God damn it, I missed a massive milestone in rock history three months ago when music fans around the world tearfully observed the 40th anniversary of Paul McCartney’s death. It wasn’t noted on CNN or even BBC so it slipped right by me, even when John Lennon devotees had their annual gathering outside the Dakota in New York in December.

But yeah, that “stupid bloody Tuesday” when vicious yet cute Beatle Paul stormed out of a recording session in a fit of pique, raced off in his Austin-Healey and “didn’t notice that the lights had changed” because he was distracted by the bluejaywalking” lovely Rita” on the sidewalk (she was later depicted as a blur on the back of “Abbey Road”) and crashed into a light pole, that was November 8, 1966.

He was, of course, pronounced dead on “Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock as the day begins” and nobody found out because the “Wednesday morning papers didn’t come”. At the funeral in Blackburn, Lancashire, Lennon read something or other biblical, George Harrison filled in the hole and Ringo was the walrus.

That’s what happened, but naturally Apple Corps went into hyperdrive to cover it up. They said, yes, a friend of McCartney’s wrecked his Mini Cooper in January 1967 and Paul had crashed his moped in December 1965, but that’s all, Paul is fine. Honestly, though, who was ever going to believe that Paul McCartney had either a moped or a Mini Cooper?

And then, while a McCartney look-alike named William Shears Campbell (”Billy Shears”) was being trained to take his place, the surviving Beatles — understandably freaked out due to guilt and shovelfuls of LSD — started planting the clues, many of which were of course easily discovered by fans who routinely played their albums backwards to clean dust out of the grooves. (There were grooves in albums at the time, and you played them with a needle. Kids aren’t allowed to have needles anymore; they use lasers now.)

Quite apart from the obvious — that the replacement Paul was taller and had eyes a different colour and a funny chin — these clues amounted to undeniable proof!, yeah, yeah and by the way, yeah.

One of these fans, or possibly an actual Beatle, called Michigan DJ Russ Gibb on October 12, 1969, to ask why no one gave a shit that McCartney was dead. Gibb explained that McCartney was to the Beatles what a breath mint is to an eight-course banquet, but then realised that the caller was serious. After hearing Gibb’s show and expressing their admiration for the Bee Gees’ music, the governments of Britain, America, Canada, the Channel Islands and France launched investigations, although France changed its mind when it seemed like too much work.

The probes uncovered a mountain of evidence that Paul was indeed dead, citing such authorities as Charles Manson and even John Lennon himself, who said bluntly, “I buried Paul, how many times do I have to tell you?” George, quite righteously fuming, released an album entitled “No, I Buried Paul”.

The clues were worthy of Agatha Christie, but she’d vanished on her way to a meeting with Beatles manager Brian Epstein. How many of us will remember calling the telephone number that appeared on the “Magical Mystery Tour” cover when you turned the word “Beatles” upside down — 537 1438?

“If this phone number was called in America at 5am on a Wednesday morning (the supposed time of Paul’s dead),” one website recalls with a nostalgic chuckle, “you’d get the message ‘You’re getting closer’, before the line went dead. However, if this phone number was called in London it was said that the caller would get one of three responses. Either you would have gotten through to a funeral parlour, an angry resident who was getting tired of all these calls waking him at 5am every Wednesday morning, or someone who claimed to be Billy Shears.

“Apparently if you got through to Billy he would quiz you on Beatle trivia before promising to send you tickets to ‘Pepperland’. It was reported in a Washington CD Underground newspaper that three students from Michigan got through to Billy Shears and actually received such tickets. The envelopes received had the initials ADN [Another dead noseyparker? you Actually Dialled this Number?] on them in inside there was a stamp that the receiver was instructed to lick. Apparently these stamps were laced with LSD and after licking it one student fell out of a window to his death. The second student claimed to have already visited Pepperland in the Carribbean Sea and was planning to return on the then-upcoming November 27th. The third student however, when questioned, just laughed.”

When I dialled the number I got a Pizza Hut and it was the best pizza I ever had in my life, presumably made by Paul McCartney’s personal mortician.

In the end, the American congressional investigation concluded that McCartney had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, while the Britons insisted it was the Illuminati and the Canadians said it was Ringo, but they failed to have him extradited from Vancouver, where he was living at the time. Ringo was soon after found dead in mysterious circumstances. He had, as we now know, refused to join the Canadian imposter band Klaatu, though their drumming sounded a lot like his even so.

Fortunately the clues keep coming, so the cover-up really ought to be abandoned before we’re all dead anyway. As the sole surviving Beatle, George is very busy dropping hints. On the “Free as a Bird” video, for example, Paul is dancing in a graveyard, and the Cirque du Soleil Vegas show is full of scary allusions. And YouTube is involved now too. So there.

A New Yorker who calls himself Doctor Lev and says he used to develop hi-tech weapons for the US Navy is now proving that Paul didn’t die in vain because Lev is making a fortune selling evidence at his website paul-is-dead.com. Meanwhile an Italian site that’s mysteriously in English has many downright spooky facial-comparison photos.

There’s some pretty gripping discussion at the All Dead Beatles All the Time forum, like this exchange from last June, which I am not making up:

The Walrus: I have a question: If as said in several clues, Paul lost his head in the accident, why in Revolution 9 there is a clue that says that Paul was screaming “Get me out!”? I thought that headless people didn’t talk (I may be wrong)…
billyshears (133 posts): Well, the story says that Paul’s head didn’t come off until after the explosion. Paul was screaming ‘get me out’ when he was trapped in the car, but before the explosion.
The Walrus: Oh. Ok, that makes sense.
Mike (administrator): Yeah, he was trapped in the burning car and was screaming “Get me out!” but before he could be rescued the car exploded and his head popped off like a champagne cork.

There are, to be sure, many red herrings, but no one should be fooled. In December 2005, someone calling himself “PaulMcCartney” posted a message on the same forum as above avowing that McCartney wasn’t killed in a car crash but was replaced by the Beatles management because he’d disappeared. I’m not making up this post either:

“His actual (unconfirmed) date of death is noted as being either 1978 or 1979. Throughout this period, John Lennon nor any associate had any clue as to the whereabouts of McCartney until an anonymous Japanese reporter communicated a bizarre message to John’s publicist in New York. The full details of this fax have never been disclosed, but it was read by Yoko and relayed to John. In it, the reporter alleges to have transcribed interrogations of McCartney by an unnamed intelligence agency. McCartney is questioned in regard to alleged sympathies with Communist block politics.”

The poster goes on to say that Lennon was forced to take the fax seriously because it included a password that only he and Paul knew, evidently divulged during interrogation. “The purpose of the message was to inform Lennon of McCartney’s death and circumstance, and to forewarn John of dangers he would face because of growing anti-Communist aggression against the Peace movement. “
And then the poster says Lennon and Yoko Ono were abducted and killed, a fake Yoko was unveiled and “the lone deranged gunman theory” sold to the public, even though Mark Chapman “was a drug addict who was not even in the city at the time of the ’shooting’”.

“This is all that needs to be said on this matter,” the poster concludes coldly. “This case is closed.”

The forum response is initiated by “SgtPepper”: “Your argument is compelling and believable. Some time back, there was a conspiracy documentary aired in Yugoslavia (where we lived then). They said similar things to what you said about Lennon and Yoko. Maybe there is link to McCartney dissapearance also.”

Where do they come up with this nonsense anway? It was a car crash, plain and simple. These things happen. Sheesh.