From Mark Lewisohn's Tune In: "Was Woolton fete the first time John met Paul? A riddle in two paragraphs: In certain private company, Paul sometimes reveals that he hadn’t only seen John on buses before the Woolton fete, but they’d also exchanged a few words. Paul says he was working as a paperboy (on his bike, delivering the Echo to local houses in the evenings) when he once talked to John outside the newsagent’s shop. John never mentioned it, and Paul has chosen, consistently for decades, never to say it publicly. He was a paperboy after the McCartneys relocated to Forthlin Road in summer 1956, when he turned 14. Paul is shy about giving away the shop’s identity to anyone who’d print it, but one local family who knew him think it was “Abbas.”
From beatlesliverpoollocations.blogspot.com:
The unnamed family mentioned in Mark Lewisohn’s notes are the Hodgsons. In 1956 Charles (senior) and his wife Annie were living at 111 Stamfordham Drive, Allerton with their two sons, Reginald, 26 and Charles, 14. Peter Hodgson, Reginald's son, has told me how his Uncle Charlie got to know the 14 years old Paul McCartney when he was working as a paper boy. Peter Hodgson: In or around 2010 I told Mark [Lewisohn] that (Paul had worked at) the shops at the Cenotaph, right by my Dad’s [...] We now know that sometime in the past, Paul has revealed the actual first meeting between himself and John and where that meeting took place. I think someone close to Paul has let the cat out of the bag to Mark and (Lewisohn) has wanted to know the name and location of Abbas in 1956. At this time and in the subsequent years, the locals will still have referred to the shop as Abbas when mentioning it, hence it was still known as Abbas by my Dad and brother...many decades later. This is where the confusion started as to the shop’s location as Mark was relying on documentation only, whereas I was relying on first hand witnesses who actually lived literally yards away. I got it straight from Macca, face to face, he agreed and nodded when I mentioned Abbas so when I told Mark many years later he went searching and could only find an Abba in Aigburth. What’s interesting is that at some point Mark actually asked Paul the name of the newsagent’s he delivered for in Allerton. Paul refused to answer him. An unusual refusal for such a seemingly trivial question. [Peter was pleased with what my own research had uncovered, for personal family reasons as much as for the benefit of Beatle’s history. (He said to me): You finding W.W. Abba at 85 Woolton Road vindicated me to Mark, as it’s impossible for me, my Dad or Uncle Charlie to have been making it up].
(Scene from the Fuh You music video. The location of the newsagent, W.W. Abba at Woolton Road, is on the left, which is shown as Paul sings, "on the night that I met you...". The Liverpool local who found the newsagent did his research much earlier than the release of this video. He was shocked when he saw it.)
The thing that interests me most about this account is what is reveals about ML's working methods, which seems to prioritise documentary sources over oral accounts. This is a perfectly reasonable approach that most historians would take, as oral recollections can be confusing and distorted by normal memory failure, agendas etc. But this account does seem to display a certain lack of imagination on his part. It would make sense, in a scenario such as this, to retain both the oral and the documentary evidence, even if they contradict each other, and present them in the text, acknowledging the contradiction and letting the reader decide what seems most likely. That way, any further supporting evidence for either position that may arise will already have all the relevant information to build on. It may seem like a trivial point but he did many oral interviews with others and used it to inform his research, so it would've made sense to do the same here, even if it was just a quick conversation.
