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I Want People To Look At My Plate At Dinner And Go, I Wish I’d Ordered That

Like her mother Linda, she's a photographer and a committed vegetarian. She talks TV, vegan china and cooking for Ringo

The Telegraph; By Craig McLean; February 19, 2022

In her studio in north-west London, Mary McCartney is serving me her vegan very chocolatey orange cookies and her signature green and mint tea from a vegan mug. “So what do you think of the ‘grint’?” she asks, using the name we’ve just this second workshopped. “It’s nice mixed, isn’t it? It takes the edge [off] the green tea.” Delicious, I tell her, as are the cookies. No taste-free worthiness here. Their vegan credentials are ensured by the lack of butter or egg (coconut oil is doing the heavy lifting), while Green & Black’s vegan chocolate is the kitchen hack – the brand’s elevated price point justified in this case – that brings the sweetness. Because there are no calorific animal products, “you can eat as much as you like, even raw, and that’s a win”, says this 52-year-old mother of four, her elegantly youthful physique (zipped-up green Adidas tracksuit top, slim jeans) proving she practices what she eats. “Raw cookie dough is a thing, isn’t it? You can buy raw cookie dough, and people just eat it. But I’m not perfect, so I’m not one to preach…” McCartney is a near-lifelong vegetarian, a photographer, a cookbook writer and, now, all-star culinary show presenter. Her show, Mary McCartney Serves It Up! is a vegan-by-default cook-along show (showing on Discovery+) that features friends and family in the shape of guests Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and, to brighten the celebrity wattage a shade more, McCartney’s sister and dad. “But what I love to do is come up with solutions that go: ‘Right, I’m going to do a cookie, and I want it to be like a normal-tasting cookie. So what can I do?’ I like to look at it in a positive way.” The same goes for the mugs from which we’re drinking. McCartney had them made as a “test”, a limited-edition range, so limited that they’re only available here in her photography studio up a cobbled mews near Maida Vale. Fat of diameter but thin of rim, and with her signature on the bottom, their eco-credentials are burnished by the lack of bone china. “Bone china has actually got ground-up [animal] bone in it. So I was wondering: ‘What could you get made without it?’” So what are these made from? “This is porcelain.” A pause and a flicker of a smile. “I’m actually bull----ing, I don’t know what it is! But I would avoid using bone china – only because I know about it. Me and mum were hanging out in the kitchen one day and she’s like: ‘Can you believe bone china is called that because it’s actually ground-up bone?’ Until you hear about it, we don’t piece it together. I will drink out of bone china, if I’m given it – I’m not that [fundamentalist]. But if I was going to make [a cookwear range], I would look for something different.” “Mum” is Linda McCartney, the late photographer, vegetarian food pioneer and activist. Mary is the first child born to Linda and Paul McCartney (her mum already had a daughter, Heather, now 59). Her younger siblings are Stella, 50, the fashion designer, James, 44, a musician, and half-sister Beatrice, 18, her dad’s daughter with ex-wife Heather Mills. My mug bears a wraparound photograph by Mary of Linda’s hands, cradling a frog. There’s a huge print of it on the wall, too, as there is of Stella, at 24, snuggling up in bed with their mum, who died of breast cancer in 1998, aged 56. “It’s called Gently Holding Frog and is one of my favourite pictures,” says McCartney softly. “We were walking along a path and the frog was on the path, and Mum picked him up. She’s holding him very firm but kind, so he won’t accidentally fling himself and squash himself and hurt himself. I never get bored of looking at it.” For most of her professional career, McCartney has worked as a photographer, in demand for exhibitions, commercial shoots, fashion magazines and celebrity portraits. Mark Rylance as Twelfth Night’s Countess Olivia, shot on Broadway in 2013, is on the wall over McCartney’s shoulder; a partially clothed Kate Moss sits over mine. She took all the cover-art imagery for her dad’s 2020 record McCartney III, the “rockdown” album the 79-year-old ex-Beatle wrote, played entirely

