Heather Mills McCartney
Encyclopedia
Heather Anne Mills is a former model, an English charity campaigner and the ex-wife of musician Sir Paul McCartney
. During their marriage she was known as Heather Mills McCartney.
Mills started her own model agency in 1986, and married Alfie Karmal on 6 May 1989, but divorced him in 1991. Mills was living with her ski instructor Miloš Pogačar in Croatia
in 1990, just before the Croatian War started, and later organised supplies for Croatia, accepting modelling assignments in Austria to pay for the trip. In London in 1993, Mills was hit by a police motorbike and suffered serious injuries, losing part of her left leg, six inches below her knee. She later sold her story to the News of the World
and used the proceeds to establish the Heather Mills Health Trust, which recycles discarded prosthetic limbs.
Mills met McCartney at a Pride of Britain
charity event, and they were married on 11 June 2002. Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003. Mills separated from McCartney in 2006, which led to a highly publicised divorce in which she was awarded £24.3 million in a court settlement on 17 March 2008. Mills is a patron of Viva!, the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation, vice-president of the Limbless Association
and was formerly a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association
Adopt-A-Minefield
program. She continues to work on behalf of various campaigns, including aid for amputees, animal rights
and for the banning of land mines.
, Hampshire
, to John "Mark" Francis Mills (a former British paratrooper), and his wife, Beatrice Mary Mills, née Finlay, who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. Mills' father was adopted at age seven and grew up in Brighton
, where his foster parents had a grocery shop, although his foster-father also worked as a mechanic for a Grand Prix
racing team. Her mother was born in India, during World War II
, but was educated at English boarding school
s. Mills' parents met at Newcastle University, and were married against the wishes of Finlay's father, who did not attend the wedding, and only saw his daughter once more before he died. Mills' mother spoke several languages and played the piano, and her father played banjo and guitar, liked photography (winning an Evening Standard
award), and took part in numerous sports. He was very fond of animals (working for the RSPCA for a time), and Mills remembered her family always having a dog and a cat, as well as once having a pet goose and a white nanny goat that was allowed to roam the house in Libanus, near Brecon
, which was a house Mills' grandparents owned. The Mills' family spent their holidays in Libanus and also lived there for a time. When Mills was six years old, the family moved north to Alnwick
, in Northumberland
, but moved shortly after to a block of flats in Washington, Tyne and Wear
, and then on to Cockshott Farm, in Rothbury
, Northumberland. Mills attended Usworth Grange Primary school, and then Usworth Comprehensive school
in Washington. (She visited Usworth Comprehensive in 2003, as guest of honour at a prize-giving event and to support the school against plans for its closure).
Mills later wrote that she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a swimming pool attendant when she was eight years old, but her next door neighbour, Margaret Ambler, who was sexually abused by the swimming pool attendant, alleged that Mills' story was "nothing what she made it out to be", that Mills was never a victim, and the pool attendant did not commit suicide, as Mills had written. Although having received a letter from Mills offering £10,000 to stop a court case, Ambler complained that the story had caused her deep discomfort by bringing the incident to national attention, so she sued for breach of privacy, accepting an out-of-court settlement of £5,000 in compensation, and £54,000 legal costs.
Mills' mother left home when Mills was nine years old, which left Mills, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister, Fiona, in the care of their father. Mills said that her father once threw her brother against a window for making a mess on the carpet with crayons. The window broke and her brother had to be taken to hospital, where Mills' father explained that the boy had fallen on some glass in the garden. Fiona Mills said: "Our family were always short of money and our father demanded that we find food and clothes so we turned to shoplifting, learnt to hide from the bailiffs and became experts at domestic duties. I’m not ashamed to say that we were forced to steal because when you are a young child, you’d rather do that than face a beating from your father". (Their father disputed his daughters' allegations that he was violent towards them, later releasing home movies of family holidays in Wales, showing Mills playing happily). Mills later wrote that she often stole food from supermarkets as a child: "By ten I was an old hand. Pinching food was really quite easy I discovered". In 2006, she visited the Sainsbury's store in her home town and was refused entry by a member of staff because she had once been caught shoplifting there.
, London, although her brother went to Brighton
to live with his paternal grandparents. Mills later wrote that at the age of 15 she ran away to join a funfair, and then lived in a cardboard box under Waterloo Station
for four months, although Stapely refuted this by saying that she occasionally left home at weekends to travel with a young man who worked for a funfair in London. During her stated period of homelessness, her school records indicate that she and her sister were both enrolled at Usworth comprehensive in Tyne and Wear until April 1983, and then at Hydeburn Comprehensive, in Balham, on 6 June 1983, where they both stayed until 2 July 1984. Mills remembered that a teacher at the Hydeburn once said, "there's no hope for her at all", and that she left school with no academic qualifications. In the same year, her father had another daughter, Claire Mills, with a new partner.
Mills worked for a croissant shop, but was sacked, and vowed "never to work for anyone else again". She later wrote that the owner of a jewellery shop in Clapham gave her a job on Saturdays, but Jim Guy (the owner of Penrose Jewellers) later stated: "Everything she wrote about me was lies, I never gave her a job; she just hung around and made tea. She told me her father was dead. The only thing that was true was she nicked [stole] stuff from the shop", which Guy said was worth £20,000. Mills admitted that she had stolen some gold chains and sold them to buy a moped
, and when Guy reported the theft, she was put on probation
.
Mills and her mother reconciled in 1989, but her mother died shortly after, during surgery for a minor thrombosis
operation. She then worked at a casino, a sunbed salon, and the Bananas cocktail bar in London.
Alfie Karmal (the son of a Palestinian father and Greek mother), was ten years older than Mills when they met in 1986, while she was working as a waitress at the Bananas cocktail club in Wardour Street, London. Karmal bought her new clothes, Cartier
jewellery and paid for cosmetic surgery when she complained that her breasts were sagging. She later said that she had had a breast reduction
operation, reducing her bra size from a 34E to a 34C. She reached the final of the Cinzano
Model of the Year Competition, so Karmal, who had moved into the computer industry, set up a model agency for her, ExSell Management, although it was not successful. Mills later tried to sell it for £5,000 but could not find a buyer. In 1987, Mills went to live in Paris, telling Karmal that a cosmetics company had given her a modelling contract, but became the mistress
of millionaire Lebanese businessman George Kazan for two years, and took part in a photo session for a stills-only German sex education
manual called Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love), in which she was photographed explicitly simulating sex with an equally nude male model, Peter Wilson. She received about £150 for the session. She also modelled for full-frontal
nude photographs.
After returning to London, Mills asked Karmal to marry her. Karmal said yes, but on one condition: "I told her I couldn't marry her until she did something about her compulsive lying, and she agreed to see a psychiatrist for eight weeks. She admitted she had a problem and said it was because she'd been forced to lie as a child by her father". Mills had told Karmal that she had a driving licence, and three A-levels, which Karmal later learned was not true. On 6 May 1989, Mills married Karmal (who had two sons from a previous marriage), and moved into a four-bedroom house in Dobbs Weir
, Hertfordshire. Although Mills proposed to Karmal, she later said that every man she has been out with "has asked me to marry him within a week". While married to Karmal, she suffered two ectopic pregnancies, so Karmal paid for her to go on holiday to Croatia with his children and ex-wife (with whom Mills had become friends), in 1990, but Mills ended up living with her ski instructor, Pogačar, shortly before the Croatian War began. Mills then set up a refugee crisis centre in London, helping over 20 people to escape the war. She drove by herself to deliver donations to Croatia, taking modelling assignments in Austria on the way to pay for the trip, later saying that she "worked on the front line in a war zone in the former Yugoslavia
for two years where there were mines everywhere that weren't marked". Karmal and Mills were divorced in 1991, and Karmal now lives in Vancouver, Canada. Mills was later engaged to Raffaele Mincione (a bond dealer for the Industrial Bank of Japan
) in 1993.
On 8 August 1993, Mills and Mincione walked to the corner of De Vere Gardens and Kensington Road, London, but while crossing Kensington Road Mills was knocked down by a police motorcycle (the last in a convoy of three), which was responding to an emergency call. Mills suffered crushed ribs, a punctured lung, and the loss of her left leg 6 inches below the knee; a metal plate was later attached to her pelvis. In October 1993, she had another operation which further shortened her leg. Mills was awarded £200,000 by the police authority as recompense for her injuries, even though the police motorcyclist, PC Osbourne, was later cleared by magistrates of driving without due care and attention. After the accident, Mills sold her story to the News of the World, and gave other interviews, saying she earned £180,000. She used the money to set up the Heather Mills Health Trust which delivers prosthetic limbs to people, particularly children, who have lost limbs after stepping on landmines. Mills often shows people her prosthetic leg; once taking it off during an interview on the American talk show Larry King Live
, in 2002.
Mills booked herself into the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida, which put her on a raw food vegan diet, using wheat grass and garlic poultices to heal her wound. After an operation, Mills discovered that she had been previously identified as having an O rhesus negative blood type
, when in fact she was A rhesus negative, which had interfered with her attempts to follow the so-called blood type diet
. As her prosthetic leg had to be replaced on a regular basis (because the size of the amputated stump kept changing as it healed), she had the idea to collect thousands of discarded prosthetic limbs for amputees in Croatia, persuading the Brixton prison
governor to get inmates to dismantle and pack them before being transported. The first convoy of limbs arrived in Zagreb
in October 1994, and Mills travelled with the convoy to film interviews with some of the recipients for the Good Morning with Anne and Nick
daytime TV show. However, Croatian citizens were already supplied with prosthetic limbs by the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, which paid for the fitting of limbs and rehabilitation of patients.
With the help of ghostwriter
Pamela Cockerill, Mills wrote a book about her experience: Out on a Limb (1995), which was republished in America as A Single Step (2002). Extracts from Out on a Limb were serialised in The Daily Mail in March 2000. Mills handed all the proceeds from the book to Adopt-A-Minefield, and stated that it was one of "the few charities that 100% of their donations goes to clear minefields and survivor assistance". In 1995, Mills got engaged to British media executive Marcus Stapleton, after being together for only 16 days, and was then engaged to respected documentary filmmaker Chris Terrill
in 1999, after only 12 days in Cambodia, where they were making a film about landmines. Mills ended their relationship five days before their planned wedding day, later telling friends in the media that she had called the wedding off because Terrill was gay, an MI6 agent, and that his mission was to undermine her anti-landmine work. Terrill had once told Mills that he had been interviewed by the intelligence services when he was thinking of a career with the Foreign Office, but later said, "I soon realised that Heather had a somewhat elastic relationship with the truth, which she was able to stretch impressively sometimes". Terrill also claims that although Mills stated she was a vegetarian at the time, she often cooked her speciality dish for him; Lancashire hotpot
(which contains lamb) and her ex sister-in-law, Dianna Karmal, claims that Mills only became a vegetarian after meeting McCartney. In 2003, the Open University
awarded her an honorary doctorate for her philanthropic work on behalf of amputees.
