Paul has daughter’s photo removed

Paul’s youngest daughter was sporting a hairdo very much like this one. Photo: Astrid Kirshherr.

A private photo taken backstage at the musical “Carousel” in London’s West End, depicting Paul McCartney and his teenage daughter Beatrice Milly together with cast members was published by several newspapers recently.

Sir Paul and his daughter were joined by Alfie Boe, Katherine Jenkins, Nicholas Lyndhurst and a few other cast members from the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic backstage. Mainstream media and fans got hold of the photo after Katherine Jenkins posted it on her Instagram account, writing alongside it: “Macca at the matinee! Eek!”.

The story in the newspapers focused on 13 year old Beatrice’s hairdo, and pointed out a similarity to the quiff Paul himself sported at the Beatles’ first visit to Hamburg in 1960. The photo, and usually also the story, has now been removed from most of the overground media who published it, including The Daily Mail, OK! magazine, The Daily Mirror, The Telegraph, The Sun, Hello Magazine and others, probably at the request of the McCartney family.

This is rather futile in this day and age, though – as the photo spread like wildfire on the various Beatles and McCartney fan pages in social media like Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and the like. A couple of other photos taken on the same occasion are also making the rounds, one of these depicting Paul and Beatrice with a much larger crowd of crew and cast members of the musical.

Paul McCartney has always been careful not to publish photos of his youngest daughter, and his attorneys have previously been busy trying to keep paparazzi photos of her off the internet. In 1983, a ransom plot to snatch then six year old son James Louis McCartney was uncovered. The would-be kidnappers were captured and jailed after police action, and it was after this incident Paul McCartney started ramping up his family’s security.

During a 2016 televised interview, Beatrice’s mother Heather Mills said: “I rarely talk about my daughter. I’m really proud of the fact that I have kept her image protected”. “She’s not mixing in celebrity lifestyles. She’s not out in public places.”