Sir Paul McCartney tells the NME Awards: Do you want to know a secret? We fibbed!

NME award for Sir Paul — as he admits Beatles made up stories
27 February 2014
The Weekender

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Sir Paul McCartney received a special honour at the NME Awards but confessed The Beatles used to lie to the magazine to see what false stories they could get published.

On a night when Arctic Monkeys hoovered up five prizes and Lily Allen managed to break her gong, the former Beatle was given the one-off accolade of songwriters’ songwriter, in recognition of his 50 years in music.

At the O2 Brixton Academy, Sir Paul, 71, said: “The NME for me brings back so many memories. It’s been going longer than I have.

“I saw the very first picture of Elvis in the NME. We’d heard him but we’d never seen him. And then we got the chance to come down to London and see the people who wrote the NME.

NME Awards afterparty at Sketch - in pictures

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“One of the things we used to like to try was to plant a false story in the NME. We actually got in that George [Harrison] was Billy Fury’s cousin. Which he wasn’t.” He joked: “Livin’ on the edge man — know what I’m saying?”

Sir Paul added: “The great thing about songwriting is you don’t know how you do it, so you can’t talk about it.” Given a standing ovation, he was presented with the honour by Damon Albarn, who won the innovation prize.

Arctic Monkeys were the biggest winners of the evening, picking up five awards including best album for AM, best live band and best British band.

After his downbeat acceptance speech at the Brits last week, frontman Alex Turner was in similar mood, telling the audience: “I used all my best s**t last week.” Lily Allen was named best solo artist after a return to the spotlight following her “retirement” from the music business. She said: “This is kind of dumb because David Bowie was in the same category, and Jake Bugg. This goes to you guys, not me.”

Allen presented the Godlike Genius gong to Blondie. The band, fronted by Debbie Harry, 68, closed the event with a career-spanning set. The party continued at Sketch in Mayfair where guests were treated to the unusual sight of Peter Crouch dancing with Allen, who managed to break off the protruding middle finger of her award.

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Debbie Harry turned up at 1am with designer Pam Hogg, while American newcomers Haim manned the decks.

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