Last week, Steve Wright interviewed Paul McCartney on BBC Radio 2. At one point, Wright asked him about his latest single. The track is exactly what you would expect of Lord Macca of Loch Kodak: completely insubstantial and terminally catchy. It’s called Dance Tonight. It’s about how everybody is going to dance tonight—and have a good time, yeah. So Wrighty mentions the interesting thing about it: the prominent mandolin-playing. This triggers a Macca anecdote.

“Yeah, so I was on me way back from me publishers, laike, eh, eh, and I walked into this guitar shop and, as I always do, y’know. I asked if they had anything for a left-hander [wobbles head from side to side, and pouts]. And the bloke in the shop says, ‘We’ve not got any guitars, but we’ve got this left-handed mandolin,’ and I says, ‘No, thanks,’ and he says, ‘Wait a minute, try it out, you might like it.’

“So I tries it out, laike, [runs hand through implausibly coloured hair], and after a while I’ve got a few chords and it sounds nice. So I says, ‘Arright, I’ll take it’, laike, y’know. And I practised for a while and I thought, ‘Yeah, I might put this on the album, laike.'”

So he did.

I love the thought of the manager of the establishment coming back from lunch, noticing the conspicuous, dust-framed, vacancy on the wall and saying to the staff behind the counter: “Fuck me. Did you lot finally sell that bloody left-handed mandolin?!”

And Dave The Guitar, who’s been waiting for forty-five minutes and rehearsing this moment in his head for every last second, mumbles, without looking up from his copy of Kerrang!: “Yeah, Paul McCartney came in while you were out and bought it. I sold him half-a-dozen packs of strings too, and a shoulder strap with a comedy parrot on it.”

Anyway, via Jim P, here are the awesome Wrong Trousers on YouTube with the best version of Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star ever.

Harp solo!