himself and recorded on his Sussex estate early in the pandemic. “Dad asked me if I would do some pictures, so I became his lockdown photographer,” she says. She shot some “Magritte-y” images of Sir Macca on horseback – Clan McCartney are big horse lovers – and then they headed to his recording studio. “But when I got there, he’d come up with an idea [for a song], and he was genuinely recording something. And I was like: ‘I’ve come down here to take pictures of you! And he was like: ‘I don’t want to kill the moment though!’ In the end, I said: ‘You have to give me half an hour.’ I had to be a little tiny bit bossy with him. It was fun. Then he would come home from the studio when we were in lockdown. He was recording, and I was testing the recipes for the cooking show, and he’d play the songs. So it was quite an interesting time!” As she describes it: “I’ve always just done the food thing more as a result of growing up in a vegetarian family. And then I got offered this TV show, and now I’m merging food and photography, my two passions, and embracing it. It’s a really exciting time.” The McCartneys are the first family of vegetarianism. As well as the pioneering and ever-growing Linda McCartney Foods range, founded by her mother in 1991, Mary, Stella and Sir Paul launched the Meat Free Monday campaign in 2009. When I accompanied the musician on tour in Japan for the Telegraph in 2014, I was astonished at the catering provided for the musicians and crew. Normally that’s food as fuel – carb-heavy nosh for a rock ’n’ roll army marching on its stomach. But backstage at the Tokyo Dome, I’d never seen such a smorgasbord of high-class vegetarian options. “That was because Mum had worked with the amazing caterers. I was with Mum a lot – I used to work with her on her food things and cookbooks. And she was like: ‘If we’re going to make this meat-free, it has to be really satisfying.’ These are big riggers that you’re feeding. So she worked with the food caterer and they had a good time with it. It wasn’t just a chore.” Sir Paul pops by on Serves It Up!, and Stella’s on, too, although according to her elder sister, the fashion designer doesn’t need any tips. If Mary is a 10 as a chef, so is Stella, insists the family’s “professional” cook. “She’s really good. We all grew up talking about food. When we became a vegetarian family, we were talking about filling that gap on the plate. And I’m always adamant that I don’t want someone to look at my plate and think: ‘Oh, I’m glad I don’t eat veggie.’ I want them to look at my plate at dinner and go: ‘Oh, I wish I’d ordered that.’ That’s how I base my food style.” As for her other guests on the show: Reese Witherspoon, Zooming in from America, “was really funny. She had genuinely texted a few months before, saying: ‘I need you to show me something,’ because she’s not a big cook. She was like: ‘I want something family-style that I can cook and put on the table for the kids and everyone will like it.’” The actress and producer is, it seems, very fun to hang out with. “For me, the kitchen is the centre of the home. Most people hang out in the kitchen more than anywhere else. So guests come into the kitchen, even if it’s a transatlantic version of that. It’s how I like to socialise.” What about Oprah? How was it flipping the table? Very daunting, admits McCartney. “But then, when I knew what we were going to cook together and I felt confident about it, the rest followed. It brings me back to how food and memories… make you feel good. That’s where the [idea for] whole show came about.” Surprised to hear that Winfrey had never made a dip, McCartney got creative. “I love Bloody Marys. And I thought: ‘What if you made that into a dip?’ So I tested it with passata, olive oil, and then what you would put in a Bloody Mary: bit of vodka, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, and heated that through. “It was more like entertaining Oprah, asking her: ‘What do you like to do? How do you like to greet the guests at a party?’ And she said she likes to meet people at the door with a little shot of good

