‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’: The Forgotten Cult Classic Behind Park Village’s Founder

Image credit: Richard Blanshard

There’s a certain charm to revisiting an ambitious creative experiment, especially when it was born from the mind of a Beatle and directed by the man who would go on to found one of London’s most respected production companies.

Let’s talk about ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’, the 1984 cult musical feature written by and starring Paul McCartney, and directed by none other than Peter Webb, founder of Park Village.

It’s a film that divides a room faster than a Marmite sandwich. Equal parts vanity project, music video collage, and surreal dreamscape, Broad Street remains one of those rare cinematic curiosities that’s both fascinating and flawed in equal measure. And as someone who now works at Park Village, for Peter’s sons Tom and Jack Webb… but was a fan of the film long before I ever walked through the studio doors, that connection feels like a remarkable creative coincidence.

The Beatle and the Director

By all accounts, making ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’ was chaos dressed as collaboration. Paul was in full creative control, writing, starring, scoring, and shaping every scene. Peter Webb, a brilliant photographer and commercial director with a knack for visual storytelling, was tasked with bringing this fever dream to life.

Having now worked at Park Village for a year, I’ve heard a few first-hand tales of that production, including the late-night phone calls. According to Tom and Jack, their dad would be woken up in the middle of the night by Paul McCartney ringing with new “ideas.” No emails, no texts, just landline to landline, Paul talking, Webb taking notes in a half-daze while his family tried to sleep.

The result? A film without a traditional script, arc, or logic. The story, such as it is, follows Paul as he searches London for missing master tapes. It’s more of a mood piece than a movie, a collection of musical set-pieces held together by charm, ego, and some genuinely beautiful cinematography.

A Beautiful, Baffling Relic of Its Time

With a reported budget of around £9 million, Broad Street had everything: Paul , Ringo Starr, high-gloss visuals, and a soundtrack that still stands as one of Paul's strongest solo works. Yet, for all its ambition, it’s gloriously strange.

I still remember the first time I watched it. At one point I stood up, pointed at the screen, and said, “Wait… is that it?” But once you accept it for what it is, a vanity-fuelled dream sequence stitched together with fantastic music videos, it becomes strangely hypnotic.
The car chase sequence, where Paul speeds across the countryside to a recording studio, still looks cool today. It has that Yellow Submarine surrealism, a hint of pop-art playfulness, and flashes of pure visual brilliance that show Webb’s commercial sensibilities.

Of course, audiences in 1984 weren’t quite ready for it. The film’s saving grace at the box office was Rupert and the Frog Song, the animated short that played after Broad Street. Many stayed in their seats just to see Rupert sing “We All Stand Together”, a slice of nostalgia that arguably upstaged the main feature.

A Forgotten Chapter in Park Village History

These days, ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’ has largely vanished, living on only in YouTube clips and the occasional late-night screening. Park Village, meanwhile, has flourished, producing award-winning work across film, advertising, and music videos. It’s funny to think that Peter Webb’s only feature film — a surreal Beatle odyssey — sits quietly in the background of that legacy.

There’s even a tie-in computer game, released on the Atari and, bizarrely, the plot works far better in eight-bit form than it ever did on screen.

Still, for all its chaos, Broad Street deserves its place among those gloriously indulgent artist-led projects of the 1980s, alongside Moonwalker and Purple Rain. It’s a time capsule of creative hubris and pop-culture magic, proof of what happens when musicians are given the keys to the studio, the camera, and the budget.

A Film Worth Remembering

For me, ‘Give My Regards to Broad Street’ is more than a cult curiosity. It’s a reminder that great creative risks often come wrapped in chaos, and that behind even the strangest projects lies a spark of brilliance.

Peter Webb’s film might not have changed cinema, but it did capture something uniquely British: ambition, imagination, and a touch of beautiful madness. And for those of us at Park Village, it’s a story worth remembering, a reminder that creativity never really dies.