Oh, Hello and welcome to a very, very special edition of Soda Jaker on songwriting.

I'm Brian O'Connor, here is ever with my co-host Simon Barber, and joining

us today is nothing short of a living legend. He's one of the most successful songwriters

and musicians of all time, having sold to date some 700 million albums across the world.

With his friends and colleagues John George and Ringo he was a member of the most influential

band in popular music history and with John one half of arguably the greatest

songwriting partnership ever. He's an 18-time Grammy winner, an Oscar winner and an

Ivan novello winner. He's an inductee of the Rock and Roll and

songwriter halls of fame and a recipient of the Gershwin Prize, the Kennedy Center Award and a Basker Fellowship.

He's an MBE, a Knight of the Realm and a Companion of Honor.

He is, for us, the Holy Grail of interviewees. He is Paul McCartney.

I know we can't believe it either. Like many of you listening we've been fans of Paul as

a Beatle and solo artist for as far back as we can remember.

I mean his music's pretty much hard-coded into my DNA at this point so to be able to count him among our guests on this show is truly the stuff of dreams. As we record this

Paul's about to release his 17th solo album the excellent Egypt station on

September the 7th and he very graciously sat down with us in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago to talk about its creation.

Yes, we met with Paul in late July at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, or Lipper as it's known, of which Paul is lead patron.

Just prior to our interview, he'd taken part in a live

Facebook Q&A with Jarvis Cocker, which was followed by a surprise unplugged performance, both of which we were

lucky enough to attend, so it was a pretty magical day all told.

I could say that.

For those of you don't know, the Lipper Building played a very significant role in

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