, during the Pride of Britain Awards event in April 1999, where McCartney presented an award to an animal rights activist, and Mills presented the Outstanding Bravery Award to Helen Smith, also making an appeal on behalf of the Heather Mills Health Trust. McCartney also presented an award dedicated to his late wife, Linda McCartney
. McCartney talked to Mills about donating to her charity – later giving her £150,000. In the autumn of 1999, Mills and her sister recorded "VO!CE"; a song they wrote to raise funds for Mills' charity, with McCartney agreeing to sing backing vocals. After recording the song in Greece (where Mills’ sister lived, running the independent label Coda Records), the sisters stayed overnight at McCartney's estate in Peasmarsh
, Sussex, in early November, where McCartney added vocals to the song. Having sparked the interest of the tabloids about his appearances with Mills at events, McCartney appeared publicly beside her at a party in January 2000 to celebrate her 32nd birthday.
While on holiday in the Lake District
, McCartney proposed to Mills on 23 July 2001, giving her a £15,000 diamond and sapphire
ring he had purchased in Jaipur
, India, when they were both there on holiday. Former escort
Denize Hewitt, then a friend, claims that Mills said she would give McCartney an ultimatum to marry her, and threaten to leave him if he refused. Mills stipulated that McCartney had to agree to stop smoking cannabis before she agreed to marry him, complaining that he used the drug "as regularly as others drink cups of tea", and that she has never taken any illegal drugs in her life.
, had died of breast cancer. Their wedding was an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie
(once the home of Shane Leslie
), in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan
, Ireland. Mills said that she liked to cook traditional (but meat-free) Christmas dinners for McCartney and as many of his family as possible, and that McCartney had encouraged her to give up her self-confessed addiction to chocolate and Snickers
bars. When asked by chat-show host Larry King
(in 2003), how life was with McCartney, Mills replied "Great, really great," but also said that she was surprised at how tidy McCartney was: "He always cleans up before the cleaner comes. So I said for a while that's crazy, but what's good is if I cook the dinner, he'll clean everything up."
In 2003, McCartney played a concert in Red Square
, Russia. Vladimir Putin
gave Mills and McCartney a tour of the Kremlin
. Mills went on every tour with McCartney during their marriage, as McCartney insisted on her accompanying him, with Mills saying that she helped to design the stage sets and lighting, and also helped McCartney to write songs. McCartney later said that Mills' contribution was giving him an acrylic fingernail to protect a finger on his left hand that often bled after playing guitar. McCartney admitted that Mills inspired him, as "being in love with her makes me want to write songs", such as "Too Much Rain" on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
, and "See Your Sunshine" ("She makes me feel glad/I want her so bad") from Memory Almost Full
. Another composition inspired by Mills was used as the bridal march
at their wedding.
During a Parkinson
chat show on 22 February 2003, host Michael Parkinson
asked if it was because of McCartney that Mills did not give any interviews, and she replied that she wanted to protect McCartney, his children, and their privacy. On the same show she said that her previous ectopic pregnancies had damaged her fertility, and that her chances of getting pregnant were small, although the couple announced that they were expecting their first child in May 2003. Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003, who was named after Mills' mother, and McCartney's aunt. It was later revealed that Mills had suffered a miscarriage
in the first year of marriage to McCartney. Mills was invited by Larry King to interview Paul Newman
, which was broadcast by CNN
on 17 April 2004. McCartney had arranged for Newman to be interviewed by Mills, but critical reactions to the show were mixed. Mills appeared on other TV programmes, such as BBC
1's Question Time
and GMTV
, and persuaded McCartney to join her on ITV
's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Although stating that they had a good sex life, Mills started complaining about the marriage to friends, saying that McCartney was "a boring old fart", and wondering why he had no social life, as well as saying "he has no friends and it's driving me mad". She did not like living at the remote McCartney home in Peasmarsh: "The only thing he [McCartney] ever does is occasionally go to the pub with his roadie. We never have parties or do fun things". After some time apart, Mills and McCartney separated on 17 May 2006. In November 2007, Mills gave a number of interviews, saying that the breakdown of the marriage was caused by her husband's daughter, Stella
, whom she described as "jealous" and "evil". Mills had previously talked with New York
magazine, saying Stella had once issued a press release confirming how much she liked her new stepmother, although Stella's publicist denied that such a statement had ever been issued.
After dismissing Anthony Julius
, a Mishcon de Reya
lawyer, Mills stated she would represent herself in the upcoming divorce hearing, with help from her sister Fiona, David Rosen (a solicitor-advocate), and Michael Shilub, an American attorney. In leaked
documents, Mills complained that McCartney was often drunk, smoked cannabis, stabbed her with a broken wine glass, pushed her over a table, and pushed her into a bathtub when she was pregnant with their daughter. Referring to her part in the marriage, Mills said that she had been a full-time wife, mother, lover, confidante, business partner and psychologist to McCartney. McCartney’s lawyers studied Mills’ book: Life Balance: The Essential Keys to a Lifetime of Wellbeing (released on 25 May 2006), as it contradicted many of her claims, such as when she praised McCartney in the book for "bringing me breakfast in bed every morning, no matter how he feels, and I do the dinner, so we’ve got that agreement. It’s thoughtfulness". Mills' father reconciled with his daughter after meeting her and McCartney, when they introduced him to his granddaughter, Beatrice. After their separation, he said that it "took guts to represent yourself at the High Court", and that he was proud of his daughter, even though he thought she would be "torn to shreds" by McCartney's lawyers.
in London. At the start of the proceedings Mills asked for £125 million, but McCartney offered £15.8 million. Before the court case, Mills had employed the accountancy firm Lee and Allen to examine McCartney's publishing company, business assets and properties, saying that she had a tape recording of McCartney admitting his true worth, but the presiding judge, Mr Justice Bennett, turned down numerous requests for information by Lee and Allen. The judge accepted McCartney's assets as being £450 million, and not £800 million, as had been suggested.
The hearing took six days, finishing on 18 February 2008, with the judgment being made public on 17 March 2008. Mills was eventually awarded a lump sum of £16.5m, together with assets of £7.8m, which included the properties she owned at the time. The total was £24.3 million, plus payments of £35,000 per annum, for a nanny
and school costs for their daughter. In his judgment, Justice Bennett described Mills as a "kindly person" who argued her case with a "steely, yet courteous, determination", but concluded that much of her evidence
was, "not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid", and that overall she was a "less than impressive witness". The divorce was granted on 12 May 2008, and the preliminary divorce decree was finalised six weeks later. Mills applied unsuccessfully to keep the full judgment secret, saying that it could make her vulnerable to "crazed" fans of The Beatles
. She later considered trying to have the injunction
stopping her talking publicly about the case lifted, as the sections released were against her wishes, saying that it would "perhaps be better for the public to see everything". Mills later vowed to continue her legal fight to get full transcripts of the divorce court case made publicly available.
After the decision, Mills talked about McCartney: "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 ... I have never spoken badly about my husband. I never will, he is the father of my child". Mills later threatened to release tapes of McCartney in therapy talking about problems with his late wife, portraying him as a drug and alcohol addict, and researching McCartney's assets to prove he has more than £400 million. A High Court injunction preventing Mills talking about McCartney's family life could have led to a prison sentence if she breached it. McCartney said: "There'll be no more nagging, no more chaos, no more Heather ... bliss. I have peace at last".
Though Mills does not call herself Lady McCartney, which she became upon her marriage, as the former wife of a knight, she technically retains that title. Per Debrett's
: "Former wife of a Knight: She is addressed as the wife of a knight, provided that she does not remarry".
during April 2008, Mills faxed eight pages of instructions to the hotel on what she should and cannot eat. She was insistent that Beatrice’s strict vegan diet should be adhered to, and was "driving the hotel staff mad, faxing both the head chef and manager instructions and recipe suggestions for Bea". McCartney was furious, as he had successfully brought up his children as vegetarians. McCartney suggested taking Beatrice on a world tour in 2008, but Mills insisted on rules that would have to be followed: she would accompany her daughter for the 14 months in a private jet and no swearing would be allowed by musicians or road crew in front of her daughter.
In 2005, Mills became a patron of the British animal rights organisation Viva!, and the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation, which are both run by Juliet Gellatley
. In 2006, Mills and Gellatley attended a debate on fur at the Oxford Union
, where she presented a video depicting the skinning of a dog. She posed with her own dog in an anti-fur advertisement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which read: "If you wouldn't wear your dog, please don't wear fur".
In March 2006, Mills and McCartney travelled to Canada to bring attention to the country's annual seal hunt
. Sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States
, they complained that the hunt was inhumane, and called on the Canadian government to put an end to it. Their arrival on the floes sparked much attention in Newfoundland and Labrador
, where 90 percent of the sealers live. Mills and McCartney protested against seals being clubbed to death, pierced with boat hooks and sometimes skinned alive. Newfoundland and Labrador
's Premier, Danny Williams
, debated the issue with them on Larry King Live
, the issue being that seals are no longer hunted that way, and have not been for a while. Mills joined a Viva! film team at a pig farm in Somerset
, in February 2007, to publicise the use of restrictive farrowing crates
, which are used for sows who are suckling piglets. A video of the investigation was made available on the Internet.
Mills' relationship with PETA ended in 2007, when McCartney's daughter, Mary
, said she would not continue to take photographs for the organisation if Mills was involved with them. A PETA representative told the New York Post
: "Heather's exposé of the Chinese fur industry remains one of most popular videos on our site, but we don't have any imminent campaigns planned with her".
Mills spoke in Hyde Park, London
, on 19 November 2007, wearing a green t-shirt saying, "Vegan, you can't get greener", arguing in favour of veganism
on the grounds that livestock create more carbon
emissions than transport (although she drove a Mercedes four-wheel drive
car to the press conference, keeping the engine running for part of the morning). Mills said: "Eighty percent of global warming
comes from livestock and deforestation
. I'm not telling people to go vegan overnight. But if they stop drinking their cows' milk latte
s, maybe this sort of thing won't have to happen". She went on to say: "You have 25 other alternate milks in many health stores and supermarkets. It's kind of bizarre. Why don't we drink rat's milk or dog's milk or cat's milk? You know, there are many, many other options". This led The Daily Telegraph
, among others, to report the press conference under the headline, "Drink Rats' Milk, says Heather Mills".
In 2008, an old video surfaced of Mills wearing a mink
coat she had owned in 1989, but explained to reporters that she had bought it years before becoming involved in animal rights organisations or vegetarianism. Although she had separated from McCartney, Mills said: "It's only since I met Paul [McCartney] that I really got to understand how vegetarianism not only benefits your health massively but also makes a huge difference to the planet, to animals, and to feeding the world". In August 2008, she was honoured by the organisation Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), with the Celebrity Animal Activist Award, presented at the Animal Rights National Conference. On 28 August 2009, at the Celebrity Catwalk event in Hollywood, Mills showed off her new "recycled clothes from charity shops" range, called Be@one. It has not been well-received by either critics or the public. After her divorce, Mills pledged to give a "large portion" of her £24.3 million divorce settlement to Adopt-A-Minefield, but the charity has not received any to date. In June 2008, Mills was asked to talk at a New York party about the cruelty of puppy farms and to promote her book about animals, but was angry about the guests speaking over her speech, saying: "Listen up at the back. I haven’t been up for 24 hours and flew here from London to be ignored". Mills' former publicist of four years, Michele Elyzabeth, decided to cease representing her on 25 July 2008.
