“A Yankee Doodle Fan-Mag Photographer”
It was June 1967 and Linda, an American, had been dating Paul for weeks. She found and photocopied an American gossip column that included a sentence about her. She sent it to her friend with the sentence underlined. It read: “They say Beatle Paul McCartney’s latest favorite femme is Linda Eastman, a Yankee Doodle fan-mag [photographer].”
Photo by John Downing/Getty Images
On the back of the photocopy, she wrote to her friend: “Thought you’d get a big laugh over the enclosed clipping. Have no idea where they picked up that lie, but it just shows how truthful newspapers are.” That friend was Miki Antony, who realized that gossip columnist Walter Winchell had, in fact, gotten his facts right.