Jane Asher and Paul McCartney (English Version)

THE ASHER FAMILY

Barry Miles: Jane Asher was educated at Queen's College, a discreet private girls' school on Harley Street, a short walk away from her home in Wimpole Street. In 1951, someone told Margaret Asher that Jane and her older brother Peter were such beautiful children that they should be in films. She decided that it would help their self-confidence and be an amusing hobby for them. Her friend made the arrangements and Margaret took them along to a theatrical agency.

PAUL: Margaret was a bit of a stage mum. She was very ambitious in that particular direction and they were all in films at a very young age. I think Richard might have wanted to encourage the academic direction but Margaret was very much the artistic and acting side, particularly acting.

Barry Miles: At the age of five Jane appeared in Mandy, the story of a little deaf girl, played by Mandy Miller, which also starred Jack Hawkins. Jane end Peter were never in a film together though they worked regularly in films, radio and television throughout their childhoods. At the age of twelve, Jane made her stage debut as Alice in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland at the Oxford Playhouse. Her 1958 recording of Alice in Wonderland is still selling well on tape cassette.

In 1960, Jane became the youngest actress until then to play Wendy in the West End production of Peter Pan and in 1961 appeared in Lewis Gilbert's well-received film Greengage Summer. By the time she met Paul she had a decade of stage, screen and radio appearances behind her and was already well known as an actress. For a time it seemed that Paul's and Jane's careers might have been complementary. She continued to act in plays and appeared in several more films, including Roger Corman's 1964 film of Edgar Allan Poe's The Masque of the Red Death, which was made the same year that the Beatles starred in A Hard Day's Night. She and Paul began to move in the same film circles: when Jane played a dolly bird in Lewis Gilbert's 1966 period piece Alfie starring Michael Caine, Shelley Winters and Eleanor Bron, Paul already knew Eleanor Bron from having worked with her the year before on Help! Paul and Jane had become a part of the elite of the London entertainment scene.

PAUL: Really, I suppose what solidified London for me was the house that they lived in at 57 Wimpole Street.

Barry Miles: It was quite an extraordinary household: an eminent doctor, a music professor, an actress in a daily radio soap opera, an accomplished young stage and screen actress and two world-famous pop singers, all sharing a Peter Pan town house in the centre of London and behaving as if this was perfectly normal, which, for them, it was. The Asher family tended to gather in the long, narrow kitchen at the back of the house; you could usually find one of them or one of Margaret Asher's music students making tea or toast or having a sandwich at any time of day or night. It was a very informal household in that respect, though all proper meals were eaten in the dining room. The kitchen was Margaret Asher's domain. She suffered from terrible migraine headaches which often kept her awake so no matter what time Paul got in, it seemed as if she was always up, asking if he'd like a bite to eat.