, Sussex, on the site of the old Big Fish Cafe, which she is reported to have purchased for £140,000. Mills is quoted as saying that she intends it to be the first in a worldwide chain of vegan restaurants. Whilst promoting the restaurant, Mills gave an interview to the BBC, stating that she'd been very proactive in the building-stages and, now that it was open, would give as much time to it as she could – working it around her charity work.
Mills bought the vegan food company Redwood Foods in 2009. The company, which is located in Corby
, Northants, sells 50 meat-free products, under the brand names Cheatin', VegiDeli, and Cheezly.
Mills has been accused by several newspapers of having embellished her life story: journalist Heather Mills, then at The Observer
, accused Mills of impersonating her for over a year in the late 1990s, showing people cuttings of articles the journalist had written, which helped Mills secure a job presenting The General
TV show, which was a BBC programme about Southampton General Hospital
. There were also doubts about Mills’ claim that she had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
(because the Heather Mills Health Trust had given away thousands of prosthetic limbs to landmine victims), but the nomination cannot be proven because the identities of all nominees are a secret for 50 years.
Stapely disputed Mills' statement that her mother had nearly lost a leg in a car crash, after Mills said, "her leg was only hanging on by a tiny flap of skin and flesh ... miraculously the surgeons managed to insert a metal plate and reattach it". Stapely said that Mills' mother had suffered a leg injury after a car crash, but recovered and was "a keen tennis player" and that Mills, "is simply a very confused woman for whom reality and fantasy have become blurred". He died in January 2011.
Mills said that she had once been asked to stand for parliament by the three main political parties, and had been offered a peerage
in 2001 (to become Baroness Mills) by the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair
, and a certain "Lord Macdonald". An ITV
documentary (McCartney vs McCartney: The Ex Files) interviewed three Lord Macdonalds, but not one of them could remember ever meeting Mills. British journalist Jasper Gerard, to whom Mills made the claims, also says she told him that she had cancelled a meeting with Bill Clinton in case her endorsement affected a US election outcome. Mills stated that she was once awarded the Outstanding Young Person of the Year award by the British Chambers of Commerce
, but did not challenge newspapers after they discovered there was no such award.
In 2006, Adnan Khashoggi
, the Saudi billionaire businessman and Kerry Packer
, the Australian media tycoon, were named in the News of the World as former clients of Mills from the time when she allegedly worked as an escort girl
. Packer's son denied that his late father had been involved. The newspaper provided an affidavit
from escort girl Denise Hewitt (who was paid £50,000 for the story), who said she worked with Mills providing sexual services and that Mills boasted of earning up to £10,000 in a single night. Mills often requested to work with two girls at a time "... to do a 'girlie scene
'. By this I knew she meant lesbian sex
" said Hewitt "I thought at the time that Heather may have been bisexual
". To substantiate its claims, the News of the World questioned Abdul Khoury, who was Khashoggi's personal secretary from 1977 to 2005. Khoury affirmed the veracity of reports that Mills "had sex with him [Khashoggi] on a number of occasions in return for money. Mr Khashoggi was always very pleased with Heather's performance. She was very athletic in bed". The Daily Mail produced accounts of another escort girl, Petrina Montrose and from other friends confirming that Mills had worked with them as an escort girl on many occasions. Montrose said that once "when all three of them were in the bedroom, Heather had ‘tried it on' with [escort girl] Joanna and suggested lesbian sex". Through her lawyers, Mills denied ever having been an escort girl and said she would sue as soon as her divorce was concluded. This has not happened.
In October 2006, Mills announced her intention to sue The Daily Mail, The Sun
and the Evening Standard. All the newspapers said that the stories "were obtained by proper methods and in accordance with good journalistic practice". The Sun, which regularly refers to Mills as "Mucca"—a play on McCartney's nickname "Macca"—responded by asking her to "tick the boxes" on a series of allegations the newspaper had made, stating, "It is not clear what exactly she plans to sue us about". Underneath the open questions, The Sun listed six allegations about her, with a blank box beside each one. The words beside the boxes read: "Hooker
, Liar
, Porn Star
, Fantasist
, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter
".
In December 2006, Mills told the BBC
that she had received death threats, and on 17 December 2006, police stated that a "non-specific threat" had been made to her safety. This led to more criticism that she was calling out the emergency services too often. In March 2007, Kevin Moore, Chief Superintendent of Sussex Police
, said that Mills was running "the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf", and added, "We do have to respond to a disproportionate high volume of calls from Heather Mills McCartney because of the situations she finds herself in, and this is regrettable as it takes officers away from other policing matters". Mills responded that the police had told her to contact them whenever she was being harassed
.
During a 5-day trial in July 2007, it was revealed that Mills had been physically assaulted by a Jay Kaycappa in Brighton. Kaycappa was a notorious paparazzi trying to photograph Mills while on shifts for a national newspaper and a regional press agency. Kaycappa, who had 132 previous criminal convictions, including perverting the course of justice, obtaining property by deception and driving offences and used ten aliases, was found guilty and sentenced to a 140-hour community order and ordered to pay Mills £100. and £1,000. court costs.
During several interviews in October 2007, Mills accused the media of giving her "worse press than a paedophile or a murderer". She also criticised the media over the treatment of Diana, Princess of Wales
—who, according to Mills, was "chased and killed" by paparazzi
—and of Kate McCann. Immediately before giving these interviews, her PR
adviser, Phil Hall (the ex-Editor of the News of the World), quit. In 2008, a survey commissioned by Marketing magazine showed Mills as one of the top five most hated celebrity women, along with Amy Winehouse
, Victoria Beckham
and Kerry Katona
.
In December 2008, the Channel 4
television comedy series Star Stories
broadcast a satirical mockumentary
of Mills' life story from her point of view. In 2009, after petitioning the Press Complaints Commission
in the UK about being lied about in the press, five British tabloids (The Sun, The Daily Express, News of the World, Sunday Mirror and Daily Mirror) publicly apologised to Mills about printing false, hurtful or defamatory stories about her. Another tabloid (the Daily Mail), sent a private letter of apology. The stories in question were not those alleging prostitution, lying, or being a fantasist, but more recent untrue stories concerning her daughter, false allegations of a romantic relationship, false suggestions regarding cosmetic surgery, and false accounts of her spending. On 4 May 2009, The Sun published a small paragraph saying that they have been asked to make clear that Mills "denies spending £10 million of her settlement; trying to sell her home to her ex-husband; masterminding a smear campaign against him; spending £1 million on a swimming pool, £0.5 million on staff wages and £6 million on properties as they had reported" and they regretted "the misunderstanding". Mills has complained that over 4,400 abusive articles about her have been published.
, after a false report that the Charity Commission
had investigated her about the money she raised for the Indian earthquake victims appeal in 2001. The extent and nature of the British press coverage of Mills has been criticised, as in May 2003, when columnist Matt Seaton (The Guardian), wrote a piece declaring, "There is little that is edifying in the symbolic lynching of Heather [Mills]. The poisonous judgmentalism that drives it is in the worst tradition of small town gossip. It is prurient, spiteful, hypocritical, and we should cry 'shame' on it". Publicist Mark Borkowski wrote in the Independent on Sunday, on 23 March 2008: "Not since the cult of Myra Hindley have we encountered so much vitriol aimed at one woman". Feminist writer Natasha Walter
has compared the coverage to that of Britney Spears
. Terence Blacker
wrote that public figures who are young, female, pretty and fair-haired, are often subjected to public bullying which is explained as "intense media interest", such as Diana, Princess of Wales
, Paula Yates
, Ulrika Jonsson
, and Mills.
Kira Cochrane
, in The Guardian, said that "every misogynist
epithet available" has been used against Mills. "She has somehow become the vessel through which it is acceptable for both pundits and the public to express their very worst feelings about women". Joan Smith, writing in The Independent
, said that newspaper "Bullies love a weakling"; quoting the Daily Mirrors front page headline: "Lady Liar", and The Sun newspaper writing "Pornocchio" over Mills' face (in reference to Pinocchio
's nose getting longer when he lied, and her past photographs). Smith went on to say that Mills had "dreamt of becoming the wife of a famous man but did not realise that he had fantasies of his own, marrying an attractive younger woman when he hadn't got over the loss of his first wife. Mills behaved foolishly when the marriage failed but she does not deserve the treatment she has had in the mass-market press. It is merciless bullying of an unstable, vulnerable woman". In 2009, Mills reported a bogus charity was set up to extract information about her marriage. News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is alleged to have set up the sting. The British tabloid newspaper The Mirror ran the headline, "Macca marriage to Heather was mistake of the decade" following an interview McCartney gave to Q magazine
. McCartney immediately moved to deny this statement, and then went on to publicly print the original transcript to prove the Mirror article was false on his official website.
newspaper reported that Mills met with officers from the London Metropolitan Police
who have shown her evidence, seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire
, which could form the basis of a claim against the News of the World
tabloid newspaper for breach of privacy over alleged phone hacking. Mills's name and private mobile phone number were listed in Mulcaire's notes along with those of her friends and associates. Mills herself later alleged that a journalist working for the Mirror Group
had admitted to her in 2001 that he had hacked her phone.
in 2007, with dancing partner Jonathan Roberts
. On 21 December 2009 she was revealed as one of the contestants on the fifth series of Dancing on Ice
and was paired with Matt Evers. She has stated that she would take part in the show in order to support the charities she frequently donates to, and also to show that disabled people can do more than people think. A subsequent campaign to get Mills removed from the show began online, despite being the favourite to leave first, she was not voted off in the initial show. Mills has also claimed that she turned down an offer of £350,000—the same figure given to participant Vinnie Jones
—to appear on the final series of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother
. On 12 January 2010, her 42nd birthday, she was involved in a minor car accident following rehearsal for Dancing on Ice. She was not hurt.
, East Sussex and in Hove
, East Sussex, having recently sold her Manhattan
apartment at 173 Perry Street in West Village for $5 million which she bought in 2009 for $4.9 million.
She continues to campaign for amputees, in addition to promoting the distribution of prostheses around the world, and has been involved with the development of the Heather Mills McCartney Cosmesis, which gives amputees in America the chance to wear a Dorset Orthopaedic cosmesis
, without having to travel to the UK. Mills is also vice-president of the Limbless Association. In 2004, she received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf
, and in the same year, the University of California, Irvine
, gave her their 2004 Human Security Award, and created the Heather Mills McCartney Fellowship in Human Security to support graduate students conducting research on pressing human security issues. She is a former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association Adopt-A-Minefield programme.
On 1 December 2007, Neil Simpson published The Unsinkable Heather Mills: The Unauthorized Biography of the Great Pretender. On 4 June 2010 a claim for compensation alleging sexual and maternity discrimination and constructive dismissal brought by a Sara Trumble, who had been employed since April 2004 as nanny to Mills' daughter, was dismissed unanimously at Ashford Employment Tribunal Centre, Kent. The tribunal concluded that all of the claims were unfounded. Employment judge Steven Vowles said that "Mills's kindness towards Miss Trumble showed that she genuinely cared about her as both an employee and a friend".
