The Total Downfall Of Heather Mills (Full Documentary)
How did a glamorous model and charity campaigner with only one leg become so hated, hacked & hounded?
In this shocking full documentary we endeavour to find out the answer. Heather Mills extraordinary life makes for one hell of a story, from a murky past with a tough childhood, to a life-changing injury, to the global fame of marrying a Beatles icon and becoming Mrs. Paul McCartney. From the scandalous split and all the drama in the divorce court to the vindication at the Leveson phone hacking inquiry. Her story is one you just couldn't make up and takes us on a rip-roaring ride through Britain in the 1990s and 2000s – and the excesses of tabloid culture, but what made Heather a perfect person for the tabloids to pick apart, and did she deserve it?
We'll explore her story through a modern lens and look at why the media turned against her. would it happen today? this film, will unpack the real story, with all its ups and downs, and try to find the real Heather Mills.
In this shocking full documentary we endeavour to find out the answer. Heather Mills extraordinary life makes for one hell of a story, from a murky past with a tough childhood, to a life-changing injury, to the global fame of marrying a Beatles icon and becoming Mrs. Paul McCartney. From the scandalous split and all the drama in the divorce court to the vindication at the Leveson phone hacking inquiry. Her story is one you just couldn't make up and takes us on a rip-roaring ride through Britain in the 1990s and 2000s – and the excesses of tabloid culture, but what made Heather a perfect person for the tabloids to pick apart, and did she deserve it?
We'll explore her story through a modern lens and look at why the media turned against her. would it happen today? this film, will unpack the real story, with all its ups and downs, and try to find the real Heather Mills.
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TVTranscript
00:00:00Heather Mills, she did become public enemy number one.
00:00:05There's a whole litany of things that you just go, wow.
00:00:10You could not have made Heather Mills up at that time.
00:00:13She wasn't nice and quiet and compliant.
00:00:16She wasn't at all apologetic.
00:00:19I'm never going to be Mrs. Switzerland.
00:00:21The fact that she called all these journalists round,
00:00:24that was when she made the pact with the devil.
00:00:26I've always lived my life to the full.
00:00:28That's what I can say and I always will.
00:00:30She, through fierce ambition, was always going to be somebody.
00:00:35Paul McCartney is a big deal.
00:00:37He's as famous in Tokyo as he is in London.
00:00:40The press started suggesting she was a gold digger,
00:00:44which was completely unfair because he did the chasing.
00:00:48I was there when he did the chasing.
00:00:51Somebody was going against our national icon
00:00:55and when that happens, everyone gets very angry.
00:00:59She was up against the establishment.
00:01:01She was fighting a fight.
00:01:03Stalked by the paparazzi, vilified by columnists,
00:01:06the former model says she's had enough.
00:01:09She was like a sort of animal being hunted.
00:01:11The problem was she kept making it worse.
00:01:14I won't go into all the horrific details of what has happened.
00:01:18What had she done wrong? What was her crime?
00:01:23Heather Mills flew too close to the sun and got herself badly burned.
00:01:442007.
00:01:46Heather Mills is in the eye of a media storm.
00:01:49The former Beatle could hand over up to £70 million.
00:01:53Details of the couple's volatile relationship
00:01:56have been splashed on the front pages
00:01:58since they split last May after four years of marriage.
00:02:01In the wake of Heather's split from Paul,
00:02:05there was a huge slew of unfavourable headlines.
00:02:08She was branded Lady Mucker by one tabloid newspaper.
00:02:12So this was pretty ribald, full-on stuff.
00:02:17She did become public enemy number one.
00:02:21The sorts of adjectives levelled at her.
00:02:24She was accused of being a whore and a cheat and a liar
00:02:28and a fiend and the devil and all this kind of thing.
00:02:31It was massively and wholly out of proportion.
00:02:34Some people vehemently despised her.
00:02:37She was pulled apart, torn apart by journalists, in the press.
00:02:40She was cancelled.
00:02:42She was in the butt of the joke on comedic TV shows.
00:02:45There was a clip on 8 Out Of 10 Cats
00:02:48where they were talking about Heather's disability.
00:02:53That just would not be allowed to go out in this day and age.
00:02:56This would never have happened to the Stones.
00:02:59None of the Stones would have ever married a one-legged nutter.
00:03:06In the autumn of 2007, following months of bad press,
00:03:11Heather decided to speak out.
00:03:15She rang up GMTV herself and said, I'm coming on the show.
00:03:19Her publicist at the time rightly said, keep your head down,
00:03:22and she refused to follow that advice.
00:03:26A seismic moment in the wake of Heather's break-up with Paul.
00:03:32She made a very emotional, borderline incoherent appearance on GMTV.
00:03:38She now makes for very uncomfortable viewing, actually,
00:03:41where she has a sort of public meltdown.
00:03:46Heather Mills is in the studio at her own request,
00:03:49because you've had enough, haven't you, really?
00:03:51I've had enough.
00:03:52I'm being pushed to the edge.
00:03:54Are you really the way you are on the edge?
00:03:5618 months of abuse, worse than a murderer and a paedophile.
00:03:594,400 abusive articles.
00:04:02I've had worse press than a paedophile or a murderer,
00:04:07and I've done nothing but charity for 20 years.
00:04:11I've had six amputee girls crying their eyes out
00:04:15because they're getting bullied at school
00:04:17because people are joking about the loss of my limb.
00:04:20Jonathan Ross... Oh, I remember that one.
00:04:22..says she's such an effing liar,
00:04:24we're going to find out she's got two legs instead of one.
00:04:26Obviously, it was irresistible television to watch,
00:04:29because it's not often that you see someone
00:04:31authentically unravelling right on telly,
00:04:33because she was at that incredibly fragile stage
00:04:36where everything is just too much
00:04:38and it's all cascading all over you.
00:04:44She becomes this hysterical figure,
00:04:47so the whole thing sort of spirals out of her control.
00:04:51Her hurt showed,
00:04:53but it showed by her becoming sort of loud and defensive,
00:04:57and that sort of indignation came across as petulance, I suppose,
00:05:01which just alienated people even more, I think.
00:05:04Look what they're doing to the McCanns!
00:05:06The woman has lost and the poor father have lost their daughter!
00:05:10What did the paparazzi do to Diana?
00:05:12They chased her and they killed her.
00:05:14They will go for me tomorrow and they'll go,
00:05:16she's crazy and she's this and she's that.
00:05:18Go for it, because I will do even more.
00:05:23She was a very angry woman
00:05:25and the angle seemed to be somehow directed at the press,
00:05:28although she'd used the press for her own ends for years.
00:05:33I mean, Breakfast TV, when Heather Mills did that interview,
00:05:37attracted a big audience of, let's say, 5 million viewers,
00:05:41which is substantial, and it made big news.
00:05:46Going on, just complaining about the media, on the media,
00:05:49and using the vehicle of the media to complain about the media,
00:05:53it doesn't sit well, and the media will act as a pack.
00:05:56They really, really will act in unity.
00:05:59Her very nature was as a fighter.
00:06:02She kept saying, I'm a fighter, I'll fight to the death.
00:06:05And this is the problem, when you have someone who is a fighter,
00:06:09they sometimes get it wrong.
00:06:30Heather Mills burst into my consciousness at the same time, really,
00:06:34as she suddenly arrived in everybody else's,
00:06:36which was she'd had this tragic, tragic occurrence,
00:06:39that she'd lost a limb, nothing to do with her, absolutely not her fault.
00:06:47She had this dreadful accident while crossing the road.
00:06:50She was hit by a police motorcycle.
00:06:52Her leg was just about severed on the spot, they couldn't save it.
00:06:57She was out of it for a few days,
00:06:59and her sister had to tell her when she woke up that she'd lost her leg.
00:07:05Fiona was the younger sister.
00:07:07They were very, very close, and she was very supportive of Heather.
00:07:14It took several days before the impact of losing her leg,
00:07:19or the reality of losing her leg, sank in.
00:07:22And her career, obviously, people thought,
00:07:25you've lost your leg, that's the end of that, isn't this tragic?
00:07:29Because she'd been quite a successful model.