tequila. So more than work, the show is asking, ‘What’s it like at home with you?’” As for what it’s like at home for McCartney, she and her second husband, director and screenwriter Simon Aboud, have two young sons, Sam, 13, and Sid, 10. From her first marriage she has two older sons, Arthur, 22, and Elliot, 19, both of whom are off at college. All her boys are vegetarian, she says. Really? No cheeky McDonald’s? “They get the Beyond Meat burger,” she says of the chain’s recently introduced vegan option. “I think that’s been good. Prior to that, I don’t think they were [going to McDonald’s]. But if they were, I wouldn’t have had to go at them. But my tactic is like my mum’s tactic: to make the food as satisfying at home as possible.” She is, then, always good at making the effort to cook dinner, even if it’s been a knackering day at work. Well, like most of us, she mostly is. “I always will want to,” she begins with a sheepish grin. “But I don’t always. And actually, the thing when my kids would push back is: ‘Can we get a takeaway? Or delivery?’ So, Honest Burger does a really good [veggie option]. “Or we’ll do pizza, or sushi – we’ll just have avocado and cucumber rolls, vegetable tempura rolls. So that’s their way of [rebelling], by eating junk and sweets. “And I’m always trying to push vegetables. I’m like, eat something green!” When the boys were younger, that found form in another kitchen hack. “I’d do baked beans and put frozen peas in with them!” A green and orange mush, yum! Thanks, Mum. “No!” she exclaims. “It’s actually quite nice. And then if they don’t want to eat it, you put it all on one piece of toast and you’re done. That was when they were very little, though – and if I wanted to cook something in three minutes! “The big joke is that my husband says I’m a vegetarian that hates vegetables. I think that’s another reason why I make salads or things with dressings, and soups – ways of eating vegetables where I’m going to enjoy disguising them. Some people love just to eat steamed broccoli.” She wrinkles her nose at the unappetising thought. “I’m like, no. Really good for you, but I’m not that person.” Serves It Up! has been renewed for a third series, so McCartney is currently developing another batch of recipes. What about guests? “Do you have any ideas for me?” she shoots back. I suggest Stephen Graham. One of our finest actors, and now with added professional kitchen experience: he’s sensational as a harried chef in the recently released, award-winning film Boiling Point, shot in real time in a real restaurant, Jones & Sons in east London. “He’d be great. And he’s Scouse! I like a Scouser! I like Jody Comer as well. Maybe we should just do it all around Scousers. Who else is a Scouse?” Um, apart from your dad? “Yeah. I don’t think Ringo will do it,” she muses of her dad’s old Beatles buddy. “He’s not a big foodie; he doesn’t love food. He’s allergic to onions, and garlic. But he likes a baked potato, and asparagus. He likes hard goat’s cheese! I don’t know how I know this!” she hoots. “But I would be able to cook for him.”

Mary McCartney’s plant-based cooking show Serves It Up! is now available on Discovery+

#Mary McCartney #Serves It Up #food #vegetarian #Interview #stella mccartney #paul mccartney #family #Linda McCartney #arthur donald #elliot donald #Sid aboud #Sam aboud #Simon aboud #reese witherspoon #oprah winfrey #Ringo starr

Sam, Beckett, Elliot, Paul, Reiley, Bailey, Sid, Arthur, and Miller

Barbara and Ringo with their grandchildren. Starting from the front: Tatia, Sonny, Rock (behind Barbara) Louie, Buddy, (arms around Louie), Jakamo, Smokey, and Ruby (next and behind Ringo).

Mary: Arthur, Elliot, Sam, and Sid

Stella: Miller, Bailey, Beckett, and Reiley

Zak: Tatia

Jason: Louie, Sonny, Rock, and Buddy

Lee: Jakamo, Smokey, and Ruby

#paul mccartney #ringo starr #barbara bach #tatia starkey #arthur donald #louie starkey #sonny starkey #elliot donald #miller willis #bailey willis #reiley willis #sid aboud #sam aboud #jakamo mehler #buddy starkey #rock starkey #smokey mehler #ruby mehler #beckett willis

Sid and Simon Aboud, 2014

Photographed by Mary McCartney

#Simon aboud #Sid Aboud #baby #family #Photographed by Mary McCartney #director

"Food" and Family: The Photographer on Her Mum, Vegetarian Myths and Why She Will Never Be Martha Stewart

June 1, 2012-- Wallstreet Journal

Mary McCartney takes one look at me and begins dictating her favorite breakfast smoothie recipe: one banana, a tablespoon of milled flax seeds, one cup of rice milk, a small tablespoon of superfood powder and a scoop of whey protein. "That way, you will be set up for the day," she says, regarding me in a maternal, slightly concerned fashion. "I mean, when did you last eat?" I have known McCartney for 15 years. She shot her first fashion pictures for me when I was editor at Frank magazine in 1998, to accompany the diary her sister Stella wrote about putting together her first collection for the fashion brand Chloé. Over the years, as her fame as a photographer has grown, we have worked together on various projects. Now, as working mums on the same school run, we continue to bump into each other, occasionally stopping to chat and compare teenage-boy war stories. McCartney last year gave birth to her fourth child — her second son with film director Simon Aboud; she has two others with former husband Alistair Donald. This month, the 42-year-old launched her cookbook "Food," inspired by the memory, cooking methods and recipes of her beloved mother, the late Linda McCartney. Mary has been a consultant on her mother's brand Linda McCartney Foods for over a decade.