On 17 December 2010, it was announced that Mills has been offered a trial in the British disabled ski team's development squad for the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games
to be held in Sochi, Russia, and in April 2011, she bought a ski chalet near Goldeck am Millstätter See
, in the Austrian Alps
, for £1.4million as a base for her 2014 Winter Paralympic Games
training. The Daily Mail reported, on 12 May 2011, that Mills was airlifted to hospital by helicopter, "after her right shoulder blade broke in several places", following a skiing accident, when she had collided with a frozen plastic pole during training with the British Disabled Ski Team’s development squad on the Mölltaler glacier in Austria. In May 2011, Hello!
magazine ran an article about Heather Mills' ambitions for the 2014 Paralympic Games as well as her efforts to stay fit and healthy with her Vegan lifestyle. On 27 November 2011 it was reported that Ms Mills had again had a skiing accident on the Mölltaler glacier, this time injuring the stump of her partly amputated left leg, as well as breaking her thumb. Austria's daily Kleine Zeitung newspaper reported her as saying that two male teenagers came to her rescue, but "when I took off my artificial leg they screamed in terror, because they thought the leg had come off in the accident". She has been told that it will take five weeks before she can resume training.
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
. During their marriage she was known as Heather Mills McCartney.
Mills started her own model agency in 1986, and married Alfie Karmal on 6 May 1989, but divorced him in 1991. Mills was living with her ski instructor Miloš Pogačar in Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
in 1990, just before the Croatian War started, and later organised supplies for Croatia, accepting modelling assignments in Austria to pay for the trip. In London in 1993, Mills was hit by a police motorbike and suffered serious injuries, losing part of her left leg, six inches below her knee. She later sold her story to the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
and used the proceeds to establish the Heather Mills Health Trust, which recycles discarded prosthetic limbs.
Mills met McCartney at a Pride of Britain
Pride of Britain Awards
The Pride of Britain Awards is an annual event in the United Kingdom, honouring ordinary people who have acted bravely or extraordinarily in challenging situations....
charity event, and they were married on 11 June 2002. Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003. Mills separated from McCartney in 2006, which led to a highly publicised divorce in which she was awarded £24.3 million in a court settlement on 17 March 2008. Mills is a patron of Viva!, the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation, vice-president of the Limbless Association
Limbless Association
The Limbless Association, is a charitable organization in the United Kingdom set up to help those with limb loss, and assist their families and carers. It is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales and its charity registration number is 803533...
and was formerly a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association
United Nations Association
The United Nations Associations are non-governmental organizations that exist in various countries to enhance the relationship between the people of a member state and the United Nations, raise public awareness of the UN and its work, promote the general goals of the UN and act as an advisory body...
Adopt-A-Minefield
Adopt-A-Minefield
Adopt-A-Minefield is a United Kingdom-based charity which raises awareness about landmines and their associated problems, and raises funds to clear minefields and help survivors of landmine accidents...
program. She continues to work on behalf of various campaigns, including aid for amputees, animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
and for the banning of land mines.
Early life
Mills was born in AldershotAldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
, Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
, to John "Mark" Francis Mills (a former British paratrooper), and his wife, Beatrice Mary Mills, née Finlay, who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. Mills' father was adopted at age seven and grew up in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
, where his foster parents had a grocery shop, although his foster-father also worked as a mechanic for a Grand Prix
Formula One
Formula One, also known as Formula 1 or F1 and referred to officially as the FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of single seater auto racing sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile . The "formula" designation in the name refers to a set of rules with which...
racing team. Her mother was born in India, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, but was educated at English boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
s. Mills' parents met at Newcastle University, and were married against the wishes of Finlay's father, who did not attend the wedding, and only saw his daughter once more before he died. Mills' mother spoke several languages and played the piano, and her father played banjo and guitar, liked photography (winning an Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
award), and took part in numerous sports. He was very fond of animals (working for the RSPCA for a time), and Mills remembered her family always having a dog and a cat, as well as once having a pet goose and a white nanny goat that was allowed to roam the house in Libanus, near Brecon
Brecon
Brecon is a long-established market town and community in southern Powys, Mid Wales, with a population of 7,901. It was the county town of the historic county of Brecknockshire; although its role as such was eclipsed with the formation of Powys, it remains an important local centre...
, which was a house Mills' grandparents owned. The Mills' family spent their holidays in Libanus and also lived there for a time. When Mills was six years old, the family moved north to Alnwick
Alnwick
Alnwick is a small market town in north Northumberland, England. The town's population was just over 8000 at the time of the 2001 census and Alnwick's district population was 31,029....
, in Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
, but moved shortly after to a block of flats in Washington, Tyne and Wear
Washington, Tyne and Wear
Washington is a town in the City of Sunderland in Tyne and Wear, England. Historically part of County Durham, it joined a new county in 1974 with the creation of Tyne and Wear...
, and then on to Cockshott Farm, in Rothbury
Rothbury
Rothbury is a town and civil parish in Northumberland, England. It is located on the River Coquet, northwest of Morpeth and north-northwest of Newcastle upon Tyne...
, Northumberland. Mills attended Usworth Grange Primary school, and then Usworth Comprehensive school
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...
in Washington. (She visited Usworth Comprehensive in 2003, as guest of honour at a prize-giving event and to support the school against plans for its closure).
Mills later wrote that she was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a swimming pool attendant when she was eight years old, but her next door neighbour, Margaret Ambler, who was sexually abused by the swimming pool attendant, alleged that Mills' story was "nothing what she made it out to be", that Mills was never a victim, and the pool attendant did not commit suicide, as Mills had written. Although having received a letter from Mills offering £10,000 to stop a court case, Ambler complained that the story had caused her deep discomfort by bringing the incident to national attention, so she sued for breach of privacy, accepting an out-of-court settlement of £5,000 in compensation, and £54,000 legal costs.
Mills' mother left home when Mills was nine years old, which left Mills, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister, Fiona, in the care of their father. Mills said that her father once threw her brother against a window for making a mess on the carpet with crayons. The window broke and her brother had to be taken to hospital, where Mills' father explained that the boy had fallen on some glass in the garden. Fiona Mills said: "Our family were always short of money and our father demanded that we find food and clothes so we turned to shoplifting, learnt to hide from the bailiffs and became experts at domestic duties. I’m not ashamed to say that we were forced to steal because when you are a young child, you’d rather do that than face a beating from your father". (Their father disputed his daughters' allegations that he was violent towards them, later releasing home movies of family holidays in Wales, showing Mills playing happily). Mills later wrote that she often stole food from supermarkets as a child: "By ten I was an old hand. Pinching food was really quite easy I discovered". In 2006, she visited the Sainsbury's store in her home town and was refused entry by a member of staff because she had once been caught shoplifting there.
London and modelling
When her father was jailed for 18 months after being convicted of fraud, Mills left home with her sister to live with her mother and partner (Crossroads actor Charles Stapley), in ClaphamClapham
Clapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
, London, although her brother went to Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...
to live with his paternal grandparents. Mills later wrote that at the age of 15 she ran away to join a funfair, and then lived in a cardboard box under Waterloo Station
Waterloo station
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. The station is owned and operated by Network Rail and is close to the South Bank of the River Thames, and in Travelcard Zone 1....
for four months, although Stapely refuted this by saying that she occasionally left home at weekends to travel with a young man who worked for a funfair in London. During her stated period of homelessness, her school records indicate that she and her sister were both enrolled at Usworth comprehensive in Tyne and Wear until April 1983, and then at Hydeburn Comprehensive, in Balham, on 6 June 1983, where they both stayed until 2 July 1984. Mills remembered that a teacher at the Hydeburn once said, "there's no hope for her at all", and that she left school with no academic qualifications. In the same year, her father had another daughter, Claire Mills, with a new partner.
Mills worked for a croissant shop, but was sacked, and vowed "never to work for anyone else again". She later wrote that the owner of a jewellery shop in Clapham gave her a job on Saturdays, but Jim Guy (the owner of Penrose Jewellers) later stated: "Everything she wrote about me was lies, I never gave her a job; she just hung around and made tea. She told me her father was dead. The only thing that was true was she nicked [stole] stuff from the shop", which Guy said was worth £20,000. Mills admitted that she had stolen some gold chains and sold them to buy a moped
Moped
Mopeds are a type of low-powered motorcycle designed to provide economical and relatively safe transport with minimal licensing requirements.Mopeds were once all equipped with bicycle-like pedals , but moped has been increasingly applied by governments to vehicles without pedals, based on their...
, and when Guy reported the theft, she was put on probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
.
Mills and her mother reconciled in 1989, but her mother died shortly after, during surgery for a minor thrombosis
Thrombosis
Thrombosis is the formation of a blood clot inside a blood vessel, obstructing the flow of blood through the circulatory system. When a blood vessel is injured, the body uses platelets and fibrin to form a blood clot to prevent blood loss...
operation. She then worked at a casino, a sunbed salon, and the Bananas cocktail bar in London.
Alfie Karmal (the son of a Palestinian father and Greek mother), was ten years older than Mills when they met in 1986, while she was working as a waitress at the Bananas cocktail club in Wardour Street, London. Karmal bought her new clothes, Cartier
Cartier SA
Cartier S.A., commonly known as Cartier , is a French luxury jeweler and watch manufacturer. The corporation carries the name of the Cartier family of jewellers whose control ended in 1964 and who were known for numerous pieces including the "Bestiary" , the diamond necklace created for Bhupinder...
jewellery and paid for cosmetic surgery when she complained that her breasts were sagging. She later said that she had had a breast reduction
Breast reduction
Reduction mammoplasty is the plastic surgery procedure for correcting over-sized breasts...
operation, reducing her bra size from a 34E to a 34C. She reached the final of the Cinzano
Cinzano
Cinzano is an Italian brand of vermouth, a brand owned since 1999 by Gruppo Campari. It comes in four versions:*Cinzano Rosso, which is amber-coloured;*Cinzano Bianco, which is white and drier than Rosso, yet still considered a sweet vermouth;...
Model of the Year Competition, so Karmal, who had moved into the computer industry, set up a model agency for her, ExSell Management, although it was not successful. Mills later tried to sell it for £5,000 but could not find a buyer. In 1987, Mills went to live in Paris, telling Karmal that a cosmetics company had given her a modelling contract, but became the mistress
Mistress (lover)
A mistress is a long-term female lover and companion who is not married to her partner; the term is used especially when her partner is married. The relationship generally is stable and at least semi-permanent; however, the couple does not live together openly. Also the relationship is usually,...
of millionaire Lebanese businessman George Kazan for two years, and took part in a photo session for a stills-only German sex education
Sex education
Sex education refers to formal programs of instruction on a wide range of issues relating to human sexuality, including human sexual anatomy, sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse, reproductive health, emotional relations, reproductive rights and responsibilities, abstinence, contraception, and...
manual called Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love), in which she was photographed explicitly simulating sex with an equally nude male model, Peter Wilson. She received about £150 for the session. She also modelled for full-frontal
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
nude photographs.
Dobbs Weir
Dobbs Weir is a both a weir near and an area of Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire in England on the River Lea. It is well known for angling, outdoor beauty and watersports. It is overlooked by the Fish and Eels pub.-Angling:...
, Hertfordshire. Although Mills proposed to Karmal, she later said that every man she has been out with "has asked me to marry him within a week". While married to Karmal, she suffered two ectopic pregnancies, so Karmal paid for her to go on holiday to Croatia with his children and ex-wife (with whom Mills had become friends), in 1990, but Mills ended up living with her ski instructor, Pogačar, shortly before the Croatian War began. Mills then set up a refugee crisis centre in London, helping over 20 people to escape the war. She drove by herself to deliver donations to Croatia, taking modelling assignments in Austria on the way to pay for the trip, later saying that she "worked on the front line in a war zone in the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
for two years where there were mines everywhere that weren't marked". Karmal and Mills were divorced in 1991, and Karmal now lives in Vancouver, Canada. Mills was later engaged to Raffaele Mincione (a bond dealer for the Industrial Bank of Japan
Industrial Bank of Japan
The , based in Tokyo, Japan, was one of the largest banks in the world during the latter half of the 20th century.It combined with Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank and Fuji Bank in 2002 to form Mizuho Financial Group.- History :...
) in 1993.
Accident and amputees
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
, in 2002.
Mills booked herself into the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida, which put her on a raw food vegan diet, using wheat grass and garlic poultices to heal her wound. After an operation, Mills discovered that she had been previously identified as having an O rhesus negative blood type
Blood type
A blood type is a classification of blood based on the presence or absence of inherited antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells . These antigens may be proteins, carbohydrates, glycoproteins, or glycolipids, depending on the blood group system...
, when in fact she was A rhesus negative, which had interfered with her attempts to follow the so-called blood type diet
Blood type diet
The blood type diet is a nutritional diet advocated by Peter D'Adamo, a naturopathic physician, and outlined in his book Eat Right 4 Your Type. D'Adamo claims that ABO blood type is the most important factor in determining a healthy diet, and he recommends distinct diets for each blood type...
. As her prosthetic leg had to be replaced on a regular basis (because the size of the amputated stump kept changing as it healed), she had the idea to collect thousands of discarded prosthetic limbs for amputees in Croatia, persuading the Brixton prison
Brixton (HM Prison)
HM Prison Brixton is a local men's prison, located in Brixton area of the London Borough of Lambeth, in inner-South London, England. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service.-History:...
governor to get inmates to dismantle and pack them before being transported. The first convoy of limbs arrived in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
in October 1994, and Mills travelled with the convoy to film interviews with some of the recipients for the Good Morning with Anne and Nick
Good Morning with Anne and Nick
Good Morning with Anne and Nick was a BBC1 daytime television show presented by Anne Diamond and Nick Owen, from October 1992 to May 1996. The pair had previously presented TV-am on ITV, but now directly competed with ITV's This Morning....
daytime TV show. However, Croatian citizens were already supplied with prosthetic limbs by the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, which paid for the fitting of limbs and rehabilitation of patients.
With the help of ghostwriter
Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...
Pamela Cockerill, Mills wrote a book about her experience: Out on a Limb (1995), which was republished in America as A Single Step (2002). Extracts from Out on a Limb were serialised in The Daily Mail in March 2000. Mills handed all the proceeds from the book to Adopt-A-Minefield, and stated that it was one of "the few charities that 100% of their donations goes to clear minefields and survivor assistance". In 1995, Mills got engaged to British media executive Marcus Stapleton, after being together for only 16 days, and was then engaged to respected documentary filmmaker Chris Terrill
Chris Terrill
Chris Terrill is an anthropologist, adventurer, author and filmmaker born in Brighton in 1952. He attended Brighton College 1965–1970, and then went to Durham University where he gained a joint-honours degree in Geography and Anthropology...
in 1999, after only 12 days in Cambodia, where they were making a film about landmines. Mills ended their relationship five days before their planned wedding day, later telling friends in the media that she had called the wedding off because Terrill was gay, an MI6 agent, and that his mission was to undermine her anti-landmine work. Terrill had once told Mills that he had been interviewed by the intelligence services when he was thinking of a career with the Foreign Office, but later said, "I soon realised that Heather had a somewhat elastic relationship with the truth, which she was able to stretch impressively sometimes". Terrill also claims that although Mills stated she was a vegetarian at the time, she often cooked her speciality dish for him; Lancashire hotpot
Lancashire Hotpot
Lancashire hotpot is a dish made traditionally from lamb or mutton and onion, topped with sliced potatoes, left to bake in the oven all day in a heavy pot and on a low heat. Originating in the days of heavy industrialisation in Lancashire in the North West of England, it requires a minimum of...
(which contains lamb) and her ex sister-in-law, Dianna Karmal, claims that Mills only became a vegetarian after meeting McCartney. In 2003, the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...
awarded her an honorary doctorate for her philanthropic work on behalf of amputees.
Relationship with Paul McCartney
Mills met McCartney at the Dorchester HotelDorchester Hotel
The Dorchester is a luxury hotel in London, opened on 18 April 1931. It is situated on Park Lane in Mayfair, overlooking Hyde Park.The Dorchester was created by the famous builder Sir Robert McAlpine and the managing director of Gordon Hotels Ltd, Sir Frances Towle, who shared a vision of creating...
, during the Pride of Britain Awards event in April 1999, where McCartney presented an award to an animal rights activist, and Mills presented the Outstanding Bravery Award to Helen Smith, also making an appeal on behalf of the Heather Mills Health Trust. McCartney also presented an award dedicated to his late wife, Linda McCartney
Linda McCartney
Linda Louise McCartney, Lady McCartney was an American photographer, musician and animal rights activist. Her father and mother were Lee Eastman and Louise Sara Lindner Eastman....
. McCartney talked to Mills about donating to her charity – later giving her £150,000. In the autumn of 1999, Mills and her sister recorded "VO!CE"; a song they wrote to raise funds for Mills' charity, with McCartney agreeing to sing backing vocals. After recording the song in Greece (where Mills’ sister lived, running the independent label Coda Records), the sisters stayed overnight at McCartney's estate in Peasmarsh
Peasmarsh
For other uses of Peasmarsh see Peasmarsh Peasmarsh is a village and civil parish in East Sussex in England. It is located on the A268 road between Rye and Beckley, some three miles north-west of Rye....
, Sussex, in early November, where McCartney added vocals to the song. Having sparked the interest of the tabloids about his appearances with Mills at events, McCartney appeared publicly beside her at a party in January 2000 to celebrate her 32nd birthday.
While on holiday in the Lake District
Lake District
The Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
, McCartney proposed to Mills on 23 July 2001, giving her a £15,000 diamond and sapphire
Sapphire
Sapphire is a gemstone variety of the mineral corundum, an aluminium oxide , when it is a color other than red or dark pink; in which case the gem would instead be called a ruby, considered to be a different gemstone. Trace amounts of other elements such as iron, titanium, or chromium can give...
ring he had purchased in Jaipur
Jaipur
Jaipur , also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. Founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, the city today has a population of more than 3.1 million....
, India, when they were both there on holiday. Former escort
Call girl
A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who is not visible to the general public; nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency...
Denize Hewitt, then a friend, claims that Mills said she would give McCartney an ultimatum to marry her, and threaten to leave him if he refused. Mills stipulated that McCartney had to agree to stop smoking cannabis before she agreed to marry him, complaining that he used the drug "as regularly as others drink cups of tea", and that she has never taken any illegal drugs in her life.
Marriage
Mills and McCartney were married on 11 June 2002, four years after McCartney's first wife, Linda McCartneyLinda McCartney
Linda Louise McCartney, Lady McCartney was an American photographer, musician and animal rights activist. Her father and mother were Lee Eastman and Louise Sara Lindner Eastman....
, had died of breast cancer. Their wedding was an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie
Castle Leslie
Castle Leslie, home to an Irish branch of Clan Leslie, is located on the 4 km² Castle Leslie Estate adjacent to the village of Glaslough, north-east of Monaghan town in County Monaghan, Ireland.-Architecture:...
(once the home of Shane Leslie
Shane Leslie
Sir John Randolph Leslie, 3rd Baronet, generally known as Shane Leslie , was an Irish-born diplomat and writer. He was a first cousin of the British war time Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill...
), in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan
County Monaghan
County Monaghan is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Border Region and is also located in the province of Ulster. It is named after the town of Monaghan. Monaghan County Council is the local authority for the county...
, Ireland. Mills said that she liked to cook traditional (but meat-free) Christmas dinners for McCartney and as many of his family as possible, and that McCartney had encouraged her to give up her self-confessed addiction to chocolate and Snickers
Snickers
Snickers is a brand name chocolate bar made by Mars, Incorporated. It consists of peanut nougat topped with roasted peanuts and caramel, enrobed in milk chocolate. Snickers has annual global sales of $2 billion....
bars. When asked by chat-show host Larry King
Larry King
Lawrence Harvey "Larry" King is an American television and radio host whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and ten Cable ACE Awards....
(in 2003), how life was with McCartney, Mills replied "Great, really great," but also said that she was surprised at how tidy McCartney was: "He always cleans up before the cleaner comes. So I said for a while that's crazy, but what's good is if I cook the dinner, he'll clean everything up."
Red Square
Red Square is a city square in Moscow, Russia. The square separates the Kremlin, the former royal citadel and currently the official residence of the President of Russia, from a historic merchant quarter known as Kitai-gorod...
, Russia. Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
gave Mills and McCartney a tour of the Kremlin
Kremlin
A kremlin , same root as in kremen is a major fortified central complex found in historic Russian cities. This word is often used to refer to the best-known one, the Moscow Kremlin, or metonymically to the government that is based there...
. Mills went on every tour with McCartney during their marriage, as McCartney insisted on her accompanying him, with Mills saying that she helped to design the stage sets and lighting, and also helped McCartney to write songs. McCartney later said that Mills' contribution was giving him an acrylic fingernail to protect a finger on his left hand that often bled after playing guitar. McCartney admitted that Mills inspired him, as "being in love with her makes me want to write songs", such as "Too Much Rain" on Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is the thirteenth solo studio album by Paul McCartney released in 2005. A long time in the making, the set was produced by Radiohead and Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich at George Martin's suggestion....
, and "See Your Sunshine" ("She makes me feel glad/I want her so bad") from Memory Almost Full
Memory Almost Full
Memory Almost Full is the 14th studio album by Paul McCartney, released in the United Kingdom on 4 June 2007 and in the United States a day later. The album was the first release on Starbucks' Hear Music label...
. Another composition inspired by Mills was used as the bridal march
Bridal Chorus
The "Bridal Chorus" "Treulich geführt", from the 1850 opera Lohengrin, by German composer Richard Wagner, is a march played for the bride's entrance at many formal weddings throughout the Western world...
at their wedding.
During a Parkinson
Parkinson (TV series)
Parkinson is a British television talk show that was presented by Sir Michael Parkinson. It was first shown on the BBC from 1971 to 2004, and on ITV from 2004 to 2007.-Background:...
chat show on 22 February 2003, host Michael Parkinson
Michael Parkinson
Sir Michael Parkinson, CBE is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his interview programme, Parkinson, from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007.- Early life :...
asked if it was because of McCartney that Mills did not give any interviews, and she replied that she wanted to protect McCartney, his children, and their privacy. On the same show she said that her previous ectopic pregnancies had damaged her fertility, and that her chances of getting pregnant were small, although the couple announced that they were expecting their first child in May 2003. Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003, who was named after Mills' mother, and McCartney's aunt. It was later revealed that Mills had suffered a miscarriage
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
in the first year of marriage to McCartney. Mills was invited by Larry King to interview Paul Newman
Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver and auto racing enthusiast...
