Heather Mills

Mills was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, to John 'Mark' Francis Mills, a former British paratrooper, and his wife, Beatrice Mary (née Finlay) Mills, who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army. John was adopted at the age of seven and grew up in Brighton, where his adoptive parents had a grocery shop. His adoptive father also worked as a mechanic for a Grand Prix racing team. Beatrice was born in India during World War II, and was educated at English boarding schools. John and Beatrice met at Newcastle University, and were married against the wishes of her father, who did not attend the wedding and saw his daughter only once more before he died. When Heather was six years old, the family moved north to Alnwick, in Northumberland, Heather attended Usworth Grange Primary school, and then Usworth Comprehensive School in Washington. But her neighbour, Margaret Ambler, alleged that Heather's story was "nothing what she made it out to be", that Heather was never a victim, and the pool attendant did not commit suicide, as she had written. Although having received a letter from Heather 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. Beatrice left home when Heather was nine years old, to live with Crossroads actor Charles Stapley, which left her, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister Fiona, in the care of their father John. Heather once said that John threw Shane against a window for making a mess on the carpet with crayons; the window broke and Shane had to be taken to hospital, where John explained that the boy had fallen on some glass in the garden. ==London and modelling==

When Heather's father was jailed for 18 months after being convicted of fraud, she left home with her sister Fiona to live with their mother and her partner in Clapham, south London. Mills worked for a croissant shop, but was sacked, and vowed "never to work for anyone else again". She wrote in her 1995 autobiography 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 stuff from the shop," which Guy said was worth £20,000. although it was unsuccessful. and took part in a nude photo session for a stills-only German sex education manual called Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love). 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." 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". but Mills ended up living with her Slovenian ski instructor, Miloš Pogačar, shortly before the Croatian War began. Mills set up a refugee crisis centre in London, helping over 20 people to escape the war. She drove 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 Mills was engaged to Raffaele Mincione (a bond dealer for the Industrial Bank of Japan) in 1993. ==Accident and amputation==

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 below the knee; a metal plate was later attached to her pelvis. In October 1993, she had another operation that further shortened her leg. After the accident, Mills sold her story to the News of the World, and gave other interviews, saying she earned £180,000. and delivered prosthetic limbs to people (particularly children) who had lost limbs after stepping on landmines. Mills booked herself into the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida, which put her on a raw food vegan diet, Mills persuaded the Brixton prison governor to get inmates to dismantle and pack the prosthetic limbs before being transported, which resulted in 22,000 amputees obtaining limbs in addition to the Croatian citizens who were already supplied with prosthetic limbs by the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, which paid for the fitting of limbs and rehabilitation of patients. 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 daytime television programme Good Morning with Anne and Nick. She received an award in 2001 from Croatia's prime minister, Ivica Račan for the money she raised to help clear that country of landmines. With the help of ghostwriter Pamela Cockerill, Mills wrote a book about her experience, entitled Out on a Limb (1995), which was republished in the United States 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, after 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 sabotage 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." She continues to campaign, 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, Mills received a "Children in Need" award from the annual International Charity Gala in Düsseldorf; 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. ==Relationship with Paul McCartney==

Mills met McCartney at the Dorchester Hotel which McCartney had attended to present an award to an animal rights activist. McCartney also presented an award dedicated to his late wife, Linda McCartney, and later talked to Mills about donating to her charity, later giving her £150,000 (). In the autumn of 1999, Mills and her sister Fiona recorded "VO!CE", a song they wrote to raise funds for Mills's charity. After recording the song in Greece, where Fiona 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 Marriage during a tour of the Kremlin in 2003 Mills and McCartney were married on 11 June 2002, four years after his first wife Linda had died of breast cancer. The McCartney–Mills wedding was an elaborate ceremony at Castle Leslie, in the village of Glaslough in County Monaghan, Ireland. A song specially composed by McCartney, called "Heather", was played; this had been included on the 2001 album Driving Rain. Mills said that she liked to cook traditional vegetarian 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." McCartney later said that Mills's contribution was giving him an acrylic fingernail to protect a finger on his left hand that often bled after playing guitar. McCartney stated that he felt inspired by Mills, as "Being in love with her makes me want to write songs", such as "Too Much Rain" for the album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (2005), and "See Your Sunshine" ('She makes me feel glad/I want her so bad') for his album Memory Almost Full (2007). Another composition inspired by Mills was used as the