma Gets By: “The last track on the album and it’s totally imaginary. I was thinking of Porgy and Bess’s world. It’s basically about a woman who you can see is the strength in the family.” 

Finally, Macca is asked how he hopes listeners will respond to his new album. 

He replies: “Well, I hope they fall in love with the songs and the performances. I hope it takes them to a place of joy.” 

Whether it’s Penny Lane, Dungeon Lane or Memory Lane, Paul McCartney will transport you there. 

Roll up! Roll up! He is your magical not-so-mysterious tour guide. 

PAUL McCARTNEY

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane

★★★★★

The roar erupting from the capacity audience inside the Ed Sullivan Theater when Stephen Colbert stepped on the stage of his “Late Show” for the last time made it clear that they did not want him to say goodbye.

Colbert took his final bow as his beloved late-night show came to an end Thursday. The episode was so crammed with top celebrities who showed up to share a last moment with the comedian that it extended several minutes beyond its usual one-hour run time.

Before the official start, Colbert addressed the audience as he thanked the staff, calling the show “The Joy Machine”: “We call it the Joy Machine because to do this many shows, it has to be a machine. But the thing is, if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears, and I cannot adequately explain to you what the people who work here have done for each other, and how much we mean to each other.”

In his opening monologue, Colbert downplayed the event‘s status, rolling a series of jokes about news stories in New York and New Jersey. But he was repeatedly interrupted by audience members Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd and Tim Meadows who all became irritated when Colbert informed each of them that they would not be his last guest.

When the show’s supposed scheduled last guest, Pope Leo XIV, refused to leave his dressing room, Paul McCartney popped on stage to a rapturous ovation. The legendary musician presented Colbert with a framed photo of The Beatles when they appeared on Sullivan’s show in 1964.

The only subtle reference to President Trump came when McCartney relayed a story how the Beatles, before their Sullivan appearance, got their faces covered with bright orange makeup. “That’s pretty popular in certain circles these days,” Colbert quipped.

The episode marked the finale of Colbert’s 11-year run on CBS’ late-night show, which he has been counting down since July of last year, when CBS said it was canceling the show because of financial difficulties. “The Late Show” franchise, which Colbert inherited in 2015 from David Letterman, was the top-ranked late-night show, but it faced challenges due to dramatic declines in viewership and a drop in advertising revenue.

However, industry observers also contended the move was tied to Colbert’s relentless criticism of Trump. The decision was announced after Paramount, the parent company of CBS, had settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The company agreed to pay $16 million to settle the suit, which came as Paramount was attempting to get regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance Media, which Colbert called “a big fat bribe.” Trump made no secret of his disdain for Colbert and other late-night hosts who have skewered him and his administration over the years.

Colbert, his guests and others continued to blast Trump in this final week. In his introduction Wednesday of his performance of “Streets of Minneapolis,” Bruce Springsteen said: “I’m here in support tonight for Stephen, because you’re the first guy in America who has lost his show because we got a president who can’t take a joke.”

And Jimmy Kimmel on his ABC late-night series said Wednesday, “I will be watching tomorrow night. I hope that those of you who watch will also tune in to CBS for the last time. Don’t ever watch it again.”

In a tribute to Colbert, Kimmel, another target of Trump, and NBC‘s “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon said their respective shows would not air new episodes during Colbert’s finale.

But the overall vibe on “The Late Show” this week has centered on celebration and spotlighting the show’s comedic formula. Several celebrities who have a special connection with the show made appearances, including Jon Stewart from “The Daily Show” and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.

In one of the more arguably iconic sequences, David Byrne and his band — all attired in bright blue uniforms — appeared Tuesday to perform the Talking Heads anthem “Burning Down the House.” Colbert joined in at the end, dancing in his matching blue outfit.

The “Late Show” time slot will be occupied starting Friday by Byron Allen and his “Comics Unleashed” syndicated show. CBS executives have said they hope to develop a new original late-night series in the future.

HIS love life has been almost as varied as his incredible songwriting catalogue.

Sir Paul McCartney endured the tragedy of losing first wife Linda to cancer and a catastrophic £24million divorce from Heather Mills before finally finding happiness again with American businesswoman Nancy Shevell.

But today The Sun can reveal the identity of the secret childhood crush who became Sir Paul’s “one that got away” — a pretty neighbour whose striking good looks inspired the opening track to his new album, which tells the story of his childhood in Liverpool.

The record was unveiled at a preview event in London this month, where the legendary Beatles songwriter recalled memories of a pretty neighbour called Jasmine, who lived close to his home.

