Peter Michael McCartney BEM (born 7 January 1944),[1] known professionally as Mike McGear, is an English performing artist and photographer who was a member of the groups the Scaffold and Grimms.

[2][3] Michael was not enrolled in a Catholic school because his father, Jim McCartney, believed that they leaned too much towards religion instead of education.

[4] At the time the Beatles became successful, Mike McCartney was working as an apprentice at a ladies’ hairdresser,[5] where the staff included future actor Lewis Collins and budding comedian Jimmy Tarbuck.

[6] Simultaneously, he was a member of the Liverpool comedy-poetry-music group The Scaffold (along with Roger McGough and John Gorman).

[6] In the 1980s, after retiring from music, Mike McCartney decided to end his use of the "McGear" pseudonym and revert to using his family name.

[11] The McCartney brothers also have a sister named Ruth whom their father Jim adopted in 1964 when he married her mother, Angela Williams.

Mike McCartney married Angela Fishwick on 7 June 1968[12] and they had three daughters: Benna, Theran, and Abigail Faith; they later divorced.

[13] In 2019, McCartney was awarded the British Empire Medal in the Queen's Birthday Honours for "services to the community in Merseyside".