Sir Paul McCartney has been named as Britain's first musician billionaire.
According the The Sunday Times Rich List, The Beatles icon and his wife Nancy have a net worth of £1billion – an increase of £50million compared to last year.
The recent jump is down to the release of the last ever single by The Beatles – Now And Then as well as the Peter Jackson-directed documentary Get Back.
Now And Then was born from a John Lennon demo recorded in the late 1970s and features contributions from all four members of the band.
Now And Then was originally recorded by Lennon at his home in New York’s Dakota Building. When the remaining Beatles were putting together their Anthology project in 1995, Yoko Ono supplied them with the demo, alongside rough versions of two others, Real Love and Free As A Bird which were released as singles at the time.
But the technology available in the 90s wasn't advanced enough for Now And Then to be released. With recent advances in the technology, it was finally reworked and made available in 2023.
Jackson's Get Back came from 55 hours of unseen footage and 140 hours of unheard audio edited together over two years and packaged into three episodes.
According to the Sunday Times, the McCartney fortune includes around $50million of Nancy's money.
Sir Paul McCartney owns a company called MPL Communications, founded in 1969 and which controls the rights to more than 25,000 songs.
MPL owns McCartney’s post-Beatles songs and also tracks by other icons such as Buddy Holly.
Another iconic and knighted British music star, Sir Elton John, also makes the list's top 350 – with a net worth of £470million.