Today, it has emerged she is retired mum-of-three Jasmine Howe, who left the area and resettled in Hertfordshire before retiring to the New Forest in Hampshire.

And the now 83-year-old’s ­family were stunned to learn of the £800million rock legend’s youthful infatuation — revealing she had “absolutely no idea” about his fondness for her.

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They explained: “It’s a cute story, she lived nearby and knew who he was, but she never got close to him — meanwhile, he obviously felt very differently!

“It’s an amazing story — a very long time ago now, but we’ve chatted as a family in the past about how Jasmine grew up close to Paul McCartney.
Goosebumps

“She just knew him as one of the boys in the local area. It’s enough to give you goosebumps!”

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is Sir Paul’s first solo album in five years, and critics say it is his “most personal to date”.

The title is taken from Days We Left Behind, a wistful acoustic track that references Dungeon Lane, near the River Mersey, where McCartney played as a boy, as well as a “secret code” and mysterious promise made to John Lennon at the time, which he insists “will never be broken”.

At a special event, held at the iconic Abbey Road studios in London where the Fab Four ­produced their biggest hits, Sir Paul played tracks from the new record and explained their ­origins — beginning with opening song As You Lie There.

The lyrics recall: “Do I ever cross your mind as you lie there? As you lie across your bed, am I there inside your head?”

Revealing the inspiration to a small invited audience, Sir Paul explained: “Up in one of the ­windows, there was a girl I ­fancied called Jasmine.

“But I didn’t know how to approach her — I never spoke to her.

“The joke was, she did show up later that year and knocked on the door. I was indisposed — I was on the toilet — so I missed Jasmine!”

Turning to his wife Nancy, who he married in 2011, he grinned and quipped: “Sorry, Nancy.”

Prior to meeting his third wife, Macca famously had quite a ­colourful love life.

His first serious romance was with Dorothy ‘Dot’ Rhone, who he met at the Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool in 1959.

The pair dated for more than two years and even got engaged, but split just before Beatlemania exploded.

In 1963, Paul met actress and model Jane Asher backstage at one of the band’s concerts.

The relationship would last five years and Paul even moved into the family home on London’s Wimpole Street.

Jane was his muse and introduced him to the avant-garde arts and classical music scene, which would inspire some of his most famous songs.

Despite being charmed by Jane’s cultured family and domestic life, Paul had secret flings with model Maggie McGivern and US writer Francie Schwartz — betrayals that ultimately shattered one of the Sixties’ most iconic romances.

He met his second wife, model and amputee activist Heather Mills, at a charity event in 1999, marrying her three years later.

Their daughter Beatrice was born the following year. However, the pair split acrimoniously three years later with a very publicly played-out divorce — one that cost the star £24million.

However, the singer enjoyed real happiness with his first wife, American photographer Linda.

They married in 1969, raised four children together, and were ­inseparable until her death from breast cancer in 1998.

Growing up, Sir Paul lived with his parents at 20 Forthlin Road in Allerton, Liverpool, while Jasmine lived with her family on the corner of neighbouring Hurstlyn Road, just 20 yards away.

Both properties still stand in the south Liverpool suburb, nestled in a series of brick-built terraces — though Sir Paul’s is now owned and maintained by The National Trust as a museum.

The Trust operates tours around Sir Paul’s home and also John Lennon’s childhood home nearby.

Inside, the three-bed property has been meticulously preserved as a snapshot of 1960s Liverpool, including some of the family’s original decor — and a blue plaque outside commemorates “The Birthplace of The Beatles” as Paul and pal John would meet there to compose their earliest songs.

Jasmine later married her boyfriend Charles, known to the family by his middle name, ­Christopher, and they had three sons — Philip, Matthew and, amusingly, Paul.

A photograph of Jasmine posted online by a family member shows her looking elegant in a navy blazer at a relative’s wedding, with carefully cropped blonde hair beneath a wide-brimmed hat.

The relative explained: “She is 83 now and lives quietly. She wouldn’t want it to become any more of a story than it is — she had no idea that Sir Paul liked her, but she’s happy to leave it as that.

“It’s a good story for our family.”

The album, released on May 29, returns the world’s greatest living songwriter to many of his early memories and experiences, with Sir Paul going on to explain more about his 18th solo collection.

He said: “This was a lot of memories of Liverpool for me, but also any days we’ve left behind.

“Everyone’s got them, school, old mates  . . . It has memories of John in the middle — that’s lovely to go back to. Someone asked: ‘What’s the secret code?’ I’m not telling.