00:07:33She's not conventionally beautiful, but she had the height, the assets,
00:07:37she had the self-confidence to get herself into a model agency
00:07:42and to go for it.
00:07:44So you suddenly had a sort of tabloid moment,
00:07:47a very beautiful blonde model going about her business,
00:07:50who'd been mown down by a police vehicle, and had nearly lost her life.
00:07:54It was a terrible, terrible accident.
00:07:57In the wake of that, everybody wanted Heather's story,
00:08:00everyone wanted to hear what had happened.
00:08:08Heather Mills knew the media market well enough
00:08:11to know that her story was of interest.
00:08:15She put it to the highest bidder,
00:08:17of which tabloid newspaper at that time, in the early 1990s,
00:08:20would get the story.
00:08:22It was quite a memorable moment where Heather was negotiating the rights
00:08:26for her story from her hospital bed.
00:08:28And I think, for better or for worse, that kind of set the tone.
00:08:34I don't think most people at that time,
00:08:37the sort of man or woman in the street,
00:08:39would have necessarily thought through their own misery
00:08:43that at least I've got to make what I can out of it.
00:08:46It's fairly smart, actually.
00:08:49It's all right, people saying,
00:08:51oh, yeah, you can definitely come and work for us when you come out,
00:08:54but at the end of the day, you know, they're not going to just give you a job
00:08:58just because they feel sorry for you, you've got to be right for it.
00:09:01It was very media savvy, very understanding,
00:09:03that almost because of what had happened was so awful for her,
00:09:07there was then a media interest in her.
00:09:10When something huge like this happens and you just can do nothing about it,
00:09:14you can only get better, you can't sort of say,
00:09:16oh, I'm going to make my leg look better, then you have to accept it.
00:09:20I've always lived my life to the full, that's what I can say, and I always will.
00:09:24She somehow made that injury, that loss of her leg,
00:09:28into an enormous opportunity for her.
00:09:31I know that it's been called exploitative
00:09:33that Heather sold her story to the papers when she had this accident,
00:09:37but if you look at Heather's background,
00:09:40this is quite common in people who have had quite traumatic histories,
00:09:44there is this very internal and very strong drive to survive.
00:09:57Heather Mills spent her formative years in and around Tyneside in the 1970s.
00:10:03She had a very dysfunctional family in terms of, you know,
00:10:07her father was abusive, her mother left home and ran off with an actor.
00:10:12Their father told them, your mother's gone,
00:10:15and basically her name was barely mentioned again.
00:10:20I think it would have a tremendous impact on a nine-year-old
00:10:23to lose your mother like that.
00:10:25I mean, it's like having a death without the body, really.
00:10:30Her father went to prison for fraud, and the family was split up.
00:10:34Two of the children went back to live with the mother and stepfather
00:10:37and didn't get on with the stepfather.
00:10:40The older brother went to live with his grandmother in Brighton,
00:10:43and the three children, who'd been very close
00:10:45because they'd been left alone so much
00:10:47and they'd looked after each other, were split up.
00:10:50It was a very unhappy time for Heather, and she had a lot to cope with.
00:10:54And you either sink under that sort of pressure,
00:10:57or you just grow resilient.
00:11:00You know, she was going to survive it one way or the other,
00:11:03and she survived through having self-confidence
00:11:06and knowing that she could survive on her own.
00:11:09This is the Royal National Orthopaedic Trust Hospital in Stanmore.
00:11:13In a few weeks, doctors here will be fitting me with my new leg.
00:11:16For now, Diane, my physio, is teaching me
00:11:19how to get used to only having one leg.
00:11:21Based on my wound at the moment,
00:11:23how long do you think it'll be before I can get a leg fitted?
00:11:26Well, the thing that's dictating it at the moment
00:11:28is obviously it's very swollen now,
00:11:30because, as you said, you've had a bash on it.
00:11:32So I think that that's probably going to be a few more weeks.
00:11:36Bring your weight over onto your left side,
00:11:38and stepping forwards and back.
00:11:40She coped by saying,
00:11:42I'm not going to follow the path people expect me to follow.
00:11:45I'm not going to be categorised, I'm going to overcome it.
00:11:48Losing a leg is not the end of the world.
00:11:51I'm going to show the world it isn't the end of the world.
00:11:54Any newspaper editor will tell you
00:11:56that the readers love nothing more than a triumph-over-tragedy story,
00:12:00and in the first instance, that's what Heather was, in spades.
00:12:03You know, she had been through this terrible thing,
00:12:06but she was determined not to be kowtowed or to be a victim.
00:12:10She wanted to sort of embrace the fact that this had happened
00:12:14and be a sort of positive influence on people.
00:12:17And be a sort of positive face for someone who'd had a life-changing injury.
00:12:21It didn't harm her case that she was also very good-looking as well.
00:12:26Now, everybody who knew about your accident
00:12:29really admired your fighting spirit.
00:12:31I just wondered, really, what sort of keeps you going?
00:12:34Everybody says that.
00:12:35I mean, I was just in a clinic that I came back from.
00:12:38There was people dying of cancer and God knows what,
00:12:41and they're all saying, oh, you know, the best thing that happened was meeting you.
00:12:44Everything's so positive.
00:12:45For me, it's hard to handle because things happen in your life
00:12:48and you just get on with it.
00:12:49Young Heather, interviewed by Lorraine Kelly,
00:12:52looks ambitious, trying to sort of ingratiate herself.
00:12:58She was the sort of person who was always willing to do an interview
00:13:01and pose for a picture and a photo opportunity.
00:13:05Heather Mills was not going to let a small matter,
00:13:08like a mere missing limb, hold her back at all.
00:13:10She was going to be sexy and beautiful.
00:13:13She was going to wear fabulous clothes.
00:13:15She was going to talk about her prosthetics openly.
00:13:19I mean, if you see it, you can take it off.
00:13:27Heather went on Michael Barrymore's chat show
00:13:30and surprised him and the audience by removing her left prosthetic leg.
00:13:34That's amazing.
00:13:35Put it back in again, and that's it, and you can do everything.
00:13:37I can roll him.
00:13:39It shows her to be bold and confident.
00:13:42One can still be an attractive, successful person
00:13:46and have a disability.
00:13:49That, in a way, rebranded sexiness for the whole country,
00:13:53that you could see that you did not have to be
00:13:56some kind of physically perfect, in inverted commas,
00:13:59specimen to be attractive.
00:14:01I've been invited here to the urosurgery conference
00:14:04to meet others like me
00:14:05who've refused to let their disability hold them back.
00:14:08Well, yeah, I mean, basically,
00:14:09I've got lots of different legs for different activities.
00:14:12John Mortimer is a water-skiing champion
00:14:14who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident.
00:14:17She started to do a bit of TV presenting.
00:14:20She got involved in charity work.
00:14:22She spoke quite openly
00:14:23about how she wanted to raise awareness for amputees.
00:14:26So, initially, there was certainly
00:14:28quite a lot of positivity around Heather,
00:14:31who seemed to be a kind of force for good.
00:14:35She was a good story for the tabloids to keep focusing on,
00:14:38and they did, they followed her career,
00:14:40they followed everything that she did
00:14:41with the charity work and so on.
00:14:43And she was quite a heroine.
00:14:49By 1995, Heather was ready to share her story
00:14:53in biography Out On A Limb.
00:14:56Part of the thing of being a ghostwriter
00:14:59is you have to be a sort of therapist
00:15:01and you have to have a relationship with people.
00:15:03They feel safe to tell you things
00:15:05that aren't necessarily going to go in the book.
00:15:07You understand them better
00:15:08because you know these things about them.
00:15:11Heather came up to Yorkshire
00:15:13and stayed with us on the farm.
00:15:15She got very involved with our life.
00:15:17She mucked in, she came shopping with me.
00:15:20She was very easy as a house guest.
00:15:23When she spoke to you, she really engaged with you.
00:15:26You didn't feel she was holding anything back.
00:15:28She gave you the impression
00:15:29of being very content in her own skin.
00:15:32The publicity around her suggests
00:15:34she's self-centred and the rest of it,
00:15:36but she actually really engages with other people.
00:15:39She's a very genuine person.
00:15:41I remember interviewing Heather Mills
00:15:43when the first edition of her book came out.
