Paul McCartney Refused to Give His Number to Judd Apatow: Watch

Judd Apatow (L) and Paul McCartney (R) 
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Paul McCartney Refused to Give His Number to Judd Apatow: Watch
by Lars Brandle
6/16/2017


Sir Paul McCartney performs at AccorHotels Arena on May 30, 2016 in Paris, France.
David Wolff - Patrick/Redferns

Paul McCartney doesn't care how many Oscar nominations you've got. Living legends don’t share their phone numbers with just anyone.

Judd Apatow knows all about it. The filmmaker, raconteur and funnyman was once stonewalled by the Beatles great when it came time to swap details.

Apatow confessed it all on Conan, where he told of how McCartney used to attend his stand-up routines. “He loves comedy,” Apatow recounted. “He’s like a great guy. He was always hilarious. That’s why we like the Beatles, because they were always so funny.”

So Apatow figured he might try strike up a friendship with his hero. “I would say hello to him afterwards nervously and then after a couple of times, I thought, ‘Maybe I might ask him out to lunch’. Right? Maybe he’s like the lonely cheerleader that nobody asks out to the prom… maybe he’d like to hang out with me since he’s enjoyed me [doing standup comedy]. And so I had a piece of paper and a pen and like, ‘Hey, we should go out to lunch’… how do I reach you?” Apatow then does an impression of McCartney being handed a pen, wearing much the same expression of a person recoiling in absolute horror. “He was very nice but he instinctively said no. He found a nice way to do it.”

Apatow, who directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin and produced the Anchorman films, has proof of the time he freaked-out McCartney. A friend captured the precise moment on camera and Conan O'Brien was happy to show the world. Still, it’s better than a punch in the head, which is what McCartney laid on Eddie Vedder (by accident, of course).

Watch the Conan video below.

Apatow isn’t the first celebrity to be denied a direct line to a Beatle. British talkshow host Jonathan Ross found out the hard way that Ringo Starr doesn’t deal out his mobile number, no matter how many times you ask. “I don’t like it,” the drummer emphatically told Ross. Watch the clip from 2008.