Phil Collins and Paul McCartney Finally Ended Their 24-Year Feud — Over One Very Loaded Little Word
A rare Beatles book, a bruised ego and a phone call about charity have officially closed one of music’s strangest long-running celebrity grudges.
Some celebrity feuds arrive with diss tracks, courtroom filings and coordinated paparazzi walks. Others begin with a Beatles book and one allegedly patronizing adjective.
Phil Collins and Paul McCartney have apparently chosen the second, much more British route.
Collins, 75, revisited his famously odd 24-year estrangement from McCartney, 84, during an interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored. The good news: the bad blood is over. The even better news: the story remains gloriously awkward, because the entire saga appears to have been powered by a single word Collins heard in 2002 and never quite forgot.
That word was “little.”
The feud began with a Beatles collectible and a bruised ego
The scene was the Queen’s Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace in 2002. Collins, then already an enormous star as the former Genesis drummer and solo hitmaker, brought a rare first edition of Hunter Davies’ book about The Beatles and asked McCartney to sign it.
According to Collins’ recollection, McCartney turned to his then-wife Heather Mills and said, “He’s a big Beatles fan, is our little Phil?”
Collins’ internal response was immediate and considerably less diplomatic: “You arsehole.”
To be fair, Collins has repeatedly acknowledged that he may have inflated the insult in his own mind. During the Morgan interview, he said he “probably made more of it than he meant” and admitted that he did, in fact, make more of it. But once a tiny slight has been filed away by a famous person with a long memory, it can apparently achieve the staying power of a classic album.
Collins has said the comment landed badly because he felt McCartney had treated him condescendingly before. The issue resurfaced publicly years later, when Collins discussed it while promoting his 2016 memoir, Not Dead Yet. He recalled McCartney responding to the account by email, saying he was disappointed and telling him not to be “sacrosanct” — a word Collins said he was not sure he understood, but which nevertheless left “a bad taste” on both sides.
Imagine being one of the most successful musicians alive and still thinking about whether a former Beatle called you small in front of his wife. Celebrity: it is just like us, except the signed book is worth considerably more.
Then McCartney made the first move
The reconciliation began with a charity auction. Collins told Morgan that he had been asking fellow musicians whether they had memorabilia they would be willing to donate for an auction benefiting the King’s Trust.
McCartney apparently heard about it and called him.
The conversation did not stay on auction logistics. McCartney brought up the estrangement and asked Collins, “What is all this about?” That question has the energy of a man discovering that an old office tension has somehow survived multiple decades, several royal concerts and the entire rise of social media.
Collins told him, “I wish I’d never said it. I wish I’d never said it.” McCartney, for his part, said he thought they were already good.
And then, in Collins’ telling, they kissed and made up.
That phrase is doing a lot of work here. There was no grand public summit, no dramatic backstage embrace released to the tabloids, no carefully staged photograph of two legends smiling beside a peace treaty. Just a phone call, a difficult conversation and two men deciding that a 24-year grudge was perhaps no longer worth carrying.
Collins still managed one final jab. He said McCartney had clearly been bothered by the situation because “he likes to be liked, as we all do … maybe him more than some other people.” The feud may be over, but apparently the director’s commentary remains available.
It’s the most rock-star way to resolve a very un-rock-star problem
There is something almost charmingly miniature about the original offense. This was not a creative betrayal or a stolen publishing credit. It was not a relationship implosion or a spectacular awards-show snub. It was a Beatles superfan asking a Beatle to sign a book, then interpreting a familiar-sounding remark as a condescension grenade.
That tension is what made the feud so durable. Collins was not some random admirer hovering at the edge of McCartney’s orbit. He was a global star in his own right, a musician whose songs — “In the Air Tonight,” “Against All Odds,” “You’ll Be in My Heart” — occupy their own permanent wing of popular culture. Yet in the story he tells, the Beatles’ mythology briefly reduced him to exactly what he did not want to be: the little fan asking for approval.
