Speaking to APTN Entertainment's News Editor Katherine Smith, on the eve of his first date of his European tour, McCartney said that despite the war in Iraq, the show must go on.

"What we are here to do is lift people's spirits, so obviously if the times are difficult, that kind of identifies our job a little more clearly. So, I was thinking in difficult times people need something else to balance their feeling, so that is what we are here for is to just lift spirits and we hope to start doing that tomorrow night."

McCartney also revealed that the European leg would end in his hometown of Liverpool.

"It is always lovely to go home to Liverpool, so I think we can expect a party you know, we'll be up for it and I think the audience will. I can say I love the people of Liverpool because I am one of them and it is my hometown and I get up there quite a lot. I have a lot of relatives there - that will probably be the entire audience, my relatives."

The three-month European tour will include a stop in Moscow, where McCartney will play his first-ever Russian gig on 24 May 2003. McCartney's two and a half hour, 36-song show includes 22 Beatles songs, the most Beatles songs ever performed in any one show, plus more than a dozen hits from his Wings and solo periods.

McCartney, who was reunited with Ringo Starr and George Harrison, before the latter's death, for a secret jam session, says that performing Beatles tracks during this tour is the only way they will now be heard.

"Obviously The Beatles broke up, it would have been great if we would have been able to continue and it was The Beatles now, but as that did not happen, and could not happen, this is how it is now. So, I don't worry about the past. You know that it was something great and I am really proud of it and had a great time then, but strangely enough I am having a great time now you know, so I don't worry about what it might have been specially when it is this good."

Talking about his appeal to young and old alike, McCartney compared the appeal of the timeless Beatles' song to the current success of Eminem. "You get the nostalgia, you get the sheer fact that the songs still work. That is something that I would have never prophesied, you know.You don't think it would work, but even alongside people like Eminem, who I like, I really respect his work and his lyrics, I think our stuff still works. Something like 'Eleanor Rigby' alongside something of Eminem's, I think there is something in common, it is something you can get hold of, you can get interested in the story, so I think there is something there that just lasts and touches a nerve in people."

APTN News and Entertainment subscribers were able to access the entire interview on Monday, 24 March 2003, in their evening bulletins.