My mum was a rock 'n' roll cook.

She cooked more on instinct than by measuring. She appreciated food. She would never, for example, have eaten a Mars bar when she could eat really good chocolate.

For mum, the kitchen was the social hub.

She always liked people coming in and hanging out with her while she cooked. I'm the same. I like to cook for a reason—mainly for the kids, or if I have friends coming over.

My parents would challenge each other to cook great veggie meals.

My dad was always saying: Right, well, if I'm no longer eating meat, then what can we eat that is as delicious? He is a northern guy, and everything at that time revolved around the meat on the plate. It still does, I think, as opposed, for example, to Italy, where meat is just an ingredient, not the main constituent of a meal.

There's a preconception that veggie food is complicated and time-consuming.

I wanted to dispel that. I like to spend about 30 minutes or less on a recipe, and I use ingredients that are easily obtainable.

My mum never wore an apron when she cooked, and neither do I.

When I look back on her style, I think of it as easy and cool. The kitchen was no different to anywhere else in terms of how she dressed. I think if you are relaxed, it comes through in your cooking. I will admit, though, that having a mum who wore weird stuff and argyle socks was kind of embarrassing when I was at school.

My boys cook with me.

I learned so much from my mum about where food comes from and how to prepare it; I figure they will do the same. Plus, they are much more likely to eat it if they have had a hand in preparing it.

I always said no to writing a book because it's not my arena.

I'm a people person, which is why I'm a photographer—I like to tell a story with pictures not words. Writing is too much like homework. But then, because I support Meat Free Mondays and I wanted to illustrate to people that veggie food can be interesting and easy, I agreed. When the book first arrived, I looked at it and thought: Now, this is why I did it.

Actually, I finally said yes to the book because my husband pitched the idea to me.

He has an advertising background, so he's very persuasive. He pitched the idea of us having this recent baby, too.

Food carries with it so many memories of my family.

My sister does the same thing with clothes that I do with food. When I look at Stella's collections, I see a bit of my mum's boho and vintage influence and some of my American grandfather's seersucker, lawyer-suits vibe. When I go to watch Stella's runway shows, I feel very nostalgic.

I read a recent review of my book and it said, "nice pictures, but I bet she didn't come up with the recipes."

I was like, What!?, because I came up with all the recipes, which were really what I grew up with but healthier—my mum used a lot of cream. I try to enhance what I already know and love, and make it indulgent but good for you.

I tried to treat the food I was photographing like I would the portrait of a person.

There was no food varnishing on my shoots—I didn't even have a prop stylist. It was manic. I was making the food, then putting it onto or into vintage-y plates and bowls, then sticking it somewhere like a windowsill and framing the shot. As a family, we have bad memories of chargrilled vegetables and couscous, which was traditionally all that was on offer in restaurants in the '70s if you were vegetarian. Consequently, neither appears in my book or on my table—ever!

Everything that surrounds food is really complicated.

There's so much shame attached to what we eat and guilt about what we weigh. I think celebrating good, healthy food is part of the answer. Wouldn't it be interesting if every person in the country could have a therapy session about how they feel about food?

I have a very clear memory of the first time food changed my mood.

I was having a bad day and my aunt took me out, and I had a grilled cheese sandwich, chips and a milkshake. I remember realizing afterward that the meal had actually made me feel better.

My step-grandmother on my mum's side taught me to bake.

She was French and a little scary—always saying things like: Children do not run in the apartment. But when I got older, we became friends through cooking. She taught me the value of measuring things and of having an oven thermometer. Those two things are fundamental to my cooking today.

My dad loves home baking, and I think there's a link between my interest in food and making people happy.

