John Lennon used to be insecure about wearing glasses, according to Sir Paul McCartney.

The 81-year-old music legend shot to fame alongside the late John – who was shot dead at the age of 40 in 1980 – as part of rock group The Beatles in the 1960s but revealed that his bandmate used to have “horn-rimmed glasses” that made him look like boy wizard Harry Potter and would only ever keep them on for fellow musician Buddy Holly.

Speaking on Radio 2, he said: “John had these horn-rimmed glasses at the time and if ever there would be a girl coming round John would whip his glasses off and put them in his pocket and squint as she went by.

‘And I would say, you look pretty good, the glasses are good, no, but when Buddy came along the glasses stayed on…

‘It was like Harry Potter with all the kids.”

Paul added that Buddy – who was killed in a plane crash in 1959 at the age of just 22 – had been “amazing” for the band for several reasons, noting that as a “one-man band” he served as the inspiration for himself and John, along with Ringo Starr and George Harrison, to go forward in the world of music in the way that they did.

He said:”Buddy Holly to us was amazing for a number of reasons.

“On a musical level he sang and played guitar, Elvis just sang and Scotty Moore played guitar ‘He not only played guitar, he played the solos. Normally if you played guitar there was another guy in the group who was the lead guitar who played the solos, but Buddy sang, played guitar and played the solos.

“He also wrote the stuff. So this was like an all-inclusive one-man band and we really thought that was great. We thought this is what we have to do.”