CLUB SANDWICH 52

there's plenty of good music being made today: I don't think it's all rubbish. I think there's some very good people like Stevie Wonder-"

"That's not really the music of today," chipped in Sam.

"He wouldn't be pleased to hear you say that! I mainly like the bands that can really play: somebody like U2 has a bit more spirit-they are a bit like a '60's band. I'm not so keen on the synthetic stuff, where the machine played it all."

Yevgeny came back for more: "The rumour is that there are many songs in the vaults of EMI which are not released. Is that true?"

"There are one or two Beatles songs, yeah. Not many, because we were very careful to finish off everything we did. There are some good songs: 'Leave My Kitten Alone', which John sings... I think we have to ask the record company to hear them."

(Here Sam introduced 'Kansas City'.)

"Paul, we're forming a fan club for the Rolling Stones and the Beatles," announced a chap from Moscow called Jeny. "We want to have an official one, if you can help us with it."

"Yes, we can help you get in touch, sure. Write a letter to Sam, maybe."

Natasha from Kiev wanted to know how Paul first met John Lennon.

"Well, when I was about 14 I had a friend that knew John - he lived near John. This friend invited me to a fair where John and his band the Quarrymen were playing. That was where I first met John, in a place called Woolton in Liverpool, and I wasn't very impressed because he was a bit drunk. But he seemed pretty sweet... and later on they asked me to join the group."

And, well, Paul could be rapping to Russia still, but all good things must come to an end. As with so many things in his career, the reverberations were tremendous. (Those in the USSR we can only guess at). For a start, he was interviewed on both TV news programmes that night. "I haven't enjoyed a phone-in so much for years", enthused Gillian Reynolds in the Daily Telegraph. "The callers sounded genuinely excited".

The same paper's Peterborough column had a nice postscript on 8th March: "A Moscow pensioner is suffering an identity crisis..." A Russian magazine "printed Vassily Ryazanov's number by mistake, and the shy war veteran's telephone rang round the clock... Many callers refused to believe they had rung the wrong number, so Ryazanov and his wife have spent days...denying that they had ever fallen out with someone called John, or felt nostalgic for a place called Liverpool."

So even those who phoned Vassily and his wife benefited indirectly from this pioneering broadcast. The inspiration felt by those who listened or contributed to the real Paul McCartney phone-in cannot be estimated.