Macca's meltdown: The inside story of the marriage that cost Sir Paul £24m

Daily Mail ^ | 14th August 2010 | Howard Sounes

[tlb]

Heather found a message on her answer machine: ‘It’s Paul ­McCartney here.’

Paul presented the Heather Mills Trust — which she hadn’t yet registered with the Charity Commission — with a cheque for £150,000.

At 14, she claimed in her ­autobiography, she’d run away from home. She’d started ­sleeping rough and mixing with drug addicts, rent boys and prostitutes.

Then she got a Saturday job with a jeweler, from whom she stole — resulting in a ­probationary sentence for theft. Next, Heather strayed into the fringes of the sex industry, ­finding employment at around the age of 16 as a waitress in a Soho hostess club.

Her ex-husband Alfie Karmal says: ‘It was difficult to believe anything she said, as I caught her out lying to me so often.’

Why did Paul invest such trust in a self-­publicising minor celebrity with a dubious past?

Mike Robbins thinks he knows the answer: sex.

He confused sex with love,’ says Mike. ‘He couldn’t tell the difference.’

Of course, any woman who ­married Paul was always going to have a near impossible task: living up to his first wife, Linda, whose image as the ultimate earth mother was only enhanced by her untimely death from breast ­cancer in 1998.

However, as we will see on ­Monday, when Linda first came into Paul’s life she was far removed from the maternal vegetarian campaigner who was to become almost as famous as her husband.

She was a single mother who made a living ­photographing rock stars who she then often slept with — one friend dubbed her a ‘groping groupie’.

And long before she met any of the Beatles, she decided she liked the look of the baby-faced one. From then on, Paul McCartney was her number one target.

[tlb]

Extracted from Fab: An Intimate Life Of Sir Paul McCartney by Howard Sounes, published by HarperCollins on August 25 at £20.

So he initially baited the trap with a large check and unsurprisingly caught someone interested in money. That changes the perspective of the story quite a bit.

[Yossarian]

Before McCartney's ridiculous dig at G.W. Bush at the White House concert:
    I would have had a bit of sympathy for him.

After McCartney's ridiculous dig at G.W. Bush at the White House concert:
    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!

[PhiloBedo]

Paul knew she needed a leg-up.

[Eagles6]

Two repugnant people making each other’s lives miserable. There is some justice in this world.

[J Edgar]

I have very little respect for Paul McCartney or the Beatles.
They where pop stars in the 60s. I never liked their music, and could never understand what was so great about them.
I tried, but except for “Jude” I don’t see anything very memorable.
Their art is devoid of values, it’s only feelie stuff to me!
Go ahead and flame, I got my fire proof flame suit on!

[martin_fierro]

At 14, she claimed in her ­autobiography, she’d run away from home. She’d started ­sleeping rough and mixing with drug addicts, rent boys and prostitutes.
Then she got a Saturday job with a jeweler, from whom she stole — resulting in a ­probationary sentence for theft. Next, Heather strayed into the fringes of the sex industry, ­finding employment at around the age of 16 as a waitress in a Soho hostess club.

I heard she was a member of ...

... wait for it ...

SHIN FEIGN.

[reagan_fanatic]

I don’t get what Paul ever saw in her. It really has me stumped.

[Trailerpark Badass]

24 million anything seems like he got out of it pretty good.

I thought he was worth near a billion.

[grey_whiskers]

I'll have to make a visit to the ER to have that one extracted from my psyche.

You bastard.

:-)

Cheers!

[ansel12]

I don’t know what he saw in her, but a girl with her background and training can be very enticing to a man.

The 14 year old runaway, drug world, music groupie world produces many used up discarded burnouts, but it also produces skilled courtesans.

[Noob1999]

Roflol

[Richard Kimball]

Now, however, he told himself that Linda wouldn’t mind about his feelings for Heather. He convinced himself that his dead wife was sending him messages via the wildlife on their Sussex farm.

This reminds me of the scene in The Man With Two Brains, where Steve Martin asks his deceased wife if he should marry the golddigger Katherine Turner.

[fantom]

Can she read ?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

When Paul’s tour moved on to Hamburg in Germany, he introduced Heather to his old friends Horst Fascher and Astrid Kirchherr, whom he had met there when touring in the early Sixties. Astrid didn’t warm to her.

If I'm not mistaken, Astrid Kirchherr was the fiancee of Stuart Sutcliffe, John Lennon's school friend and one of the founders of the Beatles, who walked away from the band and died of a brain aneurysm before the Beatles became famous. Sutcliffe is one of the people on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper's album. And Paul is still friends with his old band-mate's fiancee. Interesting to know.

[Slings and Arrows]

[Execrable joke snipped.]

That was tasteless, crude, and utterly lacking in redeeming value.

I wish I'd thought of it.

[Slings and Arrows]

And in the two years since the divorce, she has employed a ­succession of public relations ­consultants, who have found ­themselves hard-pressed to improve her image.

She should have put her best foot forward.

[EDINVA]

Exactly !!!!

Once ole Sir Paul opened his disrespectful mouth at the White House, whatever respect or sympathy I might have had for him vanished.

[JRios1968]

Heather’s case against Paul should have had no legs...

[paulycy]

Seems McCartney’s original assessment of her was about a foot off.

[Flag_This]

"The 14 year old runaway, drug world, music groupie world produces many used up discarded burnouts, but it also produces skilled courtesans."

One should refrain from marrying skanks.