, which was broadcast by CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
on 17 April 2004. McCartney had arranged for Newman to be interviewed by Mills, but critical reactions to the show were mixed. Mills appeared on other TV programmes, such as BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
1's Question Time
Question Time (TV series)
Question Time is a topical debate BBC television programme in the United Kingdom, based on Any Questions?. The show typically features politicians from at least the three major political parties as well as other public figures who answer questions put to them by the audience...
and GMTV
GMTV
GMTV was the national Channel 3 breakfast television contractor, broadcasting in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1993 to 3 September 2010. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of ITV plc. in November 2009. Shortly after, ITV plc announced the programme would end...
, and persuaded McCartney to join her on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...
Although stating that they had a good sex life, Mills started complaining about the marriage to friends, saying that McCartney was "a boring old fart", and wondering why he had no social life, as well as saying "he has no friends and it's driving me mad". She did not like living at the remote McCartney home in Peasmarsh: "The only thing he [McCartney] ever does is occasionally go to the pub with his roadie. We never have parties or do fun things". After some time apart, Mills and McCartney separated on 17 May 2006. In November 2007, Mills gave a number of interviews, saying that the breakdown of the marriage was caused by her husband's daughter, Stella
Stella McCartney
Stella Nina McCartney is an English fashion designer. She is the daughter of former Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney and the late photographer and animal rights activist, Linda McCartney.-Early life:...
, whom she described as "jealous" and "evil". Mills had previously talked with New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine, saying Stella had once issued a press release confirming how much she liked her new stepmother, although Stella's publicist denied that such a statement had ever been issued.
After dismissing Anthony Julius
Anthony Julius
Anthony Julius is a prominent British lawyer and academic, best known for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, Deborah Lipstadt and more recently Heather Mills...
, a Mishcon de Reya
Mishcon de Reya
Mishcon de Reya is an international law firm with offices in London offering a range of legal and advocacy services for businesses and individuals...
lawyer, Mills stated she would represent herself in the upcoming divorce hearing, with help from her sister Fiona, David Rosen (a solicitor-advocate), and Michael Shilub, an American attorney. In leaked
News leak
A news leak is a disclosure of embargoed information in advance of its official release, or the unsanctioned release of confidential information.-Types of news leaks:...
documents, Mills complained that McCartney was often drunk, smoked cannabis, stabbed her with a broken wine glass, pushed her over a table, and pushed her into a bathtub when she was pregnant with their daughter. Referring to her part in the marriage, Mills said that she had been a full-time wife, mother, lover, confidante, business partner and psychologist to McCartney. McCartney’s lawyers studied Mills’ book: Life Balance: The Essential Keys to a Lifetime of Wellbeing (released on 25 May 2006), as it contradicted many of her claims, such as when she praised McCartney in the book for "bringing me breakfast in bed every morning, no matter how he feels, and I do the dinner, so we’ve got that agreement. It’s thoughtfulness". Mills' father reconciled with his daughter after meeting her and McCartney, when they introduced him to his granddaughter, Beatrice. After their separation, he said that it "took guts to represent yourself at the High Court", and that he was proud of his daughter, even though he thought she would be "torn to shreds" by McCartney's lawyers.
Divorce
The case was heard in court 34 of the Royal Courts of JusticeRoyal Courts of Justice
The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is the building in London which houses the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and the High Court of Justice of England and Wales...
in London. At the start of the proceedings Mills asked for £125 million, but McCartney offered £15.8 million. Before the court case, Mills had employed the accountancy firm Lee and Allen to examine McCartney's publishing company, business assets and properties, saying that she had a tape recording of McCartney admitting his true worth, but the presiding judge, Mr Justice Bennett, turned down numerous requests for information by Lee and Allen. The judge accepted McCartney's assets as being £450 million, and not £800 million, as had been suggested.
The hearing took six days, finishing on 18 February 2008, with the judgment being made public on 17 March 2008. Mills was eventually awarded a lump sum of £16.5m, together with assets of £7.8m, which included the properties she owned at the time. The total was £24.3 million, plus payments of £35,000 per annum, for a nanny
Nanny
A nanny, childminder or child care provider, is an individual who provides care for one or more children in a family as a service...
and school costs for their daughter. In his judgment, Justice Bennett described Mills as a "kindly person" who argued her case with a "steely, yet courteous, determination", but concluded that much of her evidence
Evidence
Evidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
was, "not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid", and that overall she was a "less than impressive witness". The divorce was granted on 12 May 2008, and the preliminary divorce decree was finalised six weeks later. Mills applied unsuccessfully to keep the full judgment secret, saying that it could make her vulnerable to "crazed" fans of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
. She later considered trying to have the injunction
Gag order
A gag order is an order, sometimes a legal order by a court or government, other times a private order by an employer or other institution, restricting information or comment from being made public.Gag orders are often used against participants involved in a lawsuit or criminal trial...
stopping her talking publicly about the case lifted, as the sections released were against her wishes, saying that it would "perhaps be better for the public to see everything". Mills later vowed to continue her legal fight to get full transcripts of the divorce court case made publicly available.
After the decision, Mills talked about McCartney: "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 ... I have never spoken badly about my husband. I never will, he is the father of my child". Mills later threatened to release tapes of McCartney in therapy talking about problems with his late wife, portraying him as a drug and alcohol addict, and researching McCartney's assets to prove he has more than £400 million. A High Court injunction preventing Mills talking about McCartney's family life could have led to a prison sentence if she breached it. McCartney said: "There'll be no more nagging, no more chaos, no more Heather ... bliss. I have peace at last".
Though Mills does not call herself Lady McCartney, which she became upon her marriage, as the former wife of a knight, she technically retains that title. Per Debrett's
Debrett's
Debrett’s is a specialist publisher, founded in 1769 with the publication of the first edition of The New Peerage. The name "Debrett's" honours John Debrett...
: "Former wife of a Knight: She is addressed as the wife of a knight, provided that she does not remarry".
Daughter
When McCartney planned a holiday with his daughter Beatrice at La Gazelle d'Or hotel in MoroccoMorocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
during April 2008, Mills faxed eight pages of instructions to the hotel on what she should and cannot eat. She was insistent that Beatrice’s strict vegan diet should be adhered to, and was "driving the hotel staff mad, faxing both the head chef and manager instructions and recipe suggestions for Bea". McCartney was furious, as he had successfully brought up his children as vegetarians. McCartney suggested taking Beatrice on a world tour in 2008, but Mills insisted on rules that would have to be followed: she would accompany her daughter for the 14 months in a private jet and no swearing would be allowed by musicians or road crew in front of her daughter.
Activism
Juliet Gellatley
Juliet Gellatley is a British writer and animal rights activist. She is the founder and director of Viva! and a former director of the Vegetarian Society...
. In 2006, Mills and Gellatley attended a debate on fur at the Oxford Union
Oxford Union
The Oxford Union Society, commonly referred to simply as the Oxford Union, is a debating society in the city of Oxford, Britain, whose membership is drawn primarily but not exclusively from the University of Oxford...
, where she presented a video depicting the skinning of a dog. She posed with her own dog in an anti-fur advertisement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), which read: "If you wouldn't wear your dog, please don't wear fur".
In March 2006, Mills and McCartney travelled to Canada to bring attention to the country's annual seal hunt
Seal hunting
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. The hunt is currently practiced in five countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, the Danish region of Greenland, Norway and Russia...
. Sponsored by the Humane Society of the United States
Humane Society of the United States
The Humane Society of the United States , based in Washington, D.C., is the largest animal advocacy organization in the world. In 2009, HSUS reported assets of over US$160 million....
, they complained that the hunt was inhumane, and called on the Canadian government to put an end to it. Their arrival on the floes sparked much attention in Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
, where 90 percent of the sealers live. Mills and McCartney protested against seals being clubbed to death, pierced with boat hooks and sometimes skinned alive. Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
's Premier, Danny Williams
Danny Williams (politician)
Daniel E. "Danny" Williams, QC, MHA is a Canadian politician, businessman and lawyer who served as the ninth Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador between November 6, 2003, and December 3, 2010. Williams was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador...
, debated the issue with them on Larry King Live
Larry King Live
Larry King Live is an American talk show hosted by Larry King on CNN from 1985 to 2010. It was CNN's most watched and longest-running program, with over one million viewers nightly....
, the issue being that seals are no longer hunted that way, and have not been for a while. Mills joined a Viva! film team at a pig farm in Somerset
Somerset
The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the...
, in February 2007, to publicise the use of restrictive farrowing crates
Gestation crate
A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a 7 ft by 2 ft metal enclosure used in intensive pig farming, in which a female breeding pig may be confined during pregnancy, and in effect for most of her adult life....
, which are used for sows who are suckling piglets. A video of the investigation was made available on the Internet.
Mills' relationship with PETA ended in 2007, when McCartney's daughter, Mary
Mary McCartney
Mary Anna McCartney is a photographer. The first biological child of rock photographer Linda Eastman McCartney and Paul McCartney of The Beatles, Mary was named after her paternal grandmother, Mary McCartney....
, said she would not continue to take photographs for the organisation if Mills was involved with them. A PETA representative told the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
: "Heather's exposé of the Chinese fur industry remains one of most popular videos on our site, but we don't have any imminent campaigns planned with her".
Mills spoke in Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
, on 19 November 2007, wearing a green t-shirt saying, "Vegan, you can't get greener", arguing in favour of veganism
Veganism
Veganism is the practice of eliminating the use of animal products. Ethical vegans reject the commodity status of animals and the use of animal products for any purpose, while dietary vegans or strict vegetarians eliminate them from their diet only...
on the grounds that livestock create more carbon
Greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone...
emissions than transport (although she drove a Mercedes four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive
Four-wheel drive, 4WD, or 4×4 is a four-wheeled vehicle with a drivetrain that allows all four wheels to receive torque from the engine simultaneously...
car to the press conference, keeping the engine running for part of the morning). Mills said: "Eighty percent of global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
comes from livestock and deforestation
Deforestation
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....
. I'm not telling people to go vegan overnight. But if they stop drinking their cows' milk latte
Latte
A latte is a coffee drink made with espresso and steamed milk. Variants include replacing the coffee with another drink base such as masala chai, mate or matcha...
s, maybe this sort of thing won't have to happen". She went on to say: "You have 25 other alternate milks in many health stores and supermarkets. It's kind of bizarre. Why don't we drink rat's milk or dog's milk or cat's milk? You know, there are many, many other options". This led The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, among others, to report the press conference under the headline, "Drink Rats' Milk, says Heather Mills".
