CLUB SANDWICH 54

            Somehow - presumably because someone Up There likes him - we got through, a wheezing, white-faced, shaken gang, all saying "bloody 'ell!". All 'cepting one, that is - James Paul McCartney was grinning his ears off. But then he's been there, done that before.
            And the publicity angle? Back in Arrivals stood the visibly trembling, ashen-faced frame of Piers Morgan, pop editor of The (London) Sun.
            "That", he said, still shaking, "was madness, that was insane, that was … Jesus, that was a hell of a photograph".
            In publicity parlance, that is Above the Line stuff; filming the event and spreading it worldwide (the Riot of Narita made the Japanese, American and U.K television news).
            But bringing Paul McCartney home to the hearts and minds of his public is often a lot more subtle - and done for no more reason than his kindness.
            Take the 48 Hours example. On the tour's first visit to the States, Paul had a World In Action, fly-on-the-wall type TV team follow us in Chicago; filming every inch of the show - from Charlie Boxhall rigging up the Horizon theatre in the wee hours, through sound-check, watching Paul clown in the dressing room and Linda and he chatting in their hotel suite. It was good stuff, except they caught us unintentionally out. When we got to see the finished film, on its broadcast, we saw the CBS team had spent much of the two days with a crew following a super-fan, Joy Waugh - an advertising account executive whose only dream was to see Macca once, close up, just once.
            Trouble was, we knew nothing of this and poor Joy's only "meeting" with Paul - after she'd gone to the hairdresser especially and got frocked out in a new outfit - was to wave hopelessly at the tail-lights of his limo passing her by.
            OK, so it wasn't our fault. We didn't know and - hell - there's always a disappointed fan out there somewhere. Can't be helped.
            But then Macca doesn't think like that. That woman, he reasoned, is going to spend the rest of a long time wishing we'd only stopped and seen her.
            So he has her tracked down - this is two months later, mind - flown at his expense to Worcester, Massachusetts, put up with her husband in a first-class hotel suite, taken by his personal limo to the soundcheck and then he meets her, hugs her, takes her in his dressing-room and generally makes her day, if not her life. And all to make up for disappointment.
            There was no publicity in it, really. No front-page stuff. But she went away telling her friends more than 48 Hours could ever do in a month of programmes.
            So what else can I tell you? From a publicist's view, the tour's a dream; everywhere we go the tour is huge news, most every review has been esctatic - and when there's been the odd bad-assed comment, like the words of the reviewer of the New York Post, the local radio stations put out bulletins saying (this is true) "this man is a complete jerk who doesn't know what he's talking about".
            Mind you, don't go thinking that