Let’s get straight to it: did Paul McCartney watch Miley Cyrus’s ‘twerking’ “as an experiment to check”? We highly doubt it; but he’s seen it now, and felt compelled to defend it, somehow.

Paul McCartneyMcCartney doesn't see anything wrong with Cyrus's antics

"I watched it as an experiment to check,” said Paul to Sky News. Unconfirmed reports – that we made up – suggest ‘a friend’ got him the dvd. “But you look at it and you say 'what's everyone shouting about?' an incredulous Macca continued.

"I think it was only mildly shocking ... it wasn't explicit at all,” he explained.

Cyrus’s recent and rampant hyper sexualisation of her image has received criticism from many corners. Sinead O’ Connor wrote an open letter to the former Disney star, pleading for her to take control of her own image, while Annie Lennox has called for age classifications on music videos, something that Charlotte Church supported in a recent keynote speech for the John Peel Lecture.

The former Beatle has been promoting new album, New, the single of which has been doing the rounds on the radio.

Watch Miley Cyrus perform Wrecking Ball on SNL

"It's not difficult to come up with something new, but to come up with something new which is good is difficult because you're stacking them against the stuff you've done - but you've got to just forget that,” he explained. "I love writing songs so I just have to say 'don't even try to better the old ones, just get on with it'. But I love doing it so much that I can't stop."