00:15:45She oozes this extraordinary self-belief.
00:15:49Very often when you interview women particularly,
00:15:52they start to tell you,
00:15:53God, I suffer from imposter syndrome,
00:15:55I never really feel I'm quite good enough for whatever.
00:15:58Not Heather Mills, not at all.
00:16:02She was an incredible, vivacious,
00:16:05kind of life-affirming, punchy, feisty personality.
00:16:09She's somebody who was grasping at life,
00:16:12somebody who was absolutely the embodiment of Carpe Diem.
00:16:16She was determined to become
00:16:18a high-profile person in some aspect,
00:16:21whether it's through charity campaigning,
00:16:23whether it was through becoming a TV and media celebrity.
00:16:27She, through fierce ambition,
00:16:29was always going to be somebody.
00:16:44The moment where things changed again for Heather
00:16:48came in 1999 at the Mirror's Pride of Britain Awards.
00:16:52Heather went along, in her capacity as a sort of campaigner
00:16:57and gave a very heartfelt, emotional speech.
00:17:04Imagine being here today
00:17:05and being unable to stand up and pay tribute to...
00:17:08She was unaware as she was making this speech
00:17:11that watching apparently transfixed
00:17:14was no less than Sir Paul McCartney.
00:17:19He was extremely struck by her, found out more about her,
00:17:23did some investigating, found out her phone number and rang her.
00:17:28So, yeah, he definitely made the first move.
00:17:31And probably the second and third too.
00:17:36Heather returned from a trip abroad
00:17:38to find a message on her answer phone saying,
00:17:41Hey, it's Paul McCartney,
00:17:42I'd like to meet to talk about your charitable work.
00:17:46And that was the start of it.
00:17:53I'm a biographer.
00:17:54I write biographies of famous people, Bob Dylan, etc.
00:17:57And in 2009, I was commissioned to write a new life of Sir Paul McCartney.
00:18:02Paul McCartney really aged in that year after Linda died.
00:18:06He looked like a man who'd been through something.
00:18:09And then he met this very attractive, sort of flirtatious woman,
00:18:14what, 26 years younger than him?
00:18:16And he was completely charmed by her.
00:18:18He just fell for her, you know, in a big, big way.
00:18:24I think it's important to remind people
00:18:26what a big figure in the world Paul McCartney is.
00:18:30I mean, he's one of the two leading songwriters
00:18:32of the biggest pop group ever.
00:18:35He's an international figure.
00:18:36He's as famous in Tokyo as he is in Buenos Aires,
00:18:39as he is in Seattle, as he is in London.
00:18:41You know, he's a big deal.
00:18:43A very powerful man in the music industry.
00:18:46I'm sure the minute she saw him, her eyes lit up.
00:18:49You know, this is my God, you know, this is the guy.
00:18:51This is the big chance.
00:18:53I think being wooed by Paul McCartney
00:18:56must have been absolutely wonderful.
00:18:58I mean, he's cultivated and intelligent and well-travelled
00:19:03and incredibly interesting and was obviously beguiled by her,
00:19:08and I think it must have been the most exciting, enchanting,
00:19:12romantic and wonderful period of her life.
00:19:15He was incredibly romantic and stupidly romantic.
00:19:20He did the chasing.
00:19:21I was there when he did the chasing.
00:19:25She did have some doubts about it
00:19:27because there was a big age difference.
00:19:29I remember that she'd said,
00:19:30I really don't know what to do because he is so much older
00:19:33and I really like him, but it's such a big difference
00:19:36and I really think he wants, you know,
00:19:39to make it more of a relationship than it is.
00:19:42And her sister Fiona said, Heather, you've got to, you've got to,
00:19:47because at least you can say you've slept with a beetle.
00:19:58Three months after they met,
00:19:59the couple came out to friends and family
00:20:02at Heather's 32nd birthday party.
00:20:04We went to a party and there were her old friends there,
00:20:08her sister, her brother, probably 40 or 50 people,
00:20:11and she whispered to me when I went in,
00:20:13there might be a special guest tonight.
00:20:15And I knew no more than that, and nobody did.
00:20:17There was nothing in the press.
00:20:19But halfway through the party,
00:20:21you could hear a helicopter land outside
00:20:23and in walks this man.
00:20:25I thought, that looks like Paul McCartney.
00:20:28It was clear they were an item.
00:20:30They were very affectionate to each other.
00:20:33They were both very happy.
00:20:35It was amazing, really, seeing Heather get to go.
00:20:38They were rock royalty.
00:20:39I was of the generation that had grown up with the Beatles,
00:20:44It was like meeting a god.
00:20:46I was definitely more in awe of him than Heather was, yes.
00:20:51I think it's safe to say that Paul McCartney
00:20:53and Heather Mills' relationship was a whirlwind.
00:20:56They went public in the early months of 2000.
00:21:00They'd been pictured together a couple of times.
00:21:02I think they both realised they had to confirm
00:21:05that they were together officially,
00:21:07in the way that one is expected to do in celebrity land.
00:21:10So they announced that they were together and in love.
00:21:13Their relationship made global news
00:21:16and was featured on prolific shows like Entertainment Tonight.
00:21:20Eventually, I realised I fancied him.
00:21:24You fancied him from the start.
00:21:26Well, I did fancy him from the start, but I was playing it cool.
00:21:29I got into the lift, oh, God,
00:21:31and sort of just felt these eyes in my back
00:21:34and the lift is round the corner.
00:21:36And I turned round and I saw him going,
00:21:38I thought he was eyeing up my bum.
00:21:42And I was.
00:21:43Heather, who also had a kind of media profile to some extent,
00:21:49she becomes suddenly a much, much more interesting person.
00:21:55So anyone who becomes personally involved with the Beatle
00:21:58is going to be of monumental interest to the media,
00:22:01particularly when that person has had dealings with the media before.
00:22:05What have you been doing?
00:22:07I'm not telling you.
00:22:11I'm a private person, so I'm not telling you.
00:22:13The press courted her. She was a darling at the time.
00:22:17And that might have lured her into this sort of sense of security
00:22:21with the press and with Paul.
00:22:24Heather made the mistake of thinking
00:22:26that her relationship with the press would be static,
00:22:29that having been loved by the press at the beginning,
00:22:32that that would continue to be the case,
00:22:34but it doesn't work like that.
00:22:36Relations with the press are forever shifting sands.
00:22:46When Heather Mills became Sir Paul's girlfriend,
00:22:49it was celebratory because he was finding love again.
00:22:53You know, everyone felt that he was part of their family
00:22:56in British society.
00:22:58MUSIC PLAYS
00:23:06I'm over the moon. I'm still in shock. I'm really happy.
00:23:09It's a sapphire.
00:23:11From India. An Indian sapphire.
00:23:14Right?
00:23:16Well, you didn't get focused quick enough.
00:23:19Heather rang me and they said they'd got engaged.
00:23:22He'd taken her to the Lake District for a holiday
00:23:25to a very nice hotel in the Lake District,
00:23:27and he produced a ring.
00:23:30We don't kiss on demand.
00:23:32Well, if you feel like it.
00:23:35Kiss on demand.
00:23:37I'll kiss you.
00:23:38All right, come on, lads, this is it, get it quick.
00:23:41She was having a wonderful time with him
00:23:43and it was still very romantic.
00:23:45And, yeah, they agreed to get married.
00:23:48Congratulations, by the way.
00:23:50See you then.
00:23:52Congratulations.
00:23:58MUSIC CONTINUES
00:24:03The footsteps of their announcement,
00:24:05I think the narrative did change quite quickly,
00:24:08from her being a sort of courageous campaigner
00:24:11to being a sort of, oh, foxy little on-the-make minx.
00:24:18It could have been a great spiritual match.
00:24:21What it looked like was a slightly clichéd older wealthy man
00:24:25falling for an attractive young woman.
00:24:29I do feel a degree of sympathy for her,
00:24:31but also she just didn't quite ever help herself.
00:24:35CHEERING
00:24:37Heather, what was it like for you to be there?
00:24:39It was great. I mean, obviously very moving,
00:24:41even with Sidney Poitier's speech, and so that was pretty cool.
00:24:44Were you moved when I sang to you?
00:24:46I was crying. Was that moving? That was so moving.
00:24:49He didn't care about winning at all.
00:24:51He was like, well, actually, maybe I hope I don't win
00:24:54because I don't have to go backstage for an hour and a half.
00:24:57I guess Heather didn't want people to think
00:24:59she was going out with Paul McCartney because he is Paul McCartney,
00:25:02so she goes on TV and says,
00:25:04oh, you know, I wasn't really aware of who the Beatles were.
00:25:08I only heard a few Beatles songs.
00:25:10You were a presenter at a charity benefit... Mm-hm.
00:25:14..and a man named Paul McCartney was there,
00:25:17and he was evidently very impressed with you.
00:25:19Did you meet him that night? No, I didn't meet him.
00:25:22Had you been a Beatles fan? No, I didn't know anything about it.
00:25:25Really? Hardly at all. I liked Wings.
00:25:27It was preposterous.
00:25:29You'd have to live in a cave for the past 60 years
00:25:31to not know who the Beatles were.
00:25:35The press didn't like the fact that she'd admitted
00:25:38she didn't know much about the Beatles.
00:25:42There was a kind of hivet.
00:25:44The spotlight went on to some of the things that she'd said.
00:25:47Some of the claims were very, very easily ripped apart.
00:25:53She claimed that she'd run away to join a fair when she was 15.
00:25:57In fact, school records showed she was very much still
00:26:00in attendance at her school.
00:26:02That was shown to be a hill of beans, pretty much.
00:26:06Heather Mills, when she talks about her life,
00:26:08she turns her life into, as we all do, into a story,
00:26:11and she tells it as a good story.
00:26:13There seems to be a bit of hyperbole
00:26:16about running things together,
00:26:18and she seems to be a past master of that.
00:26:22The problem was, once you're exposed as having lied
00:26:25about a few things, you just don't get to do that
00:26:28and walk away unscathed.
00:26:38Paul McCartney is rock royalty.
00:26:40In this country, you might as well be actual royalty.
00:26:44People have certain expectations about the kind of person
00:26:47that you should be with.
00:26:49That means sort of blemish-free,
00:26:52and I think Heather's issue was that she did have a past
00:26:57and that it was also unclear sometimes what was true
00:27:01and what wasn't true about that past
00:27:03in terms of what she disclosed to the media,
00:27:06and also Heather being a slightly complex individual
00:27:09who was sometimes hard to read.
00:27:11So I think that made for an uneasy mix.
00:27:14Everyone wants to ask you the question
00:27:16that I know hacks you off mightily.
00:27:18It was asked in there, you sort of cut it dead,
00:27:20but it's always going to happen with you and being together.
00:27:23Yeah, it's OK.
00:27:24And we'll always just cut it dead. Well, I will anyway.
00:27:27So will I.
00:27:29Cos it's just not, it's not relevant
00:27:31to what we're trying to promote.
00:27:33It's not anybody's business and, you know,
00:27:35I've got absolutely no comment on it at all.
00:27:38When she put the wall up as now a Beatles partner,
00:27:43that definitely created some antagonism with the media.
00:27:47She said she was trying to protect his privacy,
00:27:50but she just needed to not be as defensive.
00:27:55I think it would have probably helped her
00:27:57when these irregularities in her backstory came to light.
00:28:02Paul McCartney is very popular with the press.
00:28:06He's been a great favourite of the tabloids since the 60s.
00:28:10He's a good copy, he's quite accommodating with journalists,
00:28:14press tickets, comes to my shows.
00:28:16He does do interviews, poses for pictures, good with photographers,
00:28:20journalists like him, editors like him.
00:28:24A real skill set, and you've got to be comfortable
00:28:26in your own celebrity.
00:28:28It's that personability which really sets people like him apart
00:28:31in dealing with media.
00:28:43It's basically a family wedding,
00:28:45so we're going to have family and friends
00:28:47and we're just going to have a bit of fun.
00:28:49But it's a secret, all right?
00:28:51I'm not supposed to tell anybody anything.
00:28:59I was invited to the wedding.
00:29:01We all arrived at the airport and all we were told
00:29:04was we had to meet each other.
00:29:06There were Heather's friends and relatives,
00:29:08a lot of whom I'd met before, and we all met in this lounge.
00:29:13We had no idea where we were going, no idea at all.
00:29:16And it turned out we flew to Belfast and then we were all put on a bus
00:29:20and we were driven down to Castle Leslie.
00:29:23Well, the wedding was this absurd, balmy kind of jamboree
00:29:29in a castle in Ireland with boats and fireworks
00:29:32and a sort of lavish Indian buffet and hundreds of guests flown in.
00:29:36So, I mean, the whole thing was just mad.
00:29:38It must have cost millions.
00:29:40And relatives of Paul's from Liverpool were saying to me,
00:29:43you know, the thing was just way over the top and not really like him.
00:29:48The bride was late, very late, at least half an hour late,
00:29:52and people started getting restless.
00:29:54A lady popped up from the back, I'm free!
00:29:58Eventually she appeared and there'd been paparazzi chasing.
00:30:01This is what had held things up.
00:30:07There was a brief respite, shall we say, in kind of relations with the press.
00:30:11I think when they actually did get married,
00:30:13there was quite a celebratory mood.
00:30:15Sir Paul McCartney and his new wife, Heather Mills, still in newlywed mode.
00:30:19It was gorgeous, we had a lovely time, we're still on the honeymoon.
00:30:23I think they wanted the marriage to succeed for him, the media did.
00:30:28They wanted him to be happy.
00:30:30So there were stories that would be buried,
00:30:33undoubtedly buried, to be nice to Sir Paul and her.
00:30:46It didn't take long for the sort of shadows to gather again
00:30:50and bubbling stories of uneasy relations
00:30:54with Paul's children from his first marriage
00:30:57started to feed into this already laden groundwork
00:31:02of Heather being a gold digger,
00:31:04because obviously there was this idea
00:31:06that they didn't trust her motivation around their marriage.
00:31:11There were stories circulating that Stella, Stella McCartney, the designer,
00:31:15Paul's daughter, was particularly unhappy about Heather's arrival in the family.
00:31:20And I think people really respected Stella,
00:31:23because despite her father, she became a chosen designer
00:31:26for a famous Paris fashion house,
00:31:29which very rarely went to non-French designers.
00:31:32Very proud, I'm proud to be her parents.
00:31:3550% of my life I've been a designer.
00:31:38Very proud, I'm proud to be her parents.
00:31:4150%, I'll give you 50%.
00:31:44And when she kind of...
00:31:47It became apparent through stories I wrote and others wrote
00:31:51that they'd fallen out and she disliked her.
00:31:54The sympathy by then was always going to be with Stella.
00:31:57She'd lost her mum.
00:31:59You know, she'd lost her mum as a young woman,
00:32:02which is a horrible, horrific thing for anyone to go through.
00:32:05It would be very difficult for anybody,
00:32:07whether it was Heather or anybody else,
00:32:09to follow in the footsteps of Linda,
00:32:12who was a long-term love of Paul's,
00:32:15and they had been together an incredibly long time, had children.
00:32:19She was always going to be a hard act to follow.
00:32:23I think Heather had found it quite hard to live in the same house
00:32:28that only a couple of years before Linda had been living in.
00:32:33And the house hadn't been changed that much.
00:32:36She was in an inescapable presence,
00:32:38because obviously she was a big part of Paul's life.
00:32:42I'm sure it was difficult for Heather to move into the life of a man
00:32:47who'd been famously happily married for years to Linda,
00:32:51and they had children together,
00:32:53and I'm sure he was still in love with Linda, you know,
00:32:56and he probably hadn't got over it.
00:32:58He kept Linda's ring on until the day before he married Heather.
00:33:02There were little plaques saying,
00:33:04I love Linda, over the doorways, and photographs of her around.
00:33:09It must have been very hard to deal with.
00:33:22We have a bunch of school kids, high school kids tonight,
00:33:25who've raised $140,000.
00:33:28McCartney's always been involved in good causes,
00:33:31with Linda, anti-fur, campaigning, PETA, all these things,
00:33:35and he still is.
00:33:38They became this sort of indefatigable, charitable couple.
00:33:42And that's all of the seals that have actually been taken.
00:33:45And while I had the opportunity...
00:33:47Hang on, your department actually assured us
00:33:49that the cod levels wouldn't go down
00:33:51the year before they had to stop the fishing,
00:33:53because the cod levels...
00:33:55It was the same department that assured the cod levels were fine.
00:33:58Of course, you know, who can quibble?
00:34:00These, of course, are all good, worthy things,
00:34:03but if you start making a song and dance about it,
00:34:05you're kind of using it for your own ends,
00:34:07and she did it very obviously right from the start.
00:34:10Celebrities campaigning for charity is a kind of controversial issue
00:34:14because people think that the celebrity might be doing it
00:34:17for reasons of sort of self-aggrandisement.
00:34:20But on the other hand, if you are raising money for a good cause
00:34:23and you are using your profile or your face or your name to do it,
00:34:26how can that really be said to be a bad thing?
00:34:30He pops up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
00:34:32You know, for charity, of course.
00:34:36Merry Christmas!
00:34:38Happy Christmas!
00:34:39One of these is barium, one of them is bromine.
00:34:44Barium.
00:34:45OK, we're going with barium.
00:34:47Toto!
00:34:48Oh, good luck with the marriage, everybody!
00:34:51When you consider how famous and rich
00:34:55and just busy Sir Paul McCartney is,
00:34:58it's a bit like sort of imagining Elton John
00:35:01being on Pointless all afternoon, you know?
00:35:03I mean, you would think Paul had better things to do.
00:35:07We'll go with Atlanta, final answer.
00:35:09Yeah.
00:35:13It's the right answer!
00:35:15CHEERING
00:35:18Yeah!
00:35:19You know, he was in love, I guess. He was in love.
00:35:21That's the truth.
00:35:22He was in love and he wanted to do whatever she wanted to do.
00:35:25And that's all part of her being socially ambitious,
00:35:27you know, and professionally ambitious.
00:35:29Heather's presenting career reached new heights
00:35:31when she made a notable appearance
00:35:33on iconic American talk show Larry King Live.
00:35:41Good evening. Hi, I'm Heather Mills-McCartney,
00:35:43filling in for Larry King.
00:35:45It's my great pleasure to welcome the multifaceted,
00:35:47rarely interviewed Paul Newman. Hi, Paul.
00:35:50She had a kind of fledgling broadcasting career.
00:35:53One of the things she wanted was to expand that
00:35:56and the ultimate result of that, actually,
00:35:58was she interviewed Paul Newman on Larry King Live
00:36:02and McCartney fixed that for her.
00:36:04You know, he fixed it up.
00:36:05He said, Paul, you know, will you speak to my wife,
00:36:07you know, on Larry King Live? That would be a big deal.
00:36:10So she went from doing little sort of outside camera stuff
00:36:13for breakfast TV to interviewing, you know, Paul Newman.
00:36:16And that's a big leap.
00:36:18How come you're such a philanthropist?
00:36:21Oh, come on. Well, you start quickly, don't you?
00:36:25Well, you are. You're kind, you're generous.
00:36:27You know, she was C-list, D-list,
00:36:29and then she became A, star, no-one-bigger list
00:36:33in terms of her relationship.
00:36:36She is somebody who obviously does flourish in the limelight.
00:36:40She does like it.
00:36:41She's certainly not someone that doesn't want to be on film
00:36:43or on camera or noticed. She does want to be noticed.
00:36:47I spoke to a lot of people who know Paul well
00:36:50and who knew Heather during their marriage.
00:36:52I mean, broadly speaking,
00:36:54they found her to be egocentric and self-centred.
00:36:58I think it went to her head, the fame, the money,
00:37:01the kind of status, it all went to her head.
00:37:04It went wrong fairly quickly.
00:37:12It was a volatile relationship from the beginning.
00:37:16Because they were both such strong characters,
00:37:20they both were used to having their own way.
00:37:24Even before they married,
00:37:26there was a big row in a hotel in America, apparently,
00:37:29and the engagement ring got flung out of the window.
00:37:32I don't know who flung it out, but the next day,
00:37:36the engagement ring was gone.
00:37:38I don't know who flung it out, but the next day,
00:37:41the staff of the hotel were all going round with metal detectors
00:37:46and they found they'd recovered the ring.
00:37:49How much of it was...? Well, I think, yes, that bit was true.
00:37:56I think one of the main problems with Heather Mills and Paul McCartney
00:38:00is that they both have huge egos,
00:38:02and she felt herself to be as significant and famous
00:38:07and entitled as he does.
00:38:10And who's to say she's wrong,
00:38:12other than the fact that he is a Beatle, you know,
00:38:15and he's always going to trump a glamour model, you know.
00:38:19That's the truth of the matter.
00:38:21Despite her indefatigable charitable work,
00:38:23she didn't write Hey Jude.
00:38:26In English or Spanish, whatever you want.
00:38:30Message for the victims of landmines in Colombia.
00:38:33We call them survivors, if they're still alive, they're survivors.
00:38:36So victims is like victimising them.
00:38:38He was totally the centre of attention
00:38:41and she wanted to do, still do, her charity work.
00:38:44She still wanted to be who she was and for that not to be forgotten.
00:38:48And it was quite hard to carry on doing that.
00:38:51Once he started to get involved in the charity,
00:38:54he became the star of the show.
00:38:56And she was, you know, just an extra.
00:38:59You tell Hola Mujer today? Hola Mujer today.
00:39:02Merry Christmas. Yeah, OK.
00:39:05Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
00:39:07Paul McCartney is a tougher character than perhaps people suspect
00:39:11and he's pretty much in charge of everyone around him.
00:39:14And so, you know, he's not an easygoing chap.
00:39:17He's in control and wants to be in control all the time.
00:39:21She possibly found him controlling
00:39:24and I think more than that, she found other people's expectations
00:39:28of how she should behave a little bit controlling.
00:39:31Particularly when he started to go on tour
00:39:34and she was in the background.
00:39:36And it was a new role for her to be in the background.
00:39:40It's our annual benefit and we hope to raise a lot of money.
00:39:45I think she resented his demands on her
00:39:49to be a kind of more of a housewife-type spouse.
00:39:53Bear in mind, he was born in the 40s, right?
00:39:55He's 26 years older than her.
00:39:57He's from a working-class Liverpool family.
00:39:59That's what he wanted. It wasn't what she wanted.
00:40:02So I'd just like to declare this gallery open
00:40:05and I'll come and cut the ribbon. Thank you.
00:40:08APPLAUSE
00:40:10She wanted to share the spotlight in a way that actually
00:40:14his other wives have been wise enough not to do.
00:40:18There were clashes of personality
00:40:20and very angry clashes on both sides.
00:40:24The press, when they got wind of disagreements,
00:40:29the press seized on it, this was going to be a good story
00:40:32because actually it was what they'd been predicting, wasn't it?
00:40:35It was always going to end in disaster.
00:40:38Facts came out from conversations they'd had between them.
00:40:42There could have been no way that anybody would know those facts
00:40:46other than by listening to that conversation.
00:40:49These people who would have no link to a celebrity or a pop star
00:40:53would just get this mind-numbingly gobsmacking exclusive.
00:40:57You did go, how the hell have they got that?
00:41:00In recent weeks, Heather, who's recovering from a leg operation,
00:41:03has been here at their seafront mansion in Hove in East Sussex.
00:41:07While Sir Paul has been tucked away up here at the country farm
00:41:11near Rye, 50 miles away from his wife.
00:41:14The relationship broke down, that's all you can say.
00:41:17You can't say it's his fault or her fault.
00:41:19They were both nice people, but put them together
00:41:22and I think it became fireworks, once the romance had worn off.
00:41:26Like any marriage that goes wrong, I suppose it's a tragedy, really.
00:41:29He said himself that he thought it was going to last forever.
00:41:34It's a case of hello, goodbye for Sir Paul McCartney
00:41:37and his wife, Lady Heather,
00:41:39who've confirmed that they're going their separate ways.
00:41:42Sir Paul immediately denied any suggestions
00:41:44that his wife had married him for his money,
00:41:46insisting the couple still cared about each other, quotes, very much.
00:41:50But if the split does go all the way to the divorce courts,
00:41:53it could prove expensive for the former Beatle.
00:41:56Things really shifted dramatically in 2006
00:41:59when Sir Paul and Heather announced that, with great regret,
00:42:04they were now separating.
00:42:06There was this slight sense of, the gloves are off now.
00:42:10All of a sudden, the protection she had
00:42:12from being married to Paul McCartney disappeared.
00:42:28Following her divorce from Paul McCartney,
00:42:30she got very bad press indeed,
00:42:33and all of a sudden, the protection she had
00:42:36from being married to Paul McCartney disappeared.
00:42:40My God, did they go for her.
00:42:44Somebody was potentially going against our national icon,
00:42:48and when that happens, everyone gets very angry
00:42:52and defensive of our national icons.
00:42:55We've seen it so many times before, and it was a free-for-all.
00:42:59And the stories started appearing in the press,
00:43:02saying she'd been a £5,000 hooker,
00:43:06that she was Lady Mucker, that she'd been dealing in vice.
00:43:12The German sex book, let's not forget, that wasn't a sex book.
00:43:16It was an erotic sex love manual,
00:43:19but, you know, these are just skeletons coming out that are denied.
00:43:23There's a whole litany of things that you just go,
00:43:26wow, you could not have made Heather Mills up at that time.
00:43:30The most famous, and she would probably still deny it to this day,
00:43:34in the news of the world, is that she was an escort.
00:43:37It's certainly a murky part of her life.
00:43:40I certainly wouldn't want to repeat an allegation in the news of the world
00:43:44that was based on, you know, somebody said,
00:43:47because, you know, the news of the world operated in a very particular way.
00:43:52I don't like it when a woman is branded the evil, temptress,
00:43:57you know, the gold digger, the baddie.
00:44:00It was massively and wholly out of proportion.
00:44:03And it was an absolutely misogynistic free-for-all.
00:44:08It was much more vicious, the media, than it is now.
00:44:11She was like a sort of animal being hunted.
00:44:14We're not blocking her in.
00:44:16Why are you still here?
00:44:18The newspaper's paying me to be here.
00:44:20You don't get this, do you?
00:44:22We don't just turn up on some basic that we're going to get here.
00:44:25We do it because we've been asked to do it.
00:44:27Footage from the time shows the paparazzi's relentless hounding of Heather.
00:44:31We had three of them following me and my daughter this morning,
00:44:34and they all drive dangerously through red lights, holding their cameras.
00:44:38It's just crazy, and, you know, and you can't do them for anything.
00:44:42They're just now being done for the crash,
00:44:44but it's harassment, it's pursuit, and it's just madness.
00:44:47She was very hurt by a lot of the bad publicity she got after her divorce.
00:44:52She was hurt that people didn't see her as a real person,
00:44:55they saw her as a villainess.
00:45:01Their divorce is as public as their marriage,
00:45:04and today Heather Mills-McCartney reacted for the first time
00:45:07about what she calls her trial by media.
00:45:09She's suing three newspapers for printing what she claims
00:45:12are false and damaging statements about her.
00:45:15Stalked by the paparazzi, vilified by columnists,
00:45:18the former model says she's had enough.
00:45:21You know, the public, who are easily led by the tabloids,
00:45:24and the media, who are easily led by the tabloids,
00:45:27You know, the public, who are easily led by the tabloids,
00:45:30turned against her.
00:45:32It was a very hard time for her.
00:45:35Heather famously went on to American television.
00:45:38I think it was a bid for public sympathy on a more global scale.
00:45:43And she made the memorable admission that she'd rather lose
00:45:47all her limbs than go through the press kind of baptism of fire
00:45:52that she'd endured.
00:45:54In her interview, she talks of the barrage of criticism she's faced,
00:45:57but the former model, who lost a leg in an accident 13 years ago,
00:46:01then makes an extraordinary claim about her suffering.
00:46:04I would rather someone come up and chop all my limbs off
00:46:07than go through what I went through.
00:46:09Because if your limbs are chopped off, you go, OK,
00:46:12you get another limb, there's light at the end of the tunnel.
00:46:15When you're vilified for doing nothing but fall in love with an icon,
00:46:18nothing, what have I done, what is my crime, nothing.
00:46:21It's another example of her thinking that she knew how to relate to people
00:46:25and, yeah, it all just went wrong.
00:46:30She was cold, she wasn't defensive.
00:46:33Almost, if you look back at it in hindsight, maybe she was right to be.
00:46:37The problem was, she kept making it worse.
00:46:41For the best part of a year, the press onslaught continued.
00:46:45But it was an article, printed in October 2007,
00:46:49linking animal lover Heather with the death of a neighbour's dog
00:46:53that proved the final straw.
00:46:56The problem is this, when you're famous and people write stuff about you
00:47:00and people say to you, oh, it's tomorrow's chip paper
00:47:03and, you know, nobody takes it seriously
00:47:05and, you know, everyone will have forgotten about it,
00:47:08but you don't forget about it, you just can't let go of it.
00:47:11It takes root in your soul, you can't get rid of it.
00:47:14And so what you do is what Heather Mills did in 2007,
00:47:17you repeat the damn thing.
00:47:20Taking matters into her own hands, against the advice of her PR,
00:47:24Heather appeared on GMTV.
00:47:27The interesting thing about Heather that underpins quite a lot of her story
00:47:31is that she's always slightly seemed to behave as if she's known better
00:47:35than known experts in the field.
00:47:39This is where confidence can really come and bite you very hard in the bottom.
00:47:44You know, you were so confident, you're determined to do something,
00:47:47you won't listen to anyone who tells you not to, you do it anyway.
00:47:50She shouldn't have done that interview, it didn't serve her well.
00:47:53I've so had enough, I've had 18 months of absolute abuse
00:47:57and then they try to ruin my daughter's birthday party,
00:48:00which I spent ages organising, saying I'd kill the dog next door.
00:48:03This was in yesterday's Sun, wasn't it?
00:48:05A complete load of rubbish.
00:48:07Look what they're doing to the McCanns.
00:48:09The woman has lost and the poor father have lost their daughter.
00:48:13What are we doing as a nation?
00:48:15What are we doing persecuting a woman that is devastated behind closed doors
00:48:20and trying to hold it together, as I have, for 18 months?
00:48:23What did the paparazzi do to Diana?
00:48:25They chased her and they killed her.
00:48:27People said it was a performance,
00:48:29but it didn't seem like a performance when I watched it.
00:48:33I felt that it was a woman at breaking point.
00:48:37She didn't know how to express how hurt she was
00:48:40because she was so used to covering it up.
00:48:43She'd been hurt so many times in her life.
00:48:45The only way she could express this
00:48:48was by doing what other people do when they're hurt,
00:48:51which was tears and the rest of it,
00:48:53and that's why it came across as perhaps not genuine.
00:48:58Ironically, it just didn't deliver what she wanted,
00:49:02which was sympathy.
00:49:04I mean, if anything, it hardened opinion against her.
00:49:09There were unflattering headlines in the wake of that interview
00:49:12which claimed she'd compared herself
00:49:14to the late Princess Diana and Madeleine McCann's parents.
00:49:18In fact, she hadn't made that direct link at all.
00:49:21She just said they had also been sort of unfairly cast in the press.
00:49:27A fact astutely picked up on the next day by ITV's This Morning.
00:49:32We haven't been able to find anywhere where she says
00:49:35I'm just like Diana and Kate McCann.
00:49:38How dare you compare your ordeal to the McCanns?
00:49:42Now, the thing is, if that's not right,
00:49:44then you wonder just how much of a point she has to make.
00:49:48It has been cathartic.
00:49:49Heather Mills was back on the GMTV sofa today.
00:49:52Felt good to have a rant, she said.
00:49:54Her tirade against some newspapers last week
00:49:56was followed by an avalanche of critical coverage in the tabloid press.
00:49:59Proof, she said this morning, the papers are out of control.
00:50:02Has taking on the tabloids taken its toll?
00:50:06Has it? How has the past week been?