I love it if everyone eats everything on their plate.

You can tell a good restaurant by the excellence of their vegetarian dishes or menu.

I like Raymond Blanc's Manoir aux Quat'Saisons, E&O in Notting Hill, Le Caprice and Scott's — places with a nice ambience.

I'm a huge fan of straightforward, chuck-it-all-in cooks like Nigel Slater and Jamie Oliver, who celebrate food, and I detest anything complicated.

What's the deal with all that foamy, fiddly stuff?

I remember my childhood as very normal.

We went to a comprehensive, where we kept our heads down because we didn't want to be seen as different. We ate at a certain time, did our homework and, every so often, we'd go on an amazing trip somewhere that would remind us that our circumstances weren't quite like everyone else's.

I think part of the reason my dad looks so good is that he eats properly.

He would never skip a meal. Often, if he's on his own, he will eat something from my mum's range and make himself vegetables or a salad.

I'm not going to become a Martha Stewart.

There are no books planned on how my kitchen or home looks. I can't even remember the name of the cooker I use, except to say that it's a double oven and it's good. I have been approached a number of times about doing a cooking show for TV. My husband is pitching me on that now, so we'll see what happens.

I'm obsessed by Amelia Rope—a chocolate range available at Liberty.

It's really expensive, so I eat a tiny bit at a time. I love the Pale Lime with Sea Salt. [Also] Cire Trudon candles—again very expensive, so I don't buy too many, but I love all of the fragrances.

I like to be comfortable and practical, but stylish....

I want to be able to walk wherever I go. I wear my sister Stella's clothes a lot, but never the whole look. I mix everything up, which is what my mum did, so I'd wear Stella's trousers with a vintage blouse, a nice knit cardi and flip flops. I wear Stella's L.I.L.Y. [standing for Linda I Love You], Penhaligon's Bluebell and Agent Provocateur's Maitresse Gold, which my husband bought me.

I'm very inspired by my mum.

She liked vintage—pretty tea dresses and nice knits. I can't see a piece of neon clothing without thinking of her.

Stocking a Kitchen, Mary McCartney-Style

•Heavy-bottomed frying pans: small, medium and large

•Nonstick frying pans: large (around 28 centimeters) and small or medium (around 20 centimeters)

•Magimix food processor—but I prefer hand-chopping

•Chopping boards in various sizes—I'm a Virgo, so I need to control the size of everything that's chopped. Two large, wooden boards for veg and one dedicated to fruit, so you don't get garlic or onion flavor on fruit.

•Kitchen Aid mixer for baking

•Roasting and cake tins

•Sharp knives: a selection of approximately six in a wooden block; my favorite is the 13-centimeter, serrated vegetable chopping knife.

•Wooden spoons

•Spatulas

•Veg and zest peelers

•Weighing scales

•Oven thermometer

#family #mary mccartney #interview #paul mccartney #linda mccartney #stella mccartney #vegetarian #arthur donald #elliot donald #sam aboud #sid aboud #simon aboud #food

Photographed by Mary McCartney

#dessert #children #sid aboud #family #hands #cake #chocolate #sprinkles #photographed by Mary McCartney

Mary McCartney: Sir Paul, growing up a Beatle’s daughter and Linda, my mother

She has a Beatle for a dad and an impressive portfolio including celebrity subjects and a portrait of the Queen. But it’s Mary McCartney’s mother, Linda, who has had the most influence on her life. Here she reveals why

The Times, January 26 2019

When Mary McCartney was in her early twenties, she remembers phoning her mother, Linda, in Sussex, home to the McCartney family after life in the Beatles, and announcing, “I’ve decided I want to become a photographer.” Her mother immediately gave her a Leica R. It has been 20 years since Linda McCartney’s death from breast cancer, which devastated her husband and their four children, and yet that camera is beside Mary McCartney today, as if representing Linda’s presence in her daughter’s life.

