Leaked papers and accusations of assault are the latest bitter blows between Heather Mills and Paul McCartney, writes Róisín Ingle
Next time an ambitious and attractive young woman is contemplating getting hitched to a man worth around €600 million she might be as well to do a quick flick through this week's leaked divorce papers of Heather Mills McCartney.
According to the 38-year-old anti-fur campaigner, if the Beatle wasn't pouring wine over his wife's head, he was lunging at her with a broken wine glass or insisting, the cad, that she cook his dinner every night. As Mills tells it, life with Macca was far from fab.
Trawling through Mills's account of the disintegration of her marriage to McCartney, anyone with a messy break-up behind them will have shuddered with recognition. Admittedly, most break-ups don't include accusations that the husband refused to purchase an antique bedpan, forcing his amputee wife to crawl to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Or that the husband tried to choke the wife because she was moaning after negative comments were made about her on the Barbara Walters show.
But essentially the leaked accusations were made up of the kind of unedifying relationship minutiae, real or imagined, that if pressed most of us could muster in our most bitter post-break-up hours. With millions at stake in the divorce settlement, Mills was never going to hold back.
For Beatles fans the litany of cruel and unusual behaviour listed by Mills in the 13-page document has been hard to take. Even adopting an objective, Macca-neutral position, some of her claims raise questions.
Mills claims McCartney was repeatedly callous about her disability. On one occasion she says his failure to secure a wheelchair accessible aircraft meant she had to crawl up the steps of an aircraft on her hands and knees. (Were there no staff around who could have helped?) She says that he drank to excess and smoked marijuana against her wishes. (Does this say more about her controlling attitude than McCartney's neglect?) She alleges he discouraged her from breastfeeding their daughter Beatrice and that at one point the music legend was heard to justify his position declaring; "They are my breasts" or "I don't want a mouthful of breast milk". (If true - it can't be true, can it? - this last comment doesn't bear thinking about.)
It is thought there are around four pages missing from the papers which were leaked first to two wire news agencies that declined to publish them and then to a tabloid which jumped at the chance. Four more pages of slights remembered, exaggerated and rehashed.
Anecdotes such as this one: "The Respondent often needs to go to the bathroom during the night, when her prosthetic limb is not fitted, and so has to crawl to the bathroom on her hands and knees. This causes callouses and scrapes on her knees. She asked the Petitioner if she could buy an antique bedpan to keep under the bed and use at night if necessary (whilst he was asleep) so as to avoid her having to struggle. The Petitioner objected vociferously, saying that it would be like being in 'an old woman's home'."
Up to now McCartney's public image has been that of music legend, loving husband to the late Linda McCartney and latterly hapless victim of gold-digging Mills. Fans don't want to think of Macca as the insensitive, drunken and possessive man Mills portrays in her response to his divorce petition filed earlier this year.
It's widely believed the secret of the success of McCartney's marriage to Linda was that his vegetarian wife played a traditional role. They never spent more than one night apart compared to Mills, whose charity work often took her around the world without her husband.
By all accounts Linda stepped happily into the role of home-maker while Mills, because of her work and disability, relied more on domestic staff. Reading between the bitter lines it could be concluded that Mills, who has her own website and a busy career, wasn't happy to play stay-at-home wifey to her mega-star husband. Only the couple themselves really know how this tension played out in their relationship.
For now though, it's her word against his. A legal spokesperson for McCartney commented that while his client would like to reply in detail to the allegations, including the damaging claims that he physically assaulted her on four separate occasions, he feels that the only appropriate forum for such a response is the private divorce proceedings. It was a dignified response from a man who behind closed doors must be furious about how after a lifetime of successfully protecting the most intimate aspects of his private life, his moral integrity is being questioned by his soon-to-be ex-wife.