00:50:08No, it's been unbelievably cathartic.
00:50:10It's a difference between being in prison or being on parole.
00:50:14You know, that's the situation at the moment.
00:50:1618 months of the worst press ever,
00:50:18and I got the chance, you know, to protect myself
00:50:21and defend myself and my daughter.
00:50:23She wasn't nice and quiet and compliant.
00:50:27She wasn't at all apologetic.
00:50:29She didn't do that British thing of saying,
00:50:31I'm so sorry, sorry to take up your time,
00:50:33sorry to, gosh, I don't really want to talk about myself,
00:50:35I'm not really, oh, no, you know, oh, God, please,
00:50:37let me just bring a cup of tea.
00:50:39She's not like that. She's very, very strident.
00:50:42At the time, I think it was frowned on.
00:50:45Heather's point was largely lost amidst the controversy,
00:50:48and she remained a figure of ridicule in popular culture.
00:50:52Why does everyone think that he's not lying?
00:50:55I think that, you know, she might be quite...
00:50:57Who? Who? Paul McCartney.
00:50:59What's he got to do with it?
00:51:00I've heard that he's actually a bit of an arsehole.
00:51:02What I was going to say is that even if Paul McCartney is an arsehole,
00:51:06he has at least, you know, done some good songs that everyone's liked.
00:51:09He's got two arseholes.
00:51:11She's done nothing but charity for 20 years.
00:51:16Heather has made these attempts to get public sympathy.
00:51:20They don't massively work,
00:51:22so everyone's sort of slightly waiting for this divorce battle.
00:51:27Everyone loves Paul McCartney.
00:51:29They were fascinated by his relationship with Heather Mills.
00:51:33She was up against the establishment
00:51:35and she was up against people who wanted to portray
00:51:38her husband as the hero of the piece.
00:51:41The problem was, for someone who objected violently
00:51:45to being called a gold digger,
00:51:47Heather just did not do herself any favours
00:51:49in these divorce negotiations.
00:51:51She went for £125 million.
00:52:11It was never going to be a straightforward divorce,
00:52:14but this morning's journey to court took Sir Paul McCartney
00:52:17into an unprecedented legal battle.
00:52:19This was of global interest.
00:52:22You knew it was going to be pretty explosive.
00:52:24You knew what had happened in the breakdown of the relationship,
00:52:27that nothing was going to be held back.
00:52:30It became a daily living soap opera.
00:52:33The pack were drawn magnetically to the railings.
00:52:36By odd coincidence, the warring parties were dressed much the same.
00:52:39Heather Mills, clutching a blue folder,
00:52:42was in a sober grey pinstripe suit with leather stiletto ankle boots.
00:52:46Paul McCartney swept in behind blacked-out windows.
00:52:50Somewhere in there, he too was wearing a sober grey pinstripe suit.
00:52:55I had been doing a lot as the resident lawyer on GMTV for years,
00:53:01and then they said to me,
00:53:03Paul McCartney and Heather Mills' case is coming up,
00:53:06why don't you be our resident roving reporter on it?
00:53:11Not only did I have to report for GMTV,
00:53:13I had to report for virtually every other foreign country
00:53:17going about what was going on in the courtroom.
00:53:20And, of course, I had my inside people
00:53:22telling me exactly what was going on inside the courtrooms.
00:53:26So normally in a divorce, including a celebrity divorce,
00:53:29the details are confidential.
00:53:31Divorce hearings aren't open to the press.
00:53:33Indeed, we weren't allowed into the court in the High Court.
00:53:36We had to stand outside in the corridor.
00:53:38So we're in the corridor, Paul goes into the room,
00:53:41Heather goes into the room, the barristers go in and out.
00:53:43We sort of talk to them, but we can't go into the court.
00:53:51At the end of the day, she had a child with him.
00:53:54With that came some commitment to make sure that the child
00:53:57was brought up in the same sort of lifestyle as he could give.
00:54:00So she did get a lot of bad press.
00:54:03Some of it was warranted, some perhaps not.
00:54:07But he'd built all of it prior to the marriage,
00:54:10and the advice she would have been given in any event by her lawyers
00:54:14was, come on now, you know,
00:54:16you can't expect a percentage after such a short marriage.
00:54:20And perhaps that's why she parted company so quickly from her lawyers.
00:54:28So Paul had hired Prince Charles's lawyer
00:54:31who dealt with his divorce, Fiona Shackleton,
00:54:33who was one of the most eminent, at the time, QCs in the country.
00:54:37Heather decides to represent herself,
00:54:39and as a journalist who's covered lots of court cases in my time,
00:54:43it tells you a great deal about a person when they reject the expertise
00:54:48and enormous experience of a professional
00:54:52to speak for themselves in court.
00:54:57Prior to the divorce, no-one knew quite how rich McCartney was,
00:55:01other than he was supposed to be the world's richest pop star,
00:55:04possibly the only billionaire in pop at that point.
00:55:07One of her arguments was that she was really a big player in his career,
00:55:13kind of helping him on tour, getting him back on the road,
00:55:16getting him back working, kind of, you know,
00:55:18helping the McCartney Roadshow roll around the globe.
00:55:22The judge insists that McCartney's finances are audited by Ernst & Young,
00:55:27and the result of that is, in fact, he's not a billionaire,
00:55:31he's worth about 400 million quid.
00:55:34And Heather doesn't believe this,
00:55:36she thinks that somehow McCartney's pulled the wool
00:55:39over the eyes of Ernst & Young,
00:55:41and he's somehow hidden 600 million under the sofa.
00:55:44Morning!
00:55:46It's always very different when you act in person
00:55:49to when you're reined in by your lawyer.
00:55:52Getting angry in court is one of the worst things you can do,
00:55:57and the job of most successful barristers
00:56:01is to make the other person lose their temper.
00:56:04They know which buttons to press.
00:56:07Paul McCartney's barrister found it very easy
00:56:10to just put one or two things and way she went.
00:56:16It was so easy to cause her to rant,
00:56:19and if you want credibility,
00:56:22acting with dignity will give you that credibility.
00:56:26The more you rant and rave,
00:56:28and it's the advice I give to a lot of women,
00:56:31the more hysterical you appear, regrettably,
00:56:34the less you're going to be believed.
00:56:36DRAMATIC MUSIC
00:56:42Yep, yep, got it.
00:56:47Ah!
00:56:48Morning, Paul.
00:56:50Good to meet you, Paul.
00:56:54One of the things that we say to our clients is,
00:56:57just dress appropriately.
00:56:59Now, Heather's choice of clothes was commented on
00:57:03because she looked a bit like Harlequin.
00:57:06It was a fabulous outfit that flattered her.
00:57:10It was an outfit that caused puzzlement.
00:57:13Why would you wear that to go into court?
00:57:16This is the problem with her.
00:57:19She doesn't realise the impact of some of the things she does
00:57:24or wears or says.
00:57:28The High Court judge says that she often indulged in make-belief,
00:57:32and a lot of what she said about her marriage wasn't true.
00:57:35It was her perception, perhaps, of what was the case,
00:57:38but it wasn't the judge's perception.
00:57:40By her account, she was somehow not only his wife
00:57:44and the mother of his child, she was somehow his manager.
00:57:47And the judge says, you know, that's just not true.
00:57:49It's not true. He was doing this decades before he met you.
00:57:53You know, you just kind of went along on the ride.
00:57:57Judges are known for being pretty measured in their verdicts
00:58:01and delivering judgment.
00:58:03They usually use quite measured language.
00:58:05It's usually quite nuanced.
00:58:07So it was notable that the judge was fairly forthright
00:58:11and pulled no punches when it came to his assessment of Heather.
00:58:14The judge used the memorable phrase
00:58:16that Heather had an explosive and volatile character
00:58:20and, as a consequence, was her own worst enemy.
00:58:23Was the judge a Beatles fan?
00:58:26Do they have to declare that kind of thing?
00:58:30No, they don't.
00:58:32And certainly, one will never know.
00:58:37It basically ended in dramatic fashion
00:58:40with Heather throwing a jug of water over the head of Fiona Shackleton,
00:58:45which I think is probably something that hasn't happened before
00:58:49in the High Court.
