Truly, it sounds like something from a dream. Beatles fans who were on the official Magical Mystery Tour bus around Liverpool on Monday got a whole lot more than they bargained for when, on one excursion, their bus pulled up at the traffic lights next to the one and only Paul McCartney.
Macca was in the back of a vehicle, chatting away on his phone to someone on FaceTime, and wouldn't you know it – it was Ringo Starr.
Don’t try working out the odds of that exact sequence of events happening – we'll just say that they're probably very high indeed.
Interviewed by the BBC, the driver of the Magical Mystery Tour bus, Neil Morton, described the moment as “surreal… I had pulled up at the traffic lights on Hope Street when who should I see - Sir Paul with Ringo on FaceTime.
"He waved to us and everybody took photos. The passengers could not believe it."
Needless to say, the encounter was as brief as the time the lights stayed on red. "Nobody really got chance to speak with him," said Morton, who has worked on the Magical Mystery Tour bus for two years. But those photos are proof enough for punters to explain to their family, friends and acquaintances that yes, this really did happen – they went to Liverpool and met the Beatles. (Kind of.)
Imagine exploring Liverpool aboard the Magical Mystery Tour bus—today, the 20th—when, just when you least expect it, you glance at a car and see Paul McCartney inside, chatting with Ringo Starr!!!! pic.twitter.com/oykuYVeHwLJuly 20, 2026
That’s exactly what Breno Augusto, a Beatles fan from Portugal did. Posting on Twitter/ X afterwards, he wrote: “Imagine exploring Liverpool aboard the Magical Mystery Tour bus -(on Monday) – when, just when you least expect it, you glance at a car and see Paul McCartney inside, chatting with Ringo Starr!!!!”
McCartney was back in town to present an award to the actor Stephen Graham at the Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts (LIPA), which he co-founded back in the 1990s.
The Magical Mystery Tour is, as you might expect from its name, a tour bus that takes tourists around all the main Beatles sites in the city – The Cavern, John and Paul’s childhood houses, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, the whole shebang. Any sighting of an actual Beatle is an added, completely unexpected extra...
