Jane Asher and Paul McCartney (English Version)

WHAT YOU'RE DOING?

Howard Sounes: Just months after a Mail reporter confronted Paul with the story of a German barmaid who claimed to have borne his child, a Liverpool man had papered Liverpool with fliers claiming Paul had got his 'niece' pregnant. The girl in question was a typist named Anita Cochrane, who claims she met Paul just prior to her 16th birthday in 1961, going to see the Beatles play the Tower Ballroom on Friday 1 December that year.

"It was my sixteenth birthday that day".

Anita told the Daily Mail in 1997. (In fact, her 16th birthday was the next day, one of two factual inconsistencies in her story.) Anita claims she and Paul went to bed that night, and that she slept with him twice more over the ensuing 16 months.

"We used to go back to John Lennon's flat in Gambier Terrace..."

she told the Mail. (Here is the second problem with Anita's story: John didn't live at Gambier Terrace at this stage.) When Anita found herself pregnant, in the summer of 1963, she decided that Paul had to be the father and told her family as much.

"When my mum and grandmother found out I was pregnant, I thought I'd write to Paul and tell him what had happened. I was that sure the baby was his."

When Anita didn't receive a reply, her mother Violet went to see Jim McCartney, who said his Paul didn't know her Anita. On 10 February 1964, Anita gave birth at Billinge Hospital, Merseyside, to a boy named Philip Paul. No father's name was entered on the birth certificate. Anita's family then took her to a lawyer, who contacted NEMS. In truth neither Paul nor Brian Epstein had the slightest idea whether this typist, or the German barmaid, had a genuine claim. The boys had been such libertines, especially in Hamburg, that it wouldn't have been surprising if they had fathered some illegitimate children. While Paul did not, and never would, accept the paternity claims of the barmaid or the typist, the decision was made to pay off any such claimants for the sake of expedierncy. 'Brian Epstein, on behalf of the Beatles, took the stance that, unless they were talking vast sums, it was better to buy off people who were threatening to expose small things about the Beatles, and that included paternity [claims],' explains Tony Barrow.

I think Brian was particularly sensitive about sex, because of his own sexuality, and at all costs wanted to avoid intrusion upon his Own private life, because what he was at the time was not just gay, but doing illegal things.And I think he realised that anything about him would brush off on the boys... The policy was pay 'em off, get rid of them, move on.

Anita Cochrane claims to have been offered two pounds ten shillings ($3.82) a week by NEMS: The solicitor put in a request for more money and we got this offer of a one-off payment of £5,000 ($7,650). That was more than a house in those days.' An agreement was drawn up, dated 23 April 1964, on the basis that Anita wouldn't go public. But her 'uncle' (actually her mother's boyfriend) took issue with what had happened and distributed leaflets around Liverpool describing Paul as a 'cad'. Epstein heard about this the morning of the Liverpool première. Leaflets had been left at the Press Club in Bold Street. They were [also] given out in Castle Street, round the Town Hall, saying Paul give a girl a baby in Waterloo, and I think it named her, recalls Anita's brother, lan, who believed the story. A poem parodying 'All My Loving' was sent to newspapers: