Paul McCartney has said he’s pretty sure The Beatles suffered from mental health at the peak of their career but felt uncomfortable talking about their problems.

During an interview with The Sunday Times Macca was asked if his former bandmates - Ring Starr and the late George Harrison and John Lennon, would make jokes about their mental illness conditions instead of addressing the matter head on.

Asked if the band suffered from mental health McCartney said: “Yes, I think so. But you talked about it through your songs.

“You know, John would. ‘Help! I need somebody,’ he wrote. And I thought, ‘Well, it’s just a song,’ but it turned out to be a cry for help.”

McCartney continued: “Same kind of thing happened with me, mainly after the break-up of the band. All of us went through periods when we weren’t as happy as we ought to be.

“Ringo had a major drinking problem. Now he’s Mr Sober of the Year! But you know there were a lot of things we had to work through, but you’re right — you didn’t talk about mental health.”

He said the band adjusted well to fame: “It was something really that, as four guys, you were more likely to make fun of than be serious about. And the making fun of it was to hide from it.

“But having said all that, we were reasonably well adjusted, I think.”

Paul McCartney has recently releases his new album McCartney III on December 18.