Zing Tsjeng

speaker

5,900 appearances 22 recordings 9 series first heard May 2026 last heard yesterday

Zing Tsjeng’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 22 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 11.

Appearances

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Good Bad Billionaire · Sir Paul McCartney: The rich one - Live at Crossed Wires · 20 Jul 2026 podcast

In the 1920s, led sing-alongs at family gatherings, often of his own compositions, which was pretty unusual in those days.

He even wired headphones through the floorboards so Paul and his younger brother Mike could listen to the radio when they bent to bed tonight.

But his own musical career got off to a bit of a shaky start.

He got turned down by the Boy's Choir at Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral when he was 11 years old, and he was rejected because he couldn't read music.

He never did learn to read music.

Interesting.

So he swapped a trumpet, he'd been given that birthday, for a Zenith acoustic guitar with a sunburnt finish, which cost 15 quid.

Soon he was using it not just to play songs, but crucially, of course, for this story, to write them.

Yes, he famously went to see John Lennon's skiffle group, the Quarrymen.

So soon, Paul and John were writing music together.

And then in 1958, John's mother was hit by a car and killed.

And that tragedy, in a way, mutual tragedy, kind of a bonding thing between them.

Determined, resilient.

And I think some of that, you know, what we've seen as a pattern is that, you know, early adversity sometimes get determination, resilience, ability to bounce back after knocks.

You know, everything doesn't go your way.

You keep trying.

I think those are some of the qualities we've come across.

And eventually they stumbled on a name that stuck.

So the Silver Beatles was two Es.

They changed the second E to an A, beat, of course.

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