A day in the extremely busy life of privacy-loving Heather Mills
Friday, 16 March 2007
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In the course of just one day she was interviewed on two television stations and took part in a pair of well-advertised photo calls outside Parliament and in London's Oxford Street, but Heather Mills McCartney insisted yesterday that she was no self-publicist.
Lady Mills McCartney, a campaigner for animal rights, said she only ever appeared on television in connection with a cause - in this case involving a film of her taking part in a vegetarian activists' raid on a pig farm.
But simultaneously, Lady Mills McCartney was being implicitly criticised by police in her home town of Brighton, where they said they were dealing with a "disproportionate" number of emergency calls from her.
Lady Mills McCartney, who is already tipped to become the first contestant to be voted off the American talent show Dancing with the Stars, before it has even begun, told GMTV yesterday: "Think about it. When do I ever go on TV, how many times in the last year? Once. I'm chased down the street day in, day out. I'm not a publicity-seeker. Try and think of one time in the last 14 years I've gone on TV to promote anything other than a cause. I don't go on to do a CD, I don't go on to promote something that's going to make me some money, otherwise I'd be absolutely loaded."
Asked why she is so unpopular with some of the general public, she replied: "The reason people have such extreme feelings about me is because I speak out and I speak the truth and they don't like it.
"I'm not Mrs Switzerland - I'm not going to sit there and just allow this to happen," she said, referring to her current campaign about the use of "farrowing" cages by pig farmers, which are used to house sows when they give birth and suckle.
Lady Mills McCartney, who has been the focus of heightened tabloid attention since her marriage and separation from Sir Paul, said she also has a new cause - changing Britain's privacy laws. Following her marriage breakdown, she was the subject of tabloid allegations that she once worked as a high-class call girl and made pornographic films, while her claims to have once slept rough and that a former fiancé was a gay MI6 agent have also been challenged.
She said: "Of course I have felt devastated and I have been horrified by certain people and what they have written. I now believe that this has happened to me so that I can change the privacy laws, just like I changed stuff in the European Parliament. I'm suing three newspapers at the moment. When I win, instead of making a two-line apology, they should be made to say 'we apologise, we lied about what we wrote'. Then we will get proper journalism."
Lady Mills McCartney has been accused of attempting to impersonate another Heather Mills, formerly a journalist with The Independent and The Observer, who now works for Private Eye. Yesterday, Lady Mills McCartney tried to turn this claim on its head, telling GMTV: "There's this woman going round apparently called Heather Mills saying 'Heather's pretending to be me' and I'm like, excuse me? She's trying to say I was pretending I was her because I said I did journalism. I wrote for the New Statesman and I wrote as a columnist. I produced for current affairs at the BBC. I'm not making anything up, they are true things."
She also dismissed a recently published picture of her wearing a fur coat in the 1980s. "Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney - everyone has worn fur coats in the past," she declared.
Moving on to BBC News 24, she spoke of her feelings for Sir Paul, who she has been facing across a courtroom in their divorce battle over her share of his fortune and custody of their three-year-old daughter, Beatrice. "I will never get over it. I will always love Paul. He is the father of my child, but I just have to move on and deal with it and there is nothing I can do."
She went on: "I have never spoken badly about my husband. I never will - he is the father of my child."
But Lady Mills McCartney said she was the victim of "huge powers" trying to destroy her. "I don't have that powerful system that he has. There are huge powers that create these things for reasons of their own. There is a huge agenda about trying to destroy me and put me down. I have a daughter to protect and I don't want to speak badly about any of the parties involved."
Later, Lady Mills McCartney went to the Houses of Parliament, where she delivered a giant Mother's Day card to Tony Blair, bearing the words: " No Happy Mother's Day for Britain's Pigs - Ban the Farrowing Crate". Shortly afterwards, she delivered another card, with the words, "This is not just torture - this is M&S torture," to Marks and Spencer's in Oxford Street. M&S has said it is phasing out the use of farrowing cages.
While she was taking part in the photocalls, Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore, of Brighton and Hove Police, spoke about Lady Mills McCartney's frequent calls to his force: "We are dutybound to respond, but clearly people who make lots of calls to the police run the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf."
He added that although he did not believe she was "wasting police time", "officers who have attended previously to find there have been no grounds might not take any claims seriously, and that's the danger we face."
In her own words
On being harassed by the media:
"I now believe that this has happened to me so that I can change the privacy laws, just like I changed stuff in the European Parliament."
On her campaigns over animal rights and landmines:
"The reason people have such extreme feelings about me is because I speak out and I speak the truth and they don't like it."
On the breakdown of her relationship with Sir Paul McCartney:
"I will never get over it. I will always love Paul."
On wearing a fur coat:
"Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney - everyone has worn fur coats in the past."
On dancing:
[Lady Mills McCartney is to be a contestant in Dancing With the Stars, a US version of Strictly Come Dancing.] "What I want to do is show that you can get out there and do anything with an artificial leg."