In the past 20 years, Mary McCartney has gone from being initially unsure – “I didn’t know how to work with lights at the beginning” – to being one of the most successful female photographers in the UK. Like her mother, who was the first woman to shoot a cover for Rolling Stone magazine, she has photographed icons. These include the Queen. She has worked for magazines and advertising campaigns and, in the past few years, has gradually shifted her focus towards exhibitions, books and making films. She has, in many ways, followed the professional path trodden by Linda, an inspiration to her not only because she was an early activist for vegetarianism, but because of the nature of her work. As McCartney puts it, “Capturing memories in a moment.”

“At times I have been professionally pigeon-holed by people presuming that everything I’ve got within my career is because of my name,” McCartney says. “But that just isn’t realistic.

“No jobs or assignments have ever come because of that. I don’t dwell on it. But the challenge is that I’m close to my family. I don’t want not to be able to embrace that, but then I don’t want to be pigeon-holed as the daughter of Paul McCartney rather than Mary the photographer, with a new exhibition or a book. I’ve reached the point where I’m not shying away from it. It’s more how other people deal with it, rather than how I do.

“My mum was a professional photographer before she ever knew my dad, and that was how they met. A huge amount of her work was done years before she met him, but a certain number of people would still say that she’s a celebrity photographer who started when she married him, because of his connections. It’s understandable why it happens, but it’s a fine balance.”

I feel slightly guilty here because, when I first looked through McCartney’s impressive body of work, I did assume she got a few celebrity sittings over a lunch or two at the McCartneys’ kitchen table. What with her famous pa and her famous sister, the fashion designer Stella McCartney.

For the record, she says she does not have celebrities on a Rolodex. “A lot of the celebrity photographs I have done have been through being asked to do them. They’re not my friends or people I know. Maybe it is that people know I am not going to take advantage of them and try to get a photograph that is going to be sensationalised in some way. I don’t think it’s necessarily to do with my background. I wouldn’t particularly connect with someone as a celebrity, because I’m not an actress.”

We are in McCartney’s studio because she is about to publish a book of pictures called Paris Nude, an extraordinarily intimate nude study in black and white of a stand-up called Phyllis Wang, whom McCartney knew only vaguely before arriving in her apartment in Paris on a hot day last summer. The book came about after a happy misunderstanding in which McCartney asked Wang to model for a commercial project and signed her text “xxx”, taken by Wang as a request for her to pose for explicit shots. By the time the misunderstanding was cleared up, they both had begun to think, “What a great idea!”

A few months later, McCartney was in Wang’s apartment asking her to take her knickers off, an embarrassing moment for photographer and subject that took a bit of working up to, via the jeans. “I was like, ‘You’re going to have to take the knickers off now.’ And they’re sort of pushed down the sofa. You can see them pushed in.”

By definition, the pictures are intimate. Wang is naked on the sofa, by the fireplace, writhing about in the shower and in the bath, where McCartney’s lens zooms in to swirling water so that the viewer looks on and is tempted to ask, blimey, is that a pair of buttocks there? Let’s not dwell on Wang’s reappearing lady garden. It is part of McCartney’s fascination with the female form and follows on neatly from her first exhibition, Off Pointe: a Photographic Study of the Royal Ballet After Hours, for which she photographed ballet dancers in real life, smoking fags, drinking Coke, going to the cash machine and, yes, having a bath. It is, McCartney says, intimacy with her subject that she craves. For the viewer, it is permitted voyeurism.

There is no doubt Mary McCartney gets people to do things for her that perhaps they might have previously ruled out. She shows me a book of her pictures called Twelfth Night, featuring Mark Rylance backstage in white tights and face make-up. “He just said, ‘Want to stay?’ And he never says that.

“I think I do meet people and then I’m intrigued, like, who is that real person? That if I got into their world more, my immediate perceptions might change.

“There is definitely a connection with my background. I think before I would shy away from it and go, ‘There is no connection.’ But now I kind of think, ‘Why am I so interested in that?’ It has to be something.”

In other words, being judged only as a McCartney and not as the person beyond the name informs her work. She wants the truth, the real story, and she wants the trust.

The family famously grew up in Sussex, the children riding ponies and attending comprehensive school. Twentieth-century legends flitted in and out of the house, hanging out by the Aga and eating Linda’s vegetarian food – so it’s not exactly Mum or Dad coming home from the accountancy firm and slogging to pay the mortgage. But in many ways, the children were protected from any notion of what their own celebrity meant to the world beyond them. “We used to live in a very close environment. We wouldn’t have a lot of staff around, so we would wash our own dishes. And when I rode, we used to brush and tack up the horse ourselves.