McCartney’s version of the encounter is not included in the Page Six account, and Collins has allowed that the original comment may not have carried the weight he assigned to it. That ambiguity is practically the entire plot. A remark that may have been teasing, affectionate or simply careless became a private grievance, then a published grievance, then an email grievance, and finally a phone-call grievance.
It is also a reminder that old celebrity feuds often survive because nobody wants to be the first person to admit the whole thing got weird. The longer the silence lasts, the more ceremonial it becomes. Eventually, someone has to say: Why are we still doing this?
Full circle, with one last sting
Collins later told the Sunday Times that he was glad they had talked because McCartney is “part of my life.” He also said he wished he had never made the comments, while acknowledging that the original incident did happen as he remembered it.
That is a surprisingly generous ending for a feud built on wounded pride. It leaves room for both things to be true: Collins felt slighted, and McCartney may not have intended to create a decades-long emotional subplot. The two musicians have known each other since long before the disagreement, including the era when their paths crossed publicly in the 1980s. The grudge was a chapter, not the whole biography.
Still, “we kissed and made up” is a very satisfying final line for a story that began with a signed Beatles book. Somewhere, that first edition is presumably still sitting in Collins’ collection, carrying the atmosphere of a diplomatic incident.
And somewhere in the great celebrity archive of inexplicably persistent beefs, Phil Collins and Paul McCartney have finally moved from “ancient history” to “slightly embarrassing anecdote.” The peace may be genuine. The sting of “little” may be gone. But the phrase has now achieved immortality — which is more than most adjectives can say.
Taylor Swift Played Dakota Johnson’s Therapist, Birthday Fairy Godmother and Emotional Support Pop Star on ‘SNL’
Dakota Johnson’s musician-dating monologue already had jokes, Zoloft and a suspicious Cleveland reference. Then Taylor Swift walked in with a couch-side diagnosis.
Dakota Johnson came to Saturday Night Live prepared to discuss her romantic history with musicians. Taylor Swift came prepared to make it feel like a group-therapy session.
During Johnson’s opening monologue on Saturday night, the actress joked about her “two very public, very lame breakups with two very awesome musicians” — a line that was already doing the delicate work of turning a dating résumé into a punchline. Then Swift appeared onstage to enormous cheers, introduced by Johnson as “my literal therapist.”
It was the kind of surprise cameo that makes the internet sit up before the joke has even landed: two famous women, one highly public love life, and a friendship bit that immediately suggested Swift knows exactly what Johnson is like after a night out. Or, at minimum, knows how to make the audience imagine it.
“You just show up at my house once a week”
Swift quickly rejected the professional title. “I’m not your therapist, actually,” she told Johnson. “You just show up at my house once a week with an empty bottle of wine and ask me if I want some.”
Johnson’s answer — “Yeah, I have manners” — set up the more pointed version of their alleged friendship ritual. According to Swift’s character, Johnson flops on her couch, overshares, and receives the sort of support familiar to anyone who has ever described a chaotic situation to a friend and gotten back, “Damn, that’s crazy.”
Swift added that Johnson eventually gets a Pedialyte and a ride home from security. Johnson, meanwhile, eagerly interrupted the exit plan with: “Sleepover yay!”
The bit worked because it gave Swift a role more entertaining than the standard celebrity cameo. She wasn’t there to sing, promote, or stand politely behind the host while the audience screamed. She was Johnson’s exhausted best friend — the one who has heard the same story several times, knows the wine is going to be involved, and has already accepted that the night will end with logistics.
Dakota Johnson’s dating history became the monologue’s co-star
Before Swift arrived, Johnson had already made her romantic past the evening’s central character. She joked that she was doing a public service by dating male musicians and saving women “a lot of money” on antidepressant Zoloft.
“So you’re welcome, America. Also England and parts of Ireland and Cleveland, allegedly,” she said — a line that nodded toward the casual rumors linking her to Machine Gun Kelly, who is from Cleveland.
That Cleveland mention got a particularly enthusiastic response from Swift, who whooped because the city is the hometown of her husband, Travis Kelce. Swift and Kelce also plan to live there, according to the Page Six account, making the joke land as both a dating reference and a tiny wink toward Swift’s own next-chapter mythology.
