Ricky Wilson has a ukulele signed by Sir Paul McCartney.
The 44-year-old rock star – who shot to fame as lead singer of The Kaiser Chiefs alongside Andrew White, Simon Rix, Nick Baines, Vijay Mistry and former member Nick Hodgson – was playing the Ukulele when he met the left-handed Beatles legend, 79, who signed it for him.
He said: “I happened to be playing the ukulele at the time. He returned it to left-handed and he played it, then wrote on it, ‘To Ricky, my dear, Paul McCartney was here’.'”
The ‘I Predict a Riot’ rocker went on to explain that the instrument is still in its left-handed position and that he has kept it in a glass case for preservation because he “never wants to play it again.”
He told The Metro newspaper: “It’s still tuned left-handed because I don’t want anyone else to ever play it again. That’s why it’s in a glass case. I should have said, ‘No, don’t personalise it, Paul, just write a generic’. That’s probably worth quite a lot of money!'”
‘The Voice’ judge also went on to imply that his days of outrageous rock and roll are behind him, as he noted that the only true part of being an outrageous rock n roll star is the playing and that the rest is just “d****** about.”
He said: “The most rock’n’roll thing you can ever do in a band is play a gig, it just is. ‘All the rest of the stuff isn’t rock’n’roll, it’s just d****** about. The word has been misused for the last few decades to allude to doing something stupid. I’ve been in a band with the same guys for over 20 years, which probably shows you that I haven’t done that much, because the people that do that barely last five. I jumped off a few balconies into swimming pools but, I mean, that’s just stupid. Physically, I was OK, but obviously I wasn’t in the right place mentally.”