“I know it’s been documented over the years that we children are really normal, but it’s probably more about being real and human. Maybe it’s that we have values. If I stay with a friend, I strip the bed. I make sure that my children hang up their towels and don’t chuck them on the floor. They need to be good humans when they go out into the world and be nice to people, considerate.

“I think the fact I went to a comprehensive school means I have met lots of different types of people. I have a very close set of friends from when I was 12. Then I have a close set of friends from when I moved to London as a teenager and I’ve collected some new ones along the way. I think that implies that I haven’t changed dramatically from then, but I think I’ve developed over the years and grown in confidence and understanding.

“What it is for me is that my upbringing of being in a bit of fishbowl, being looked at and watched, means that very close relationships with my family and friends are so important. I kind of crave that [feeling] when I’m working. I like relationships.”

I was very interested in what McCartney would be like when the boot was on the other foot. For somebody who invites trust, how trusting can she be? The early signs in the lead-up to the production that is a photoshoot were ominous. The business of so many of us – journalist, photographer, assistants, make-up artist – being invited into McCartney’s world was not without discussion. Frankly, I was as nervous as she says she was when she arrived in Paris to photograph Wang with her kit off. “You look quite calm,” she says to me, smiling. Actually, I’m not that calm. But nobody frisked me at the door or grilled me about my questions. While she was upstairs getting ready, her dog, Paddy, sniffed around my legs.

McCartney is tiny in person. She is dressed in clothes by Stella, naturellement. She is a very generous model. “I don’t see the point of agreeing to have your picture taken and then being difficult,” she says. “It’s a collaboration. It must be intimidating to take a picture of a photographer, but then on the other hand you can collaborate more.”

While her style is very cool, she can also look a bit, well, chilly, something that often defines her sister in pictures (no doubt Stella is a poppet when she’s got her slippers on). However, she is very happy to smile to requests of “a bit warmer”. Actually, as it turns out, she’s homely, has an active role in her mother’s vegetarian food company, for which she has just made a film, cooks mountains of food for pleasure and loves Bake Off. Who knew? Those pesky perceptions again.

----------

The first defining moment of Mary McCartney’s life was leaving home for London. As the eldest of Paul’s three children with Linda (he adopted Heather, Linda’s child by another relationship), she was the first to leave. “When I arrived in London [being a McCartney] wasn’t really a thing. More was being a vegetarian. I probably defended myself on that more than anything else during that era. It’s exciting that is no longer the world.”

She worked first as a picture researcher before moving to edit her mother’s archive for an exhibition in New York. Seeing herself and her tastes reflected back at her in Linda’s photographs was empowering, she explains. “I’d always grown up watching her take pictures, and I was looking through these contact sheets and they were so inspiring and varied, like a diary. The biggest thing I like to do is capture memories and moments. I realised we had a very similar sensibility. Looking at these pictures I thought, ‘Oh my God, that is exactly how I am as well.’ ”

The gift of the Leica followed, consolidated by a technical course in how to use it and then a few years establishing herself, gaining confidence as she went along.

She made new friends, partied in Soho, the Groucho Club, the Colony Club, Gerry’s. “If you meet someone, you don’t immediately say who you are or what your background is. It’s only after time.”

The second defining moment of her life was when, aged 27, McCartney was faced with Linda’s diagnosis of breast cancer. “I hoped that she would get better, that there would be a different outcome,” she says sadly. “She got on with everything and she looked great. She had a sparkle in her eye the whole time. There are pictures that I took at the time that I thought, if she makes it through this, then I’ll publish them. But the fact that she didn’t means I won’t.”

On the way to the loo I spot a painting of Linda by Paul. She’s wearing a yellow blouse, sitting in a yellow armchair beside a yellow baby grand, which matches the colour of her hair. The pencil inscription on the mount reads, “All the love in the world to my Mary, love Dad. March 06.” It was a gift given eight years after Linda died. Elsewhere there is a beautiful photograph of a young Stella looking into her sister’s lens while enclosed in Linda’s arms. It seems such a poignant picture – perhaps one of those that have gone unpublished. “Afterwards, we all looked after each other,” McCartney explains, “and we all got through it the best we could.”

