The Walrus Was Paul?

Sometimes you have to leave lots of material out of stories, usually to keep the down to length, often for legal reasons and occasionally for reasons of credibility. I Buried Paul falls into the last category. When I researched that story it was if I'd fallen through a hole in the space-time continuum and found myself in a bizarre parallel universe. It really is scary just how many people seem to subscribe to this 'Paul McCartney is Dead' nonsense. I got a lot of the inspiration for the story from a particularly lunatic message board calling itself The King is Naked, which seems to take its inspiration from an especially deluded document which can be found here. I stumbled across this latter item via the Fortean Times message boards, where a poster had described reading it as being akin to experiencing someone's descent into madness. He wasn't exaggerating.

Basically, this document contained stuff about the alleged replacement of Paul McCartney which was just so bizarre I didn't dare use it even in a satire story - people would have said I'd just gone too far! According to the document, not just McCartney, but also The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein had been murdered (probably by the KKK, or maybe the Rolling Stones) and secretly replaced by doubles. Now, the best bit was the claim that Epstein had been replaced by Don Knotts! Yes, that Don Knotts! The late comic actor who appeared in such classic movies as The Reluctant Astronaut and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (which, according to a thread on the aforementioned message board, contains all manner of 'clues' about Paul's 'death'), not to mention the Andy Griffiths Show on TV (which he mysteriously left in 1966, right about the time Paul supposedly died...). I was left reeling - you just can't make this stuff up! I read on, hoping to find that Paul had been replaced by Norman Wisdom, but sadly no, it just went into some incomprehensible explanation about a Canadian Military Police sergeant called Billy Sheppard aka Billy Shears aka Billy Pepper. Mind you, it ended on the bombshell that John Lennon had been murdered to keep him quiet after he uncovered the truth behind Paul's 'death'. Apparently Yoko works for MI6. All of this is accompanied by lots of pictures of Paul and 'Faul' (the post 1966 fake McCartney), allegedly showing how they can't be the same person. Oh, and 'Faul' was also Vivian Stanshall from the Bonzo Dog Doo Da Band, although I'm not clear why.

Now, if I'd included any of that, I Buried Paul would have been dismissed as too over the top. It would have been just too bizarre to be funny. I have no doubt that my main piece of invention, about the sexual assault on the walrus, was far more credible. Of course, all of the above lunacy is backed up with 'evidence' in the form of highly dubious (mis) interpretations of many Beatles' lyrics. This is actually what I really hate about this whole conspiracy; the way it reduces the whole of a great group's post-1966 musical output to an elaborate puzzle. Apparently we can't simply enjoy 'Strawberry Fields Forever'/'Penny Lane' as one of the greatest pop singles ever released, or 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' as a revolutionary album which defined an era. Oh no, they are merely artifacts in some spurious quest for 'the truth'. And that's what this, like most other conspiracy theories and cults is really about - allowing its adherents to believe that they are somehow 'special' because they are the guardians of some great hidden secret'. Only they have been enlightened; only they can see the 'truth'!

Cranberry Sauce!