Paul McCartney shares what he believes is the ‘height of misery’ in rarely seen personality quiz

A rarely seen personality quiz saw Paul McCartney share what he believed was the “height of misery”.

An October 1965 edition of Rave magazine featured McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr answering a series of quick questions to draw up a character assessment. Though the group were in their usual, playful state when answering the questions, some of the answers given by the trio seemed to match up to how they would conduct themselves following the break-up of The Beatles. McCartney’s answers led to an assessment of him as a “plainly spoken man” who was considered “serious” by other people. Though the assessment carried ou by the magazine has been rarely seen, it did offer a surprisingly solid overview of McCartney from the answers he provided.

One such answer was sharing what he believed to be the height of misery. McCartney’s response was: “Being woken up after two hours’ sleep.” A perfectly valid response, and one of many which filtered into the end of interview summary, which described McCartney as “enthusiastic” and “ambitious”.

It reads: “This person is a plainly spoken man. He has a great taste for hoaxing people. It is difficult for him to forget the laughing, happy child he once was, and now to be considered a serious man by other people.”

Elsewhere in the interview, McCartney shared that his favourite historical personality was Julius Caesar and that he would like to live in England. The veteran songwriter also shared how he would like to die, jokingly writing: “Gracefully (with speed).”

Fellow Beatles Starr and Harrison had shared some equally tongue-in-cheek answers on the quickfire questions page, with the All Things Must Pass hitmaker sharing his favourite historical figure is Atilla the Hun.

Starr would share Billy the Kid as his favourite historical figure and named The Beatles’ own John Lennon as his favourite painter. Lennon’s answers were not used in the quickfire questions as, according to Far Out Magazine, his answers were “unprintable.”

McCartney’s refusal to share his favourite painter comes as he praised one of his earliest influences in a separate interview. Commenting on the musical artists which had the most impact on him during the Anthology documentary, McCartney says Elvis Presley had the biggest effect on him.

He said: “I remember being in school when I was a kid and somebody had a picture in one of the musical papers of Elvis Presley. I think it was an advert for Heartbreak Hotel. I just looked at it and thought ‘he’s so good looking, he looks perfect.'”

Heartbreak Hotel would release on January 27, 1956, and was a Billboard Top 100 chart topper. The two-minute track would leave a lasting impression on John Lennon, too, with the Imagine hitmaker considering Heartbreak Hotel a “great” alternative to American music of the times.

He told the NME: “We’d never heard American voices singing like that. They always sang like Sinatra or enunciate very well. Suddenly, there’s this hillbilly hiccuping on tape echo and all this bluesy stuff going on. And we didn’t know what Elvis was singing about … It took us a long time to work what was going on. To us, it just sounded as a noise that was great.”