The loss is still there – it feels palpable – but she has a coping mechanism. “What I really tried to do was think of the positives of the situation. It was not a positive situation at all, but the things that I take from it are at least that I had time to spend with her, and I spent a lot of time with her through the last couple of years. We talked a lot, very openly, and we were really close.

“In that way I don’t have regrets, because that comforts me and I know that she was as comfortable as she could be.”

In 2015, McCartney exhibited her pictures next to those of her mother’s in a show called Mother Daughter at the Gagosian gallery in New York. It was a tribute to the person who had most profoundly shaped her life.

It is Linda’s character, her essence, that McCartney says she aspires to. “She was a really great character, really fun, great sense of humour. No one else like her. Funky, rebellious and didn’t care what people thought about her. I haven’t met many people like that. I used to think, ‘Does she actually mean it when she says she doesn’t care what people think?’ But I know she actually, really didn’t care. I think for anyone who loses someone they’re close to, it’s weirdly good to feel so sad, because it means you cared about the person that much. I think if someone had that much personality, they always stay with you to a degree, because you’ll be in certain situations and you’ll always be able to imagine what they’ll say. I try and hold on to that rather than thinking about some of the more distressing things.”

McCartney was 29 when Linda died. Towards the end of that same year she married Alistair Donald, her first husband, and by the following April of 1999, she became a mother herself. She concedes there might be a connection between losing a mother and having a child. “I don’t overthink those things, but it does seem likely. Other people I know who have lost a parent do often end up having a child soon after. I don’t really know what that connection is, but I feel like it is probably there.”

Her second son followed three and a half years later, but ultimately the marriage did not last. “I lost my mother, got married, had a baby. I think of it as a shame not to have stayed married ... Relationships are the most intriguing thing to get right.”

In 2008, she had her third son with the director Simon Aboud, whom she married in 2010, and a fourth in 2011. “I didn’t plan to have a big family; I’m not a big planner. I like to have things develop as I move along.”

Three of her four boys are still at home. The eldest, Arthur, is 19 and at college. “I like mayhem,” she says. “I can be in a situation with a lot going on and I like it. I’m happy to have lots of conversations going on at the same time. I like things to be a bit messy, a bit unpredictable and not too preplanned.”

The children all appreciate their grandfather, “but it’s not something you really think about. At school they’ll do songs that have been written by Dad, so I think they’re very proud as well. For me, rather than it being, ‘Oh, my dad’s Paul McCartney,’ it’s more, ‘What an amazing artist he is,’ and how much he has achieved. How level-headed he is, and what a great relationship we have. It’s all those kinds of things. If I see a picture or hear something on the radio, I’m impressed [for him] rather than thinking, ‘Oh. I’m in this family.’ ”

Turning 50 in August is not meaningful to her, but she does admit maturity is. “I think I appreciate it all more now. I appreciate my relationship and my friends. I appreciate my career. I think that’s the thing. You don’t when you are younger. Now, it is what makes me happy. Like, I’ll be walking down the street and a song will come on and it will make me appreciate being alive.”

As I plan to leave for my journey home, McCartney asks, “Would you like to go to the loo?” Actually, yes, I say. I’ve got a long trip. She laughs at her mother-hen-ishness.

After I wash my hands, I turn to see a photograph propped up on the lavatory. Is that Barack Obama there with a smiling Sir Paul? And then I spot all the McCartneys with Michelle O on the end. Blow me down, it’s a McCartney/Obama line-up.

As I leave, one of McCartney’s oldest friends arrives. She too is very smiley.

“It was she who also made me become a photographer,” McCartney explains, “because when we were young, she’d take pictures of us all together and she’d chop our heads off.”

They’re doing a bit of admin. “Apparently being a photographer means you can vouch for a visa,” McCartney says, killer-heeled boots now kicked off her feet.

As she says, it’s all real, but it’s not normal.

Paris Nude by Mary McCartney is published by Heni on February 7