TRACK THIRTEEN
- WRITTEN BY: McCartney
- LEAD VOCALS: McCartney
Most always a fan of his fans,
McCartney, according to
Beatles biographer Philip
Norman, trusted one of the
devotees who hung around
his home to walk his sheepdog
Martha on nearby Hampstead
Heath. And when unscru-
pulous hangers-on stole
family keepsakes after climbing
a ladder and entering his home
through a bathroom window ,
McCartney appealed to his
sometime dog walker, who
retrieved them and returned
them to their owner. That failed
to end speculation that the
song’s intruder, who dwells “by
the banks of her own lagoon,”
was a send-up of Yoko Ono.
She had, noted Can’t Buy Me
Love author Jonathan Gould,
recently had a man-made lake
installed at her home.
Whether she’s decked out “in jackboots
and kilt” or “dressed in her polythene
bag,” you know, “she's the kind of a girl
that makes News of the World,” even
then one of the U.K.’s more sensational
tabloids. The origins of the character
are murky. Liverpool legend says the
inspiration was a Beatles fan from
the Cavern Club days nicknamed
Polythene Pat because she loved to
eat plastic. Lennon told David Sheff
in 1980 that during an early Beatles
tour he met an old friend he knew from
wear jackboots and kilts; I just sort of
elaborated: ‘Perverted sex in a poly-
thene bag.’ Just looking for something
to write about.” But Ellis himself told
an interviewer in 1994 that Lennon did
indeed spend the night with him and
his girlfriend Stephanie. A conversation
about sex led the three of them to wrap
themselves in polythene. “I don’t think
anything very exciting happened,” Ellis
told A Hard Day’s Write author Steve
Turner, “and we all wondered what the
fun was in being ‘kinky.’ ”