Better late than never. Paul McCartney recently had a chance to respond to a taped message from a pair of impassioned Beatles fans -- 50 years after it was originally recorded.

The BBC reports that the tape, mailed to a London theater where the Beatles were playing in 1963, contained a greeting from then-teenaged fans Barbara Bezant and Lyn Phillips, who told the band, "This dream is just to come round the back and see you, but I don't suppose that'll ever happen. But we can always live in hope, can't we?"

Unsurprisingly, the Beatles didn't respond at the time, but the tape's trip through the U.K. postal service was just the beginning of a long and apparently fairly bizarre journey, which ended when it somehow turned up at a flea market. The buyer, described as a local historian named David McDermott, told the BBC that he was stunned by what he heard. "It was like sitting in a bubble and being there when these two girls were making this tape," he recalled. "The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and it made me wonder if these two were still with us."

From there, it ended up in the hands of a segment producer at the BBC's 'The One Show,' at which point the ladies were tracked down -- and McCartney finally had a chance to reply. "Hi Linda and Barbara, thanks very much for you lovely tape. It finally got through, better late than never," he wrote in a note presented to Bezant and Phillips on the show. "Great to hear that you found each other after all these years. Keep enjoying the music. Love, Paul."

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