SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY has revealed that the rumours about his death have become an 'occupational hazard'.
The former Beatle was talking about a 40-year conspiracy theory which claimed that John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison had recruited a lookalike McCartney to stand in for him after he 'died' in 1966.
Speaking to Mojo magazine, McCartney said: 'It was funny, really. But ridiculous. It's an occupational hazard: people make up a story and then you find yourself having to deal with this fictitious stuff.
'I think the worst thing that happened was that I could see people sort of looking at me more closely: "Were his ears always like that?" It was madness.'
The rumour began in October 1969, when a caller, identifying himself only as "Tom", rang a Michigan DJ and declared that McCartney was dead. Then two Michigan University students published a review hinting at several clues to McCartney's "demise", which started a flurry of conspiracies and theories about his "death".
A common story is that on Wednesday, 9 November 1966 at 5 am, McCartney, while working on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, stormed out of a recording session after an argument with the band and rode off in his Austin-Healey which he subsequently crashed into a lamp post, and died.
According to some believers, the shot of McCartney on the front cover of the group's 1969 Abbey Road album wasn't the singer and the bare feet was a code to mean a corpse.
There's also the belief that Lennon says "I buried Paul" in a slow, deep voice over the final refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever" although Lennon later said the phrase was actually "cranberry sauce".
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