In a glass case on the desk in Sir Paul McCartney's office sits a pair of spectacles that used to belong to the surrealist painter Rene Magritte.
Sir Paul was given them by his late wife, Linda, who'd bought them at a sale staged by Magritte's widow, Georgette. And they're under glass because, he tells me: "I managed to break them once, just by playing with them. And I thought, 'I shouldn't be breaking Magritte's spectacles!'" Indeed, the 67 year-old adores Magritte (as does Yoko Ono, who has a remarkable collection of the Belgian-born artist's work) and the thought of it brings back a Magritte-related memory from the Fab Four's psychedelic heyday: "Yeah, that was the coolest thing ever," McCartney says, the Scouse still evident in his voice, a voice that mixes joviality with steeliness (a reminder that the cheeky chappie of his "thumbs up' photographs is also the tough cookie who dared to sue his three fellow Beatles).
"Yeah," he continues, "I'd say that was the best conceptual moment of the Sixties. I was out in the garden in my London house, making a little film for Mary Hopkin [the Welsh folk singer whom McCartney had signed up after Twiggy saw her on Opportunity Knocks, and recommended her]. And it's a very buzzy summer's day - hot, lots of little insects in the air, and she was just sittin', playing with an acoustic. And Robert [Fraser, the hip art dealer of the time] showed up and he knew I liked Magritte. And he'd found this fantastic little painting.
"He could see I was busy, so instead of just blurting in, saying, 'Ooh, ooh, er, er um, I've got this painting', he just left. So when I went back in the house, there, propped on the table, was this Magritte of a giant apple, with the words 'au revoir' written across it. He'd just left it, and I thought: 'That is super cool.' I still get a great feeling when I remember that moment. And it's one of my favourite paintings." (Others in the McCartney collection include works by de Kooning and Peter Blake.)
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