In 2008, an old video surfaced of Mills wearing a mink
Mink
There are two living species referred to as "mink": the European Mink and the American Mink. The extinct Sea Mink is related to the American Mink, but was much larger. All three species are dark-colored, semi-aquatic, carnivorous mammals of the family Mustelidae, which also includes the weasels and...
coat she had owned in 1989, but explained to reporters that she had bought it years before becoming involved in animal rights organisations or vegetarianism. Although she had separated from McCartney, Mills said: "It's only since I met Paul [McCartney] that I really got to understand how vegetarianism not only benefits your health massively but also makes a huge difference to the planet, to animals, and to feeding the world". In August 2008, she was honoured by the organisation Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), with the Celebrity Animal Activist Award, presented at the Animal Rights National Conference. On 28 August 2009, at the Celebrity Catwalk event in Hollywood, Mills showed off her new "recycled clothes from charity shops" range, called Be@one. It has not been well-received by either critics or the public. After her divorce, Mills pledged to give a "large portion" of her £24.3 million divorce settlement to Adopt-A-Minefield, but the charity has not received any to date. In June 2008, Mills was asked to talk at a New York party about the cruelty of puppy farms and to promote her book about animals, but was angry about the guests speaking over her speech, saying: "Listen up at the back. I haven’t been up for 24 hours and flew here from London to be ignored". Mills' former publicist of four years, Michele Elyzabeth, decided to cease representing her on 25 July 2008.
Commercial interests
On 4 July 2009, Mills opened a vegan restaurant called VBites at Hove Lagoon, HoveHove
Hove is a town on the south coast of England, immediately to the west of its larger neighbour Brighton, with which it forms the unitary authority Brighton and Hove. It forms a single conurbation together with Brighton and some smaller towns and villages running along the coast...
, Sussex, on the site of the old Big Fish Cafe, which she is reported to have purchased for £140,000. Mills is quoted as saying that she intends it to be the first in a worldwide chain of vegan restaurants. Whilst promoting the restaurant, Mills gave an interview to the BBC, stating that she'd been very proactive in the building-stages and, now that it was open, would give as much time to it as she could – working it around her charity work.
Mills bought the vegan food company Redwood Foods in 2009. The company, which is located in Corby
Corby
Corby Town is a town and borough located in the county of Northamptonshire. Corby Town is 23 miles north-east of the county town, Northampton. The borough had a population of 53,174 at the 2001 Census; the town on its own accounted for 49,222 of this figure...
, Northants, sells 50 meat-free products, under the brand names Cheatin', VegiDeli, and Cheezly.
Media image and criticism
Mills' relationship with McCartney triggered considerable media interest, but after her divorce, the attitude of the British media was hostile, as Mills was accused of embellishing her life story, being a former prostitute, a shoplifter, and of having married McCartney for his money. Mills frequently accuses the press of misquoting her, and of using material out of context to give a negative impression of her, telling the Evening Standard that the claims that she had married McCartney for his money were more hurtful than losing her leg.Mills has been accused by several newspapers of having embellished her life story: journalist Heather Mills, then at The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, accused Mills of impersonating her for over a year in the late 1990s, showing people cuttings of articles the journalist had written, which helped Mills secure a job presenting The General
The General (TV series)
The General was a BBC fly-on-the-wall Television series hosted by Yvette Fielding, Chris Serle and Heather Mills. Based at Southampton General Hospital, the programme tracked the progress of selected patients, including outpatients, at the hospital. The series was broadcast live every weekday on...
TV show, which was a BBC programme about Southampton General Hospital
Southampton General Hospital
Southampton General Hospital is a large Teaching Hospital in Southampton, England, operated by University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust...
. There were also doubts about Mills’ claim that she had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
(because the Heather Mills Health Trust had given away thousands of prosthetic limbs to landmine victims), but the nomination cannot be proven because the identities of all nominees are a secret for 50 years.
Stapely disputed Mills' statement that her mother had nearly lost a leg in a car crash, after Mills said, "her leg was only hanging on by a tiny flap of skin and flesh ... miraculously the surgeons managed to insert a metal plate and reattach it". Stapely said that Mills' mother had suffered a leg injury after a car crash, but recovered and was "a keen tennis player" and that Mills, "is simply a very confused woman for whom reality and fantasy have become blurred". He died in January 2011.
Mills said that she had once been asked to stand for parliament by the three main political parties, and had been offered a peerage
Peerage
The Peerage is a legal system of largely hereditary titles in the United Kingdom, which constitute the ranks of British nobility and is part of the British honours system...
in 2001 (to become Baroness Mills) by the then British Prime Minister, Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
, and a certain "Lord Macdonald". An ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
documentary (McCartney vs McCartney: The Ex Files) interviewed three Lord Macdonalds, but not one of them could remember ever meeting Mills. British journalist Jasper Gerard, to whom Mills made the claims, also says she told him that she had cancelled a meeting with Bill Clinton in case her endorsement affected a US election outcome. Mills stated that she was once awarded the Outstanding Young Person of the Year award by the British Chambers of Commerce
Chamber of commerce
A chamber of commerce is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community...
, but did not challenge newspapers after they discovered there was no such award.
In 2006, Adnan Khashoggi
Adnan Khashoggi
Adnan Khashoggi is a Saudi Arabian arms-dealer and businessman. He is also noted for his engagements with high society in both the Occident and Arabic-speaking worlds, and for his involvement in the Iran–Contra and Lockheed bribery scandals, and numerous other affairs...
, the Saudi billionaire businessman and Kerry Packer
Kerry Packer
Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer, AC was an Australian media tycoon. The son of Sir Frank Packer and Gretel Bullmore, the Packer family company owned controlling interest in both the Nine television network and leading Australian publishing company Australian Consolidated Press, which were later...
, the Australian media tycoon, were named in the News of the World as former clients of Mills from the time when she allegedly worked as an escort girl
Call girl
A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who is not visible to the general public; nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency...
. Packer's son denied that his late father had been involved. The newspaper provided an affidavit
Affidavit
An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
from escort girl Denise Hewitt (who was paid £50,000 for the story), who said she worked with Mills providing sexual services and that Mills boasted of earning up to £10,000 in a single night. Mills often requested to work with two girls at a time "... to do a 'girlie scene
Threesome
A threesome is a group of three engaged in the same activity. In relation to a sexual activity a threesome refer to the activity involving three people of any gender or sexual orientation...
'. By this I knew she meant lesbian sex
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
" said Hewitt "I thought at the time that Heather may have been bisexual
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is sexual behavior or an orientation involving physical or romantic attraction to both males and females, especially with regard to men and women. It is one of the three main classifications of sexual orientation, along with a heterosexual and a homosexual orientation, all a part of the...
". To substantiate its claims, the News of the World questioned Abdul Khoury, who was Khashoggi's personal secretary from 1977 to 2005. Khoury affirmed the veracity of reports that Mills "had sex with him [Khashoggi] on a number of occasions in return for money. Mr Khashoggi was always very pleased with Heather's performance. She was very athletic in bed". The Daily Mail produced accounts of another escort girl, Petrina Montrose and from other friends confirming that Mills had worked with them as an escort girl on many occasions. Montrose said that once "when all three of them were in the bedroom, Heather had ‘tried it on' with [escort girl] Joanna and suggested lesbian sex". Through her lawyers, Mills denied ever having been an escort girl and said she would sue as soon as her divorce was concluded. This has not happened.
The Sun (newspaper)
The Sun is a daily national tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation. Sister editions are published in Glasgow and Dublin...
and the Evening Standard. All the newspapers said that the stories "were obtained by proper methods and in accordance with good journalistic practice". The Sun, which regularly refers to Mills as "Mucca"—a play on McCartney's nickname "Macca"—responded by asking her to "tick the boxes" on a series of allegations the newspaper had made, stating, "It is not clear what exactly she plans to sue us about". Underneath the open questions, The Sun listed six allegations about her, with a blank box beside each one. The words beside the boxes read: "Hooker
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...
, Liar
Lie
For other uses, see Lie A lie is a type of deception in the form of an untruthful statement, especially with the intention to deceive others....
, Porn Star
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, Fantasist
Fantasy (psychology)
Fantasy in a psychological sense is broadly used to cover two different senses, conscious and unconscious. In the unconscious sense, it is sometimes spelled "phantasy".-Conscious fantasy:...
, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter
Shoplifting
Shoplifting is theft of goods from a retail establishment. It is one of the most common property crimes dealt with by police and courts....
".
In December 2006, Mills told the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
that she had received death threats, and on 17 December 2006, police stated that a "non-specific threat" had been made to her safety. This led to more criticism that she was calling out the emergency services too often. In March 2007, Kevin Moore, Chief Superintendent of Sussex Police
Sussex Police
Sussex Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing East Sussex, West Sussex and City of Brighton and Hove in southern England. Its head office is in Lewes, Lewes District, East Sussex.-History:...
, said that Mills was running "the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf", and added, "We do have to respond to a disproportionate high volume of calls from Heather Mills McCartney because of the situations she finds herself in, and this is regrettable as it takes officers away from other policing matters". Mills responded that the police had told her to contact them whenever she was being harassed
Harassment
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is intentional behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing...
.
During a 5-day trial in July 2007, it was revealed that Mills had been physically assaulted by a Jay Kaycappa in Brighton. Kaycappa was a notorious paparazzi trying to photograph Mills while on shifts for a national newspaper and a regional press agency. Kaycappa, who had 132 previous criminal convictions, including perverting the course of justice, obtaining property by deception and driving offences and used ten aliases, was found guilty and sentenced to a 140-hour community order and ordered to pay Mills £100. and £1,000. court costs.
During several interviews in October 2007, Mills accused the media of giving her "worse press than a paedophile or a murderer". She also criticised the media over the treatment of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
—who, according to Mills, was "chased and killed" by paparazzi
Paparazzi
Paparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...
—and of Kate McCann. Immediately before giving these interviews, her PR
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
adviser, Phil Hall (the ex-Editor of the News of the World), quit. In 2008, a survey commissioned by Marketing magazine showed Mills as one of the top five most hated celebrity women, along with Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse
Amy Jade Winehouse was an English singer-songwriter known for her powerful deep contralto vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres including R&B, soul and jazz. Winehouse's 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically successful in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize...
, Victoria Beckham
Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham is an English singer-songwriter, dancer, model, actress, fashion designer and businesswoman. In the late 1990s, Beckham rose to fame with the all-female pop group Spice Girls and was dubbed Posh Spice by the July 1996 issue of the British pop music magazine Top of the Pops...
and Kerry Katona
Kerry Katona
Kerry Jayne Elizabeth Katona is an English media personality and singer best known for her television work, predominantly in light entertainment and reality shows. She has also been a pop singer with girl group Atomic Kitten, a magazine columnist, an actress, and the author of ghostwritten books...
.
In December 2008, the Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television comedy series Star Stories
Star Stories
Star Stories is a British television comedy programme that takes a satirical look at celebrities and their lives. It was first shown on Channel 4 on September 15, 2006....
broadcast a satirical mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
of Mills' life story from her point of view. In 2009, after petitioning the Press Complaints Commission
Press Complaints Commission
The Press Complaints Commission is a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC is funded by the annual levy it charges newspapers and magazines...
in the UK about being lied about in the press, five British tabloids (The Sun, The Daily Express, News of the World, Sunday Mirror and Daily Mirror) publicly apologised to Mills about printing false, hurtful or defamatory stories about her. Another tabloid (the Daily Mail), sent a private letter of apology. The stories in question were not those alleging prostitution, lying, or being a fantasist, but more recent untrue stories concerning her daughter, false allegations of a romantic relationship, false suggestions regarding cosmetic surgery, and false accounts of her spending. On 4 May 2009, The Sun published a small paragraph saying that they have been asked to make clear that Mills "denies spending £10 million of her settlement; trying to sell her home to her ex-husband; masterminding a smear campaign against him; spending £1 million on a swimming pool, £0.5 million on staff wages and £6 million on properties as they had reported" and they regretted "the misunderstanding". Mills has complained that over 4,400 abusive articles about her have been published.
