From the Vaults: Close encounters of a McCartney kind
A childhood spent in TV studios, cutting rooms and the odd Soho snooker hall offers Sam Wonfor a pretty special back catalogue of memories. Here, she’s exploring the Wonfor/McCartney Venn diagram
I had a lovely night at Tyneside Cinema this week, watching the new Paul McCartney doc, Man On The Run, which chronicles the decade after he left The Beatles, during which Wings (eventually) took flight. So when I was choosing which From the Vaults feature to share this week, this one seemed sensible.
I can’t remember my dad not having a beard.
But I know he didn’t have one for the first eight-or-so years of my life
And I can also tell you the day he decided to grow one (well, not the actual date, but the happenings thereof).
It was in 1983-ish and in his role as locations director for The Tube, he’d just finished filming a rare interview with Linda McCartney who had a touring photography exhibition on the go.
She’d had a standing chat to a very pregnant Paula (Yates) about photographs, playing the keyboards in Wings, family, the merits of black and white vs colour, getting relaxed photos of Jim Morrison, being married to a Beatle, sheep, meeting the Queen and a tripping Tube cameraman.
The film, which lasted about 15 minutes, was one of probably hundreds Dad made for The Tube, but it was to start a chain of events which would shape the rest of his working life… to say nothing of his face.
After the interview was finished, Dad had one of the very few photos he ever got taken with the people he was filming.
As the story he told goes, Linda asked him why he didn’t like getting his photo taken and he replied that it was because he didn’t like the double chin he’d amassed - in large part due to my Nana’s legendary fried egg sandwiches and spam fritters.*
*I’m not sure whether he said the last bit to Linda
Cue the lovely Linda offering a duo of solutions - the first one being her hiding his chin with her hand while the photographer took the picture. The second being a simple suggestion: why not just grow a beard?
By the time he rocked up to Regents Park during series two to film a chat between Linda’s husband and Paula’s maternity leave stand-in, Leslie Ash, the Wonfor beard was nicely bedded in, as you can see from another rare Geoff + celebrity photo.
Leslie interviewed Paul about his upcoming album, Pipes of Peace; his upcoming film, Give My Regards to Broad Street; reuniting with Beatles producer, George Martin; the controversial video for The Rolling Stones’ song, Undercover of the Night; writing love songs for Linda; playing guess who with Steve Wonder and whether he thought The Tube was any good.
Dad always credited Linda - who had apparently loved the film he made - with getting Paul to agree to do a film for The Tube… and he, in turn, must have thought the film went OK, because it wasn’t too long before the former Beatle made the journey to Newcastle to perform live on a future episode.
It was on this occasion that I had my first McCartney encounter - meeting Paul and Linda backstage at Studio Five of Tyne Tees on City Road. It was a meeting which offered a lasting memento.
Paul gave 10-year-old me a pink rose, which I immediately pressed and framed. I even wrote a dreadful poem which sat in the frame alongside it - and which I can remember, but will not recount here.
It stayed on my wall for four or five years… until I needed the frame for a photo of the Bros brothers. I was never allowed to forget that. Dad even made a point of telling Paul on one occasion when he thought the embarrass-Sam possibilities were at their maximum (probably when I was about 15).
By that time, The Tube was done and dusted, but Dad’s relationship with the McCartneys was just getting started.
At the end of the eighties, he made a documentary, Put It There about Paul’s solo album, Flowers in the Dirt. Then in 1991, he filmed The Liverpool Oratorio - Paul’s first foray into classical music, working with composer Carl Davis to commemorate the Liverpool Philharmonic’s 150th anniversary.
His years on The Tube had seen him work with all three living Beatles - one day I’ll tell you about the eventful two weeks he spent in Hong Kong with George Harrison, Madonna and Sean Penn - so when they came together to decide who they wanted to make The Beatles Anthology (recently added to Disney+ for streaming purposes), it was ‘Geoff the Geordie’ (as one local newspaper headline put it) who Paul, Ringo, George and Yoko called on.
After five years of making anthology (1991-1996) there was more McCartney films to come including a lovely documentary to coincide with the release of the album Flaming Pie in the late 90s; a VH1 town hall special around the same time; and a very special gig, McCartney Live at the Cavern in 1999.
Paul also headlined the Apocalypse Tube - a live revival of legendary music show in November 1999 - which saw co-presenters Donna Air and Chris Moyles introduce the likes of Robbie Williams, Prince, Travis and Underworld to the stage.
If you watch McCartney’s finale performance very carefully, you’ll see a fast-moving Geoff Wonfor snaking his way through the crowd to ask him - via a powerful combination of hand mime and pleading eyes - to stretch the song for as long as he could because the show was running short.
The magic of live TV eh?
Dad’s final McCartney project came a couple of years later, when Stella and the heady world of high-end fashion occupied his viewfinder.
Nearly two years of periodic filming resulted in a 2003 profile for Alan Yentob’s Imagine… series for BBC1, and offered me my one chance to walk a Paris Fashion Week catwalk.
It was after midnight in the French capital and preparations were underway for the next day’s big show.
They needed to time the walks which would be done by 8ft goddesses a few hours later… and who better to step in than the Geordie film crew who Stella had in tow.
Stella proclaimed we were ‘too cute’ and Dad took it as a cue to employ his well-practised ‘whoops my trousers have fallen down’ routine for the finale.
It was almost as iconic as a bare-chested Madonna strutting her stuff with Jean Paul Gaultier. But not quite.