“You make up a lot of stuff when you write songs.”

And that admission may chime with Jasmine’s family, who later jokingly insisted: “She never ­actually knocked on his door.”

On another track, Salesman Saint, Sir Paul turns to his parents. “I was born in 1942, in the war. I was too young to appreciate that, but my parents weren’t.

“My dad was a fireman, putting out fires from the bombs. My mum was a nurse and midwife. But they carried on, because they had to.

“Like people in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere now.”

Meanwhile, Down South, one of the album’s most nostalgic tracks, recalls a story of hitchhiking with Lennon and fellow pal and later Beatles bandmate George Harrison.

The lyrics explain: “It was a good way to get to know you before we learned Twist & Shout.”

And reminiscing about the trip, Sir Paul reveals how he and George climbed on to a milk float.

He says: “There was the driver’s seat, a battery and a passenger seat. George got the battery. His jeans had a zip on the back and it connected with the battery. Later, he showed me the big zip burn.”

The new record was unveiled in Liverpool with a series of cryptic posters around the city.

Artwork for the project was designed by Sir Paul’s nephew, Josh.

It features cameos from Ringo Starr, The Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde and Texas frontwoman Sharlene Spiteri.

And its release coincides with a series of major Beatles retrospectives — including Peter Jackson’s seminal Get Back documentary put together from restored archive footage that details the creation of their final album, Let It Be, and the band’s break-up.

But still to come is a major new dramatisation of the band’s rise to fame directed by Sam Mendes and with Paul Mescal as Macca.

The blockbuster will be released simultaneously as a quadrilogy in 2028, with each movie focused on one of the Fab Four’s formative years, charting their coming together as the world’s greatest musical group.

Filming with Mescal as Paul, Harris Dickinson as John, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George has already begun.

Will Ferrell has done the Will Ferrell thing for so long — playing embarrassingly self-absorbed doofuses, both fictional and based on real people — that it’s easy to forget that when it counts, he can still serve as the glue on “Saturday Night Live.”

For his sixth time hosting the show since leaving the cast in 2002, Ferrell had plenty of those doofuses to portray, including a “Nudeman” dad whose underwear are exposed in the rear when he meets his daughter’s boyfriend. But in sketch after sketch on the show, he showed his usual 100% commitment to every character, even when he was playing himself in the monologue doing a bit about an identity mix-up with Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. (Smith stuck around for the whole show, sitting in with the “SNL” band and playing drums for Paul McCartney.)

The ability to stay in character no matter how absurd the premise served Ferrell well yet again whether he was playing a doctor who accidentally chopped off a man’s penis (Mikey Day, trying hard not to laugh), a halfling in a “Lord of the Rings”-style fantasy clip who betrays his fellowship, a gibberish-speaking mechanic, and a cruel high school drama teacher (along with another former cast member, Molly Shannon) withholding a cast list for “Grease.” He also made a surprising appearance in the cold open as the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein.

Ferrell was an ideal closer for Season 51, which has largely been about developing relatively new talent in the cast, including rising stars Ashley Padilla, Jeremy Culhane and Marcello Hernández. Ferrell gelled with each of them and everybody else, doing the Will Ferrell thing, which still works tremendously well after all these years.

Musical guest Paul McCartney appeared in Ferrell’s monologue and in the mechanic sketch, and performed a new song, “Days We Left Behind,” as well as “Band on the Run” and “Coming Up” at the end of the show while the credits were shown.

After an absence of a few weeks, President Trump (James Austin Johnson) returned, sleepy from his trip to China. After a non-apology for not bringing Vice President J.D. Vance (Culhane) with him, Trump fell asleep on a gold bar from Switzerland before being visited by Epstein (Ferrell), who makes a series of jokes and insinuations about his association with Trump. When Trump bemoans his low approval rating in the 30s, Epstein responds, “The 30s? Gross, call me when it hits 17.” But Epstein, who claims Hell is “really, really hot” and includes Joseph Stalin and John Wayne Gacy, is there to show Trump the future, one in which former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (Padilla) is selling vacuum cleaners on the Home Shopping Network and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Colin Jost) and FBI Director Kash Patel (a returning Aziz Ansari) are co-hosting a bro podcast while sharing a giant beer bong. Trump believes the podcast is a signal that by then, the war in Iran will be over. “We came in second,” Epstein assures him. The two then launched into a version of “Just the Two of Us” before almost kissing ahead of launching into “Live from New York… It’s ‘Saturday Night!’”

