Much derided for his soppy post-Beatles musical output, which has included Frog Chorus, Silly Love Songs and Rupert Song (about the popular British comic strip bear), Paul McCartney has remained stoically prolific - and his disc sales speak louder than critics.

But whereas Britain's music press made light of his solo and Wings work of the 1970s and 80s - Sounds declaring him Old Fart of the Year in 1976 - New Musical Express hailed Macca's set at last year's Glastonbury as the highlight of the music festival.

Biographer Christopher Sandford is big on positive spin for McCartney, with nothing more negative than the occasional reference to a little tightfistedness and the odd lapse in his famously even temper. Given Sandford's long career writing biographies of musicians, it's perhaps surprising he didn't interview McCartney for this book. Especially since information about the ex-Beatle's recent dance-oriented musical experiments and fine art works is a bit patchy.

However, Sandford's knowledge of his subject is impressive. Almost half the 400 pages is dedicated to the Beatles - from McCartney and John Lennon's first musical forays to the band's messy split and subsequent album and film releases. That there's scant mention of McCartney's personal life in this early period grates a little - almost nothing is made of the birth of his first daughter Mary, or his relationships with his son James, step-daughter Heather and brother Michael. There's fair reflection, though, on his late first wife, Linda, and his second wife, Heather.

The Beatles years were so packed with tours, studio work and extra-curricular debauchery that Sandford moves along with simplified, almost newspaper-style reporting much of the time. However, unlike newspapers, he regularly omits to remind us of the date of an occurrence, so reading is often interrupted by backward thumbing to discover which year we're in.

Colourful vignettes are here in scores. It seems clear that Macca's upbringing was closer to Lennon's Working Class Hero than the latter fancied his to have been. His musically inclined father, Jim, debated the use of 'yeah' over 'yes' when McCartney and Lennon (aged 21 and 22, respectively) first presented She Loves You in the McCartney family's terraced house. Songs were whipped up in minutes by the pair, often quite literally during the duration of a bus ride.

Despite the clean-living, 'cute Beatle' image McCartney projected, Sandford makes no bones about him being the randiest of the band, and the busiest with groupies. The British establishment only saw fit to knight him in 1997, several years after a series of personal-use drug busts - one of which saw him imprisoned in Tokyo, and his Wings tour cancelled.

There have been many books about the Liverpool foursome, not to mention McCartney biographies. But for those not familiar with the other titles or readers looking for an accessible and interesting account of one of the world's enduring personalities, if not musical forces, it's hard not to get sucked into this biography, notwithstanding a little rose-tinted gloss.