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PAUL McCARTNEY

ON THIS DAY: PAUL McCARTNEY HAS A MOPED ACCIDENT IN WIRRAL

ByBeatles Magazine

Dec 26, 2025 #Paul McCartney

On the night of December 26, 1965, Paul McCartney suffered a moped mishap while visiting relatives in Liverpool. Accompanied by his friend Tara Browne—the 20-year-old Guinness heir invited to spend the holidays in the city—the pair set off on motorized scooters toward a cousin’s home in the Wirral, near Paul’s father’s residence.

As they rode through the dimly lit country lanes, Paul became momentarily captivated by a stunning full moon. In that brief distraction, he lost his balance and crashed, being thrown onto the pavement. The fall resulted in several facial injuries: he chipped a front tooth and sustained a deep gash on his upper lip. Despite a bruised and swollen face, he avoided more grave consequences. After picking himself up, he and Browne made their way to his cousin Betty’s house for assistance.

At the time, the incident remained largely under the radar. The Beatles’ management issued no formal announcement, and the press paid little heed, as the accident occurred during the group’s Christmas hiatus and the injuries weren’t life-threatening.

It wasn’t until months later that observant fans spotted the physical traces of the crash. In the promotional clips for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain,” filmed in May 1966, Paul’s damaged tooth is clearly evident, and his lip remains noticeably scarred in close-ups. Paul eventually cleared up the rumors during a June 1966 interview with New Musical Express.

Paul later stated regarding the matter:

“I had an accident when I came off a moped in Wirral, near Liverpool. I had a very good friend who lived in London called Tara Browne, a Guinness heir – a nice Irish guy, very sensitive bloke. I’d see him from time to time, and enjoyed being around him. He came up to visit me in Liverpool once when I was there seeing my dad and brother. I had a couple of mopeds on hire, so we hit upon the bright idea of going to my cousin Bett’s house.
We were riding along on the mopeds. I was showing Tara the scenery. He was behind me, and it was an incredible full moon,- it really was huge. I said something about the moon and he said ‘yeah’, and I suddenly had a freeze-frame image of myself at that angle to the ground when it’s too late to pull back up again: I was still looking at the moon and then I looked at the ground, and it seemed to take a few minutes to think, ‘Ah, too bad – I’m going to smack that pavement with my face!’ Bang!
There I was, chipped tooth and all. It came through my lip and split it. But I got up and we went along to my cousin’s house. When I said, ‘Don’t worry, Bett, but I’ve had a bit of an accident,’ she thought I was joking. She creased up laughing at first, but then she went ‘Holy…!’ I’d really given my face a good old smack; it looked like I’d been in the ring with Tyson for a few rounds. So she rang a friend of hers who was a doctor.
He came round on the spot, took a needle out and, after great difficulty threading it, put it in the first half of the wound. He was shaking a bit, but got it all the way through, and then he said, ‘Oh, the thread’s just come out – I’ll have to do it again!’ No anaesthetic. I was standing there while he rethreaded it and pulled it through again.
In fact that was why I started to grow a moustache. It was pretty embarrassing, because around that time you knew your pictures would get winged off to teeny-boppery magazines like 16, and it was pretty difficult to have a new picture taken with a big fat lip. So I started to grow a moustache – a sort of Sancho Panza thing – mainly to cover where my lip had been sewn.
It caught on with the guys in the group: if one of us did something like growing his hair long and we liked the idea, we’d all tend to do it. And then it became seen as a kind of revolutionary idea, that young men of our age definitely ought to grow a moustache! And it all fell in with the Sgt Pepper thing, because he had a droopy moustache.
I was originally trying to grow a long Chinese one, but it was very difficult. You have to do a lot of work waxing it, and it takes about sixty years – I never did get one of them.
John had a moustache cup. It had a little hole underneath the lip so you could drink tea from it without getting your moustache in it — rather fetching!”
Paul McCartney – From “The Beatles Anthology” Book, 2000
Additionally, in his 2021 book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul writes the following:

“I did once have an accident in Liverpool where I fell off a moped and busted my lip open, and we had to get the doctor round to my cousin Betty’s house. That was around this same time, when I was twenty-something and going out on the moped from my dad’s house to Betty’s house. I was taking a friend, Tara Guinness. He died later in a car accident. He was a nice boy. I wrote about him in ‘A Day in the Life’: ‘He blew his mind out in a car / He didn’t notice that the lights had changed’. Anyway, I was with Tara and had an accident – fell off my moped, busted my lip, went to Betty’s, and she said, ‘Get a doctor, get a doctor. It needs stitches.’

So they got this guy, and he arrived stinking of gin. This guy was so drunk. ‘Hello, Paul. How are you?’ ‘Great.’ ‘Oh yes, that’s going to need stitches. I’ve brought my bag.’ So he brings his black bag and now he’s got to try and thread a little needle, a curved surgical needle, but he’s seeing three needles at least.

I think I said, ‘Let us do it.’ And we threaded it for him. I said, ‘You’re just going to do this with no anaesthetic?’ He said, ‘Well, I haven’t got any.’ I think I might have had a slug of scotch or something. He just put the needle in and pulled it round. And then the thread came out and he said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I have to do that again.’

So he had to do it a second bloody time, and I was trying not to scream. To be honest, he really didn’t do a marvellous job, and I had this bump in my lip for a good while after. I can still feel it. And I was black and blue and really quite a mess. So I decided to grow a moustache. Then the other Beatles saw it and liked it, so they all grew moustaches too. John got so into it that I think somebody bought him a moustache cup with a little lid that sort of stops the moustache from getting wet when you drink.

Paul McCartney – From “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present” , 2021.

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