Even eagle-eyed viewers might have needed a full minute or so to realize that the person on stage delivering the monologue was not actually Will Ferrell but Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, who has been doing an extended gag for more than a decade about their uncanny resemblance. Ferrell followed, wearing the same gray suit, claiming, “He pushed me down backstage. And I fell hard. Lorne (Michaels) had to give me mouth to mouth.” Ferrell tried to do a hard reset of the monologue but couldn’t get the vibe back. He turned to the audience for questions, but only found McCartney there, who still couldn’t tell the difference between the host and the drummer. Ferrell listed many of the songs that McCartney has written (which weren’t performed on the show this time out), but pointed out that there are a few great songs he didn’t write, including “Timber” featuring Pitbull.

Best sketch of the night: Did you at least check the sprog box on your Rav4?

In a piece that calls itself, “What It Feels Like Talking to a Mechanic,” Ferrell plays an auto expert telling a clueless couple (Day and Padilla) that their vehicle needs a lot of work. But he uses completely foreign terms including “dong rod gasket” and a “camber” that’s out of whack and rotting to describe what’s wrong. Another specialist (Hernández) arrives, who describes the car’s ailments in funny noises and partly in Spanish. “You need a new trans person,” he declares. He also expects them to return every six days and come to his private party. A third mechanic (McCartney) found the steering wheel is on the wrong side and that their “tipsy wispy” is all “dangly goodly.” The absurdity level keeps rising, but it will feel familiar to anyone who’s ever felt like their mechanic is speaking in an entirely different language. The only false step in the sketch is the ending, which goes on on a cheap joke.

Also good: That white flag he was carrying around should have been a tip-off

It’s been a bit shocking how good some of the pre-filmed pieces this season have looked, including this one, a “Lord of the Rings” Midnight Matinee sketch called “Bobbin’s Sacrifice.” It features, with quite good special effects and costumes, a full cast of orcs, elves and dwarves during a castle siege, as well as Ferrell as a little Hobbit-looking halfling named Bobbin who bravely volunteers to destroy a bridge that separates the heroes from the monsters. However, once outside the castle gates, Bobbin proudly declares in song that he’s switching sides. And not just switching, but offering the orcs blueprints of the castle and giving them magic items he stole from his friends. Things don’t end so well for Bobbin, but at least he goes out memorably and with a song in his heart.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: How does one apply to be a Blast Boy?

“Update” traditionally does a joke-off between co-hosts Jost and Michael Che in which each writes jokes the other has to read. This edition wasn’t too surprising: Jost was made to spew racist jokes about black vampires (in reference to “Sinners”) and using his Staten Island Ferry to ship Black people “back to the motherland.” Che was made to make light of molestation claims against Michael Jackson. The segment ended up being one of the weaker joke-offs, ending with the threat of Jost getting his hair cut off by a barber on live television (it didn’t happen). Surprisingly, the joke-off was not as funny as Culhane’s return as Mr. On Blast, a guy with takes that are far from hot. Example: “AI? More like P.U.” “Metaverse? Why don’t you go read a Bible verse?” Mr. On Blast punctuates his weak jokes with very entertaining dance moves punctuated with sound effects. This time out, the character deployed a new catch phrase, “Devout!” in reference to being both Christian and Jewish, and he brought out bearded backup dancers called Blast Boys. Culhane was on point and is a lock to return next season for more fun like this.

Seven-time Ulster Championship winner Paul McGrane believes that Monaghan will “have no fear” facing Armagh in Sunday’s Ulster Senior Football final.

Kieran McGeeney’s side are favourites to end their 18-year wait to lift the Anglo-Celt Cup given they have hit 100 points in their three Ulster games to date, including a thumping 28-point victory over Down in the semi-final.

But Monaghan have recovered from a poor league campaign to reach the final as they look to win the county’s first Ulster title since 1988.

McGrane, who was the last Armagh captain to lift the Anglo-Celt Cup in 2008, says that Monaghan’s experience of beating Armagh in the All-Ireland in 2023 and the Ulster SFC in 2021 will give them confidence at Clones.

“There’s a Monaghan team coming that are Ulster club champions, on their own patch and the display of grit they showed against Derry and to do what they did with the sideline points, they’ll relish playing Armagh,” he told BBC Sport NI.

“They’ll have no fear playing them. The last two big games they played them; in Croke Park [shootout win], they came out the right side of it and in the match in Pairc Esler [a thrilling 4-17 to 2-2 win].

“They’ll be going with hunger the same that Armagh have to get over the line and get an Ulster title themselves.”