Paul McCartney has revealed that he’s been learning to play the mandolin and it’s made him remember the thrill of creating music for the first time.

He told Uncut magazine: “I bought a mandolin. It isn’t tuned like a guitar so I didn’t know my way around it. But the feeling of picking my way through and finding chords was magic. It was like I was 17 again.”

“I remembered - this is what it is all about. It was like me and John [Lennon] learning piano. You play and then you hit a wrong note and you go ‘ooohh!’ And you write a whole song on that chord.”

“The excitement of getting the mandolin, finding new chords - that’s really lifted me, that has.”

Paul plays the instrument on his new album which will be released in June.