SIR PAUL McCARTNEY once asked a Scots cop to take fingerprints off a discarded fag packet fearing that they belonged to a stalker — when they were actually his rebellious teenage daughter’s.
Retired police officer Simon McLean recounts his supersleuth mission for The Beatles legend in his new book about his life in the force.
While a rookie serving in Campbeltown, Argyll, a concerned Sir Paul asked Simon to investigate the mystery of the rogue JPS pack at the star’s Mull of Kintyre farm.
But he quickly got to the bottom of it — the cigs belonged to Sir Paul and wife Linda’s daughter Heather.
Simon, 61, says: “Heather begged me not to tell her parents and I’ve kept that promise to this day.
“So when the book comes out it will come as a bit of a shock to her dad, who is still none the wiser.”
In his memoirs The Ten Percent, he spills all about the 1981 Macca ‘case’.
Simon, from Glasgow, says: “Paul walked with me to the CID car. When we got to the driver’s door he asked me if I could do him a favour.
“He produced a packet of JPS cigarettes from his pocket and explained that he had found these on the farm earlier that day when horse riding.
“He thought he had spotted the flash of binoculars on the surrounding hillside over the last week and was worried that some stalker was hanging about.”
Heather begged me not to tell her parents and I’ve kept that promise to this day.
Simon McLean
Simon says the worried moptop then asked: “Could I have them fingerprinted or checked out?”
The cop told Sir Paul, now 78, he would look into his concerns, which came just months after Macca’s Beatles pal John Lennon was shot dead, aged 40, in New York by obsessed fan Mark Chapman.
But the next day, Simon cracked the case after spotting Heather, now 57, enjoying a sneaky smoke with pals at a summer fete.
Recalling his conversation with the then 19-year-old, he says: “I said, ‘Does your dad know that you smoke Heather?’.
“She nearly died on the spot. ‘Please don’t tell them, please. They’ll kill me’.”
He adds: “I then told her of her dad’s concerns and the packet he had found near the farmhouse.
“She promised to never throw the packet away carelessly again, reassured that I wouldn’t tell her parents if she was more careful.”
As well as his celeb encounters, Govan native Simon tells how he joined the police aged 20. He spent the next 17 years in blue going from rookie cop to a member of the serious crime squad.
The book takes the reader through beat duties in sleepy Campbeltown to the grim work of a plain clothes city detective hunting drug dealers, hitmen and gangsters.
As well as a healthy dollop of humour, it gives a glimpse into the chaos and turmoil of dealing with some of Scotland’s most-fearsome crooks.
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Simon says it’s been a work in progress for around three years – but he took advantage of lockdown to hammer out the final few chapters.
He says: “I started writing years ago when the publisher encouraged me. It was stop- start but because of lockdown I managed to pull all the strands together.”
His book — due to be published in October — also touches on personal heartache with the loss of daughter Louise, who the book is dedicated to, in 2011 to cystic fibrosis, and wife Margaret who died in 2016 aged 57.
Simon — who lives with partner Fiona in Giffnock, near Glasgow — still uses his expertise to train and consult others in the security and crime-fighting fields.
He says: “I did 17-and-a-half years in Strathclyde Police. I was approached by other security services who offered more flexibility and I jumped at the chance.
“I then spent the next 20-odd years in detective work — but that’s anther story.”
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The Ten Percent can be pre-ordered now through Ringwood Publishing.
On Wednesday, October 7, Simon is taking art in a virtual Zoom launch from 7pm with further details on Ringwood’s website at ringwoodpublishing.com