Johnson’s public relationships with musicians have long been part of the celebrity conversation. She dated Noah Gersh from 2007 to 2010, Drowners frontman Mathew Hitt from 2014 to 2016, and Coldplay singer Chris Martin from 2017 until 2025. In 2026, she split from musician Role Model after less than a year together.
More recently, fans have connected Johnson and Machine Gun Kelly after reports that they hit it off at Swift and Kelce’s wedding in July. Neither has said they are dating, but Johnson’s Cleveland joke was exactly vague enough to send the internet back into its favorite position: zooming in on a celebrity sentence and asking whether it was secretly a headline.
Swift had one more surprise waiting backstage
The cameo was not the night’s only Johnson-Swift crossover. Swift returned at the end of the show with a birthday cake for Johnson, who turned 37 during the broadcast.
That second entrance transformed the cameo from a one-off monologue gag into a full friendship spectacular. First, Swift was the pal who supposedly handles Johnson’s post-breakup spirals with hydration and a security detail. Later, she was the friend arriving with dessert while the birthday girl was still hosting live television.
It was also a smart bit of timing. Johnson had spent the monologue making fun of the public nature of her relationships, then Swift — arguably the most scrutinized romantic storyteller in pop culture — appeared to reinforce the idea that Johnson is surrounded by friends who can take the melodrama and make it funny.
Swift has now appeared on SNL nine times: four times as a musical guest, once as host, and four times in cameos. Her latest appearance came with an especially built-in connection to Johnson, who stars alongside Colin Farrell in Swift’s music video for “Patient Zero,” a project Swift directed and co-starred in.
The video premiered during the MTV Video Music Awards the previous Sunday and follows Johnson and Farrell as an upper-class couple whose marriage appears to be collapsing. In other words, Johnson’s weekend already involved a Swift-directed relationship breakdown onscreen. By Saturday, she was joking about relationship breakdowns in front of Swift, with Swift playing the friend who had apparently heard every detail.
The real winner was the friendship bit
Celebrity cameos on SNL can sometimes feel like a famous person briefly wandering into the frame to prove they were in New York. This one had an actual comic engine. Johnson supplied the self-deprecation; Swift supplied the deadpan authority of someone who had allegedly been called over too many times to count.
It also gave Swift a chance to be mischievous without making the evening about herself. She did not hijack the monologue with a performance or a big announcement. She played the friend with the couch, the Pedialyte and the firm bedtime boundary — a woman who has mastered the art of saying “Damn, that’s crazy” while quietly summoning a car.
And then she brought cake.
For Johnson, it was a birthday celebration wrapped inside a dating joke wrapped inside a pop-culture event. For Swift, it was another reminder that her cameos work best when they feel less like appearances and more like social evidence of where she is comfortable spending her Saturday night.
Whether Johnson’s Cleveland line was simply a Cleveland line or a wink at the latest rumor, the audience got the answer it actually wanted: Dakota Johnson and Taylor Swift have excellent comedic chemistry, Swift knows how to enter a room, and somewhere in America a celebrity friendship group is probably still debating who gets the couch after midnight.
Drew Starkey and Cailee Spaeny Just Turned Their Movie Romance Into a Very Real Hand-Holding Situation
The Outer Banks heartthrob and Priscilla breakout have moved from London whispers to an unmistakably couple-coded Los Angeles stroll.
Hollywood has apparently decided that the best way to announce a new relationship is still the oldest one in the book: walk down the street holding hands and let everyone else do the screaming.
Drew Starkey and Cailee Spaeny have done exactly that. The Outer Banks alum and the Priscilla actress were photographed strolling through Los Angeles on Oct. 1, fingers linked, chatting closely and serving the kind of low-key public affection that says, “We are not making a statement, but we are also not hiding.”
Starkey, 32, kept things deliberately off-duty in a flannel shirt and baseball cap. Spaeny, 28, wore a long skirt with a long-sleeved black top. No coordinated red-carpet theatrics, no performative kiss for the cameras, no matching leather jackets announcing a new celebrity power couple. Just a handhold, a conversation and the sudden collapse of everyone’s carefully maintained “they’re probably just friends” theory.
