Sir Paul Mccartney - Mccartney Thankful For Renewed Lennon Friendship

The Imagine legend was shot dead by crazed fan Mark Chapman outside his New York home on 8 December, 1980.

MCCartney was in New York on Wednesday (08Dec10) to mark the 30th anniversary of his Beatles bandmate's death in his own personal way, and he insists he is still baffled by the tragedy.

He tells U.S. talk show host Jimmy Fallon, "What can you say, you know, it's just so senseless. A phrase kept going in my head about the guy who killed him: Jerk of all jerks. Because you know, it's just like... I think I was deranged. It was just so, so sad because we thought John would be around forever, we'd hang."

But MCCartney is thankful for one thing - making the effort to rebuild the close friendship they had shared during their youth in the months before Lennon's passing.

The pair was estranged for years following the bitter break-up of The Beatles in 1970, and MCCartney admits they bonded again over their love for their kids - and bread.

He says, "I think the nice thing about it though, was that we got our friendship back together.

"I think it'd have been really difficult because you know, we'd fought, we'd broke up, we had a lot of business problems, but since then, that point we'd started to chat on the phone.

"We'd chat about how to make bread! Just ordinary stuff, you know. He'd had a baby by then, he'd had Sean, so we could talk babies and family and bread and stuff. So that made it a little bit easier, the fact that we were buddies (when he died)."