00:58:51She's a very glamorous middle-aged woman
00:58:54dressed to the nines in sort of Gucci
00:58:56and, you know, a very sort of well-presented woman.
00:58:59She came out with her hair, blonde hair.
00:59:01It's like somebody had played the garden hose on her.
00:59:05Her hair was flattened down.
00:59:08From that day onwards, we've all been really nervous
00:59:12about having water in the courtroom
00:59:14in case somebody gets very angry and does what we call a heather.
00:59:18Mrs Shackleton said something under her breath,
00:59:21so I cleansed and baptised her, which was...
00:59:23I thought she looks fantastic.
00:59:25I thought she'd deliver the world of good
00:59:27and now I've been offered lots of jobs
00:59:29for creating relooks for women of her age
00:59:32with those kind of hairdos.
00:59:34So I have no regrets.
00:59:36Amazingly, she then goes on TV and admits it
00:59:39and makes a joke of it.
00:59:41And, you know, watching her,
00:59:43you see someone who's kind of enjoying being mischievous, right?
00:59:46She's having fun. She enjoyed it.
00:59:48She enjoyed somehow getting her own back.
00:59:50And, you know, a sort of suitable end point for this disastrous marriage,
00:59:54this sort of farce of a marriage, actually.
00:59:56You know, it does end as a farce, really.
01:00:00Heather may have gained a small personal victory,
01:00:04but it was what she would get in the settlement
01:00:06that mattered to the public.
01:00:08Everybody wanted to make sure he didn't pay out too much to this woman.
01:00:12What would Paul McCartney have to pay out to Heather Mills
01:00:16after such a short marriage?
01:00:28You can never tell, as a lawyer, when you step into court,
01:00:32quite how a case is going to unravel.
01:00:37At the end of the day,
01:00:39the judge made a finding against Heather Mills
01:00:42and awarded her £24.3 million.
01:00:47We're all in the corridor outside
01:00:49and there's this sort of muffled commotion inside the court.
01:00:52Heather comes out first and she says, flick of the hair,
01:00:55we've got to do this outside in front of the cameras.
01:00:58And most of the press pack follow her out onto the High Court,
01:01:02which is like a five-minute walk away through all these corridors,
01:01:05for her to give this impromptu press conference.
01:01:11First of all, I just want to say I'm so glad it's over.
01:01:15And it was an incredible result in the end
01:01:19to secure mine and Daughter's future
01:01:21and that of all the charities that I obviously plan on helping.
01:01:26When Heather Mills came out of court and said,
01:01:29oh, I'm really happy about the settlement,
01:01:32and she was saying to the world, oh, I'm really happy, I've done well,
01:01:36look what I've managed on my own.
01:01:39Not a single journalist believed what she was saying at the time.
01:01:43And we were all flabbergasted because we thought,
01:01:46well, you asked for £125 million, how can you be happy with £24.3?
01:01:51And at that point, I was standing quite near,
01:01:54I actually felt really sorry for her.
01:01:57So we're very, very, very pleased.
01:02:00And what I'd like to say, being a campaigning girl,
01:02:03is anybody wanting to go through a divorce,
01:02:06try your hardest, man or woman, to settle it immediately.
01:02:10She was trying to put on a brave face,
01:02:13but we all knew it was not true
01:02:16because she'd had such a pillering in court.
01:02:21A woman wished her well.
01:02:23Heather Mills whispered a thank you.
01:02:27In the eyes of the press and public,
01:02:29Heather had lost the divorce battle.
01:02:32But what would become a near decade-long feud with the tabloids
01:02:36was set to cast her in a very different light.
01:02:47Heather lived to sort of have another day in court
01:02:51because she was vindicated
01:02:53when it came to the widespread allegations of phone hacking
01:02:56that started to surface around this time.
01:02:58Heather had long suspected that her phone had been hacked
01:03:01and her name was on the sort of long list of celebrities
01:03:05and people in the public eye who had indeed had their phone hacked.
01:03:09In the morning when I woke up, there were many messages,
01:03:13but they were all saved messages,
01:03:16which I didn't quite understand because normally they wouldn't be.
01:03:21But I didn't think too much of it.
01:03:23I thought I must have pressed the wrong button.
01:03:25By the time Heather Mills was giving evidence
01:03:28to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012, you see a very different side of her.
01:03:32She's extremely professional, she's very measured,
01:03:35she's very level and balanced in what she's saying,
01:03:38and I think that just shows how very different she was in 2007
01:03:43when she was obviously very, very distressed
01:03:45and not really her real self.
01:03:47He said, look, Heather, you know,
01:03:49we've heard that you and Paul have had an argument
01:03:51and I've just heard a message of him singing on the phone to you,
01:03:55asking for forgiveness.
01:03:57And I said, there is no way that you could know that
01:04:01unless you've been listening to my messages.
01:04:03The Leveson Inquiry shows her, I suppose you might say,
01:04:06at her most effective self, where she is absolutely abreast of facts,
01:04:11she knows exactly what she's talking about,
01:04:13expresses herself very clearly,
01:04:15and she was one of the most high-profile people
01:04:17to have been phone hacked,
01:04:19and I believe she was generously remunerated for that situation.
01:04:24Although this goes little way to mitigating the extensive damage caused,
01:04:28it does serve an important purpose
01:04:31to shine a spotlight on the mild practice
01:04:34and scurrilous, vindictive behaviour
01:04:37that has been rife for so long
01:04:39in one of this country's most powerful media institutions.
01:04:43I would urge everyone, when you pick up your daily paper today,
01:04:47to consider the integrity and motive of the publisher
01:04:51before believing what you read.
01:04:55When you feel the world's against you,
01:04:57it's important to get some validation at the end of it
01:05:00and to think, actually, what you were saying was true.
01:05:03I think it was important, it did validate her a bit.
01:05:14I think most people are very dull and monochrome and one-note,
01:05:19and she's not, not Heather Mills, not at all.
01:05:23She's a very complicated person.
01:05:26She always reminds me of Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair,
01:05:29this flirtatious, socially ambitious girl from a difficult background
01:05:33who moves up in the world using her looks
01:05:37and her charms in this relentless progress through life.
01:05:42Heather Mills never disappoints in being outrageous,
01:05:45and I don't think it can ever be said
01:05:48that she stayed silent at any time.
01:05:51Heather Mills just cannot help herself.
01:05:55She has to express herself in the way that only she can.
01:06:00That was her downfall.
01:06:05She did what she could with the cards that she was offered.
01:06:08Did she act wisely? No.
01:06:11Should she have been better advised? Yes.
01:06:14Would she have taken that advice? Probably not.
01:06:18I think whatever you make of Heather Mills,
01:06:21there's lots to admire about her.
01:06:24Heather isn't a victim. Heather is never going to be a victim.
01:06:29She was fighting a fight and being loud about it,
01:06:32and in a man, that's OK, but in a woman, it wasn't acceptable.
01:06:39If you've got a drive for survival and you want to fight for justice,
01:06:44then you're going to take every angle that you can.
01:06:47Her courage is remarkable. She's one of those forces of nature.
01:06:51Do you like to dance? Tell her there's no problem, she can dance.
01:06:54In this era of kind of feisty womanhood,
01:06:58I think people would be more responsive
01:07:01and more appreciative of her gutsiness.
01:07:05Heather's story is a pretty mesmerising one.
01:07:08She starts as the beautiful model who's overcome great tragedy
01:07:13and made something of herself.
01:07:15Then she marries into rock royalty and that's a story of its own.
01:07:21That all goes horrendously wrong. Then you've got phone hacking.
01:07:26It traverses all these really fascinating cultural moments
01:07:31throughout the early 21st century,
01:07:34and I'm not sure we'll see her like again.
01:07:38Heather, this way. Heather, to your left, please.
01:07:42The shocking story of one of the world's most disturbing criminals
01:07:46who found a willing victim online.
01:07:48The cannibal next door.
01:07:50Brand new True Crime next Wednesday night at nine.
01:07:52Next, it's another full-on shift at Barnsley Casualty 24-7.
01:07:56Running the hub is sister Jane.
01:07:58Join the dedicated team around her and brave patients too in just a month.