Sir Paul McCartney was either introduced to cannabis by Dylan or the writer Barry Miles via the medium of the hash brownie. For obvious reasons, things are foggy. It stuck: McCartney then went on to be arrested for possession in Sweden and Scotland in 1972, deported from Japan in 1980 after police uncovered a half pound of the stuff in his luggage, and locked up again four years later in Barbados after buying some weed off a dealer on the beach. While his second marriage was falling apart, Heather Mills suggested that McCartney smoked weed as much as he drank tea.

However, while doing headstands to impress the reporters from the Liverpool Echo ahead of his homecoming gig there this past week, McCartney boasted that he's kicked his habit for some time now: "instead of smoking a spliff, I'll now have a glass of red wine or a nice margarita... the last time I smoked was a long time ago." This is probably following McCartney's reported revelations of responsibility a couple years ago whilst raising his youngest daughter, Beatrice, despite four other children of his having grown up surrounded by a supposed aura of skunk mist. But better late than never, and Paul has seemingly adopted a few new lifestyle choices in the last couple years: "I do a bit of the cross-trainer, a bit of running, a bit of cardio and then I do some weights, some abs on the Swiss ball, before ending up on the mat doing a few stretches. And then standing on my head." 

The paternal trend towards responsibility seems to be overshadowing the creative impulses of marijuana, McCartney once having heralded The Beatles’ introduction to the drug as "the U-turn" in their attitude, and his personal habit as "a move away from accepted values".