THE FINAL STRAW for this Macca fan came a couple of months ago, with a review in Q magazine of Glass Onion, an album of Beatles cover versions. It was just a little thing, no big deal — the review, that is, the album was somewhat fab — but at the end the reviewer pointed out that one of the advantages to buying the record was that you wouldn’t have to listen to Paul McCartney sing.

Come again? The most habitually derided of all the Beatles may have his faults, but no one else has ever said, to my knowledge, that he can’t sing. You may as well say he can’t play bass guitar, or write songs that taught the world to sing in imperfect harmony.

But that’s where McCartney is these days — in this country, at any rate. A thumbs aloft, arched-eyebrow, wide-open target for any bottom-feeding, knuckle-dragging, drooling excuse for a popular music reviewer to have a go at.

It’s no coincidence that America can’t get enough of him and his famous tunes, especially after 9/11, when it seemed that all they wanted to do was hold up lighters and sing along to The Long and Winding Road (besides busting a cap off Osama’s head, of course). They love successes, and McCartney is success squared, and has been for 40 years.

Britain, on the other hand, is full of people worrying that admitting to liking his stuff is only one step up from admitting to being a paediatrician. What leaves the mouth as “I like Paul McCartney” somehow arrives at the listener’s ears as “I think that Mull of Kintyre or Mary Had a Little Lamb are wonderful and I play them all the time”, the style police are called in and the unfortunate speaker gets a good kicking.

He doesn’t help himself, of course. McCartney is his own tall poppy, and he cuts himself down regularly. Surely he can’t wake up every morning and think: “What can I do today that will make people point and laugh at me?” But how else can you explain the paintings (Linda liked them, so the whole world might too) and the poetry (ditto)? Why can’t he be cool? Why can’t he be ... well, John Lennon, really, only alive?

The sad thing is that he’d obviously love to. If the wish fairy could grant his, it could well be: “Make me as important to other people as John is.”

He forgets the bad bits about John, just as the rest of us have, as we rush to deify Lennon and name our children after him. He forgets, too, that in the things that should really matter to him —- the song-writing bit, rather than the “icon for a generation” bit — he has nothing to apologise for, or attempt to cover up, or even trumpet in that desperately uncool way of his. What he has done, and could still do again, is staggering. But then we all know that, don’t we — even if the style mafia have a contract out on him.

The problem is that by dying young, and going the way he did, Lennon removed himself from all criticism. No matter that much of his solo work was poor. His last album, Double Fantasy, was a bit of a stiff until its success was ensured by his becoming one too. The godawful Imagine stopped being something Lennon might have nightmares about after too much cheese and became an anthem, voted the finest song in pop music, ever, if you didn’t count Bo Rhap.

So strip away the prejudice, ignore the image nazis and face it — if you were to put McCartney’s best stuff in one cup of a scales and Lennon’s best in the other McCartney’s would be the heavier. Even lyrically, Lennon’s trump card, he could almost hold his own. Yes, Lennon wrote Help!, Strawberry Fields Forever, I am the Walrus and In My Life, but McCartney can point to For No One, Eleanor Rigby and Penny Lane. Oh, and Why Don’t We Do it in The Road, of course, which Lennon thought was particularly fine.

Musically, there’s no comparison. Lennon’s genius lay in doing the simple things well, and having the complicated things in his head for other people to do for him. McCartney’s genius has never stood still, as he searches for new notes to play, and new ways to play them.

Actually, I don’t know why we’re bothering to argue the toss on this. According to my daughter’s guitar teacher, the real genius in the Beatles was George.

Who wins your vote? Lennon or McCartney? Send your e-mails to debate@thetimes.co.uk