Macca pats One Direction on the head; pats Noel on head for good measure

Well played, Paul McCartney. Obviously, he wouldn't want to snort derisively when a lightweight act gets garlanded with "the new Beatles" honours, because that would look snooty. So look how he managed to make 'like The Beatles? I don't think so' sound as if it was warm-hearted advice when on Daybreak:

“There are so many bands who all get called ‘the next Beatles’.

“Suddenly it puts an awful lot of pressure on them to be the next Beatles.”

“Oasis were ‘the next Beatles’ once if you remember. It’s a pressure, because suddenly you’ve got to live up to all the things that we did and it was a different time.

“So let’s just call them ‘the next terrific band’.”

You do wonder how long McCartney has been waiting for an opportunity to point out that all those people who called Oasis a modern Beatles were spectacularly wrong, don't you?