Criticism of press coverage
In 2002, Mills accepted damages of £50,000 plus costs from the Sunday MirrorSunday Mirror
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...
, after a false report that the Charity Commission
Charity Commission
The Charity Commission for England and Wales is the non-ministerial government department that regulates registered charities in England and Wales....
had investigated her about the money she raised for the Indian earthquake victims appeal in 2001. The extent and nature of the British press coverage of Mills has been criticised, as in May 2003, when columnist Matt Seaton (The Guardian), wrote a piece declaring, "There is little that is edifying in the symbolic lynching of Heather [Mills]. The poisonous judgmentalism that drives it is in the worst tradition of small town gossip. It is prurient, spiteful, hypocritical, and we should cry 'shame' on it". Publicist Mark Borkowski wrote in the Independent on Sunday, on 23 March 2008: "Not since the cult of Myra Hindley have we encountered so much vitriol aimed at one woman". Feminist writer Natasha Walter
Natasha Walter
Natasha Walter is a British feminist writer and human rights activist. She is the author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism and The New Feminism , and is the director of Women for Refugee Women ....
has compared the coverage to that of Britney Spears
Britney Spears
Britney Jean Spears is an American recording artist and entertainer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Kentwood, Louisiana, Spears began performing as a child, landing acting roles in stage productions and television shows. She signed with Jive Records in 1997 and released her debut album...
. Terence Blacker
Terence Blacker
Terence Blacker is an English author, columnist, journalist, and publisher. He is the son of General Sir Cecil Hugh Blacker, and the brother of sculptor Philip Blacker....
wrote that public figures who are young, female, pretty and fair-haired, are often subjected to public bullying which is explained as "intense media interest", such as Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
, Paula Yates
Paula Yates
Paula Elizabeth Yates was a British television presenter and writer, best known for her work on two television programmes, The Tube and The Big Breakfast.-Early life:...
, Ulrika Jonsson
Ulrika Jonsson
Eva Ulrika Jonsson is a Swedish television presenter in the UK, who became famous as a TV-am weather presenter and moved on to present Gladiators and became a team captain of the show Shooting Stars.-Early life:...
, and Mills.
Kira Cochrane
Kira Cochrane
Kira Cochrane is a British journalist.She was born and raised in Essex. Her elder brother was killed aged 8 in a traffic accident in 1983; Cochrane's father had died of a heart attack and the family were brought up by their mother...
, in The Guardian, said that "every misogynist
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...
epithet available" has been used against Mills. "She has somehow become the vessel through which it is acceptable for both pundits and the public to express their very worst feelings about women". Joan Smith, writing in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, said that newspaper "Bullies love a weakling"; quoting the Daily Mirrors front page headline: "Lady Liar", and The Sun newspaper writing "Pornocchio" over Mills' face (in reference to Pinocchio
Pinocchio
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial between 1881 and 1883, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio , an...
's nose getting longer when he lied, and her past photographs). Smith went on to say that Mills had "dreamt of becoming the wife of a famous man but did not realise that he had fantasies of his own, marrying an attractive younger woman when he hadn't got over the loss of his first wife. Mills behaved foolishly when the marriage failed but she does not deserve the treatment she has had in the mass-market press. It is merciless bullying of an unstable, vulnerable woman". In 2009, Mills reported a bogus charity was set up to extract information about her marriage. News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is alleged to have set up the sting. The British tabloid newspaper The Mirror ran the headline, "Macca marriage to Heather was mistake of the decade" following an interview McCartney gave to Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
. McCartney immediately moved to deny this statement, and then went on to publicly print the original transcript to prove the Mirror article was false on his official website.
Phone hacking
On 5 May 2011, The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper reported that Mills met with officers from the London Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
who have shown her evidence, seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire
Glenn Mulcaire
Glenn Mulcaire, born September 8, 1970, is a former professional footballer, latterly a private investigator. He has been closely associated with the News International phone hacking scandal. In January 2007 he was found guilty of illegally intercepting phone messages from Clarence House and...
, which could form the basis of a claim against the News of the World
News of the World
The News of the World was a national red top newspaper published in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the biggest selling English language newspaper in the world, and at closure still had one of the highest English language circulations...
tabloid newspaper for breach of privacy over alleged phone hacking. Mills's name and private mobile phone number were listed in Mulcaire's notes along with those of her friends and associates. Mills herself later alleged that a journalist working for the Mirror Group
Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror plc is a large British newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Its headquarters are at Canary Wharf in...
had admitted to her in 2001 that he had hacked her phone.
TV
Mills was one of the celebrity performers showcased during the US television series Dancing with the StarsDancing with the Stars (US TV series)
Dancing with the Stars is a reality show airing on ABC in the United States, and CTV in Canada in 2011. The show is the American version of the British BBC television series Strictly Come Dancing...
in 2007, with dancing partner Jonathan Roberts
Jonathan Roberts (dancer)
Jonathan Roberts is an American professional ballroom dancer. He decided to take up dancing after he received a free trial at a local dance studio and enjoyed it...
. On 21 December 2009 she was revealed as one of the contestants on the fifth series of Dancing on Ice
Dancing on Ice (UK)
Dancing on Ice is a British television show co-hosted by Christine Bleakley and Philip Schofield, in which celebrities and their professional partners figure skate in front of a panel of judges. The format, devised by LWT and Granada Television, has been a prime-time hit in eight different...
and was paired with Matt Evers. She has stated that she would take part in the show in order to support the charities she frequently donates to, and also to show that disabled people can do more than people think. A subsequent campaign to get Mills removed from the show began online, despite being the favourite to leave first, she was not voted off in the initial show. Mills has also claimed that she turned down an offer of £350,000—the same figure given to participant Vinnie Jones
Vinnie Jones
Vincent Peter "Vinnie" Jones is an English film actor and retired Welsh footballer.Born in Hertfordshire, England, Jones represented and captained the Welsh national football team, having qualified via a Welsh grandparent. He also previously played for Chelsea and Leeds United. As a member of the...
—to appear on the final series of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother
Celebrity Big Brother 2010 (UK)
Celebrity Big Brother 2010 was the seventh and final series of Celebrity Big Brother to air on Channel 4 and E4. It began on Sunday 3 January 2010 and aired for 27 days until the final on 29 January 2010, the longest ever celebrity series in the UK...
. On 12 January 2010, her 42nd birthday, she was involved in a minor car accident following rehearsal for Dancing on Ice. She was not hurt.
Present life
Mills lives in RobertsbridgeRobertsbridge
Robertsbridge is a village in East Sussex, England within the civil parish of Salehurst and Robertsbridge. It is approximately 10 miles north of Hastings and 13 miles south-east of Tunbridge Wells...
, East Sussex and in Hove
Hove
Hove is a town on the south coast of England, immediately to the west of its larger neighbour Brighton, with which it forms the unitary authority Brighton and Hove. It forms a single conurbation together with Brighton and some smaller towns and villages running along the coast...
, East Sussex, having recently sold her Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
apartment at 173 Perry Street in West Village for $5 million which she bought in 2009 for $4.9 million.
She continues to campaign for amputees, in addition to promoting the distribution of prostheses around the world, and has been involved with the development of the Heather Mills McCartney Cosmesis, which gives amputees in America the chance to wear a Dorset Orthopaedic cosmesis
Cosmesis
Cosmesis is the preservation, restoration, or bestowing of bodily beauty. In the medical context, it usually refers to the surgical correction of a disfiguring defect, or the cosmetic improvements made by a surgeon following incisions...
, without having to travel to the UK. Mills is also vice-president of the Limbless Association. In 2004, she received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
, and in the same year, the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
, gave her their 2004 Human Security Award, and created the Heather Mills McCartney Fellowship in Human Security to support graduate students conducting research on pressing human security issues. She is a former Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association Adopt-A-Minefield programme.
On 1 December 2007, Neil Simpson published The Unsinkable Heather Mills: The Unauthorized Biography of the Great Pretender. On 4 June 2010 a claim for compensation alleging sexual and maternity discrimination and constructive dismissal brought by a Sara Trumble, who had been employed since April 2004 as nanny to Mills' daughter, was dismissed unanimously at Ashford Employment Tribunal Centre, Kent. The tribunal concluded that all of the claims were unfounded. Employment judge Steven Vowles said that "Mills's kindness towards Miss Trumble showed that she genuinely cared about her as both an employee and a friend".
On 17 December 2010, it was announced that Mills has been offered a trial in the British disabled ski team's development squad for the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games
2014 Winter Paralympics
The 2014 Winter Paralympics, officially known as the XI Paralympic Winter Games, will be held from March 7 to March 16, 2014 in Sochi, Russia...
to be held in Sochi, Russia, and in April 2011, she bought a ski chalet near Goldeck am Millstätter See
Millstätter See
-General facts:Lake Millstatt is situated in the Central Eastern Alps, near the town of Spittal an der Drau. With a surface area of it is the second largest lake of Carinthia , though with by far the deepest and most voluminous. Its steep shore gives the lake a fjord-like character...
, in the Austrian Alps
Central Eastern Alps
The Central Eastern Alps comprise the main chain of the Eastern Alps with its highest peaks, located between the Northern Limestone Alps and the Southern Limestone Alps, from which they differ in geological composition....
, for £1.4million as a base for her 2014 Winter Paralympic Games
2014 Winter Paralympics
The 2014 Winter Paralympics, officially known as the XI Paralympic Winter Games, will be held from March 7 to March 16, 2014 in Sochi, Russia...
training. The Daily Mail reported, on 12 May 2011, that Mills was airlifted to hospital by helicopter, "after her right shoulder blade broke in several places", following a skiing accident, when she had collided with a frozen plastic pole during training with the British Disabled Ski Team’s development squad on the Mölltaler glacier in Austria. In May 2011, Hello!
Hello!
Hello is a weekly magazine specializing in celebrity news and human-interest stories, published in the United Kingdom since 1988. Hello is sister magazine to ¡Hola!, the Spanish weekly magazine launched in Spain in 1944...
magazine ran an article about Heather Mills' ambitions for the 2014 Paralympic Games as well as her efforts to stay fit and healthy with her Vegan lifestyle. On 27 November 2011 it was reported that Ms Mills had again had a skiing accident on the Mölltaler glacier, this time injuring the stump of her partly amputated left leg, as well as breaking her thumb. Austria's daily Kleine Zeitung newspaper reported her as saying that two male teenagers came to her rescue, but "when I took off my artificial leg they screamed in terror, because they thought the leg had come off in the accident". She has been told that it will take five weeks before she can resume training.
External links
- Heather Mills – official website
- Photo of Mark Mills Heather Mills's father
- Limbless Association – official website
- V Bites – official website