The soft launch has officially left the group chat
The pair first sparked dating speculation in September, when fans spotted them together in London. That sighting landed seven months after they began working on Deep Cuts, an upcoming adaptation of Holly Brickley’s 2025 novel.
In the film, Starkey and Spaeny play two music-obsessed twentysomethings navigating ambition, belonging and adulthood during the 2000s. According to Deadline, it is a love story set against an era-defining decade, which means the movie already had built-in romantic tension before the actors were seen wandering around London together.
Now the offscreen version has supplied its own plot development. The Los Angeles outing does not come with a dramatic caption or a magazine-cover declaration, but the visual is doing plenty of talking. Hand-holding is the celebrity equivalent of changing your relationship status without touching the settings menu: simple, unmistakable and guaranteed to send the internet into forensic mode.
It is also a particularly elegant move for two actors who have kept their personal lives relatively quiet. Starkey has previously said that communication matters in a relationship, telling Elle in 2024, “Vocalize it. I’m generally a very quiet person.” On this occasion, he may not have been especially vocal, but the public stroll was eloquent enough.
Both stars arrive with their own rumor history
Before Spaeny, Starkey was linked to his Hellraiser costar Odessa A’zion. The two never confirmed whether they were anything more than friends, leaving that chapter in the familiar celebrity category of “the chemistry was visible, the label was not.”
Spaeny has had her own share of internet-fueled romantic speculation. She dated The Idea of You actor Raymond Cham Jr. for two years. She was also thought to be involved with her Priscilla costar Jacob Elordi after fans noticed that he had a karaoke photo of the pair as his phone background.
Spaeny shut that one down herself during a December appearance on Today, explaining that Elordi had come to London and they celebrated with karaoke. She joked that they were probably singing Shakira, then clarified that they were celebrating his work and said she was proud of him. It was a very modern celebrity clarification: warm, funny and just specific enough to keep a harmless rumor from growing legs.
That earlier episode makes the Starkey situation feel notably different. A karaoke photo can inspire a thousand theories. A Los Angeles walk with intertwined hands is a much more legible piece of public behavior. Neither actor has issued a formal announcement, but they also appear to have no interest in pretending the public is imagining the obvious.
Hollywood’s favorite workplace romance gets a 2000s soundtrack
There is an especially neat bit of symmetry to Starkey and Spaeny finding each other while making a movie about young people falling in love amid the mess of adulthood. Actors meeting on set is one of the oldest stories in the Hollywood handbook, but it remains irresistible because the workplace itself is already a pressure cooker: long days, heightened emotions, travel, intense scenes and the strange intimacy of building a shared fictional world.
The genre has produced everything from durable private partnerships to spectacular public implosions. E! News points to famous examples including Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes, who met while making The Place Beyond the Pines; Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton, who connected on The Voice; and Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, who met while playing love interests on All My Children. There are also the particularly cinematic cases: Kit Harington and Rose Leslie falling for each other on Game of Thrones, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys becoming a real-life couple while playing married spies on The Americans, and Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly turning a movie set into the launchpad for a famously intense romance.
Starkey and Spaeny’s version is currently much quieter. There are no matching tattoos, no dramatic declarations and no red-carpet debut to analyze frame by frame. Their public rollout is all understated chemistry: London sightings, a film with an explicitly romantic premise and now a very casual hand-in-hand walk through Los Angeles.
That restraint is part of the appeal. In an era when celebrity couples can arrive fully packaged with a joint campaign, a podcast episode and coordinated paparazzi choreography, Starkey and Spaeny have offered something almost retro. They were seen together, they looked comfortable, and the rest of us were left to notice.
For now, Deep Cuts has two storylines to sell: the one coming to the screen and the one quietly taking shape between its stars. The first is about music-obsessed twentysomethings navigating ambition and belonging. The second is about two recognizable actors taking a walk and making a very convincing case that sometimes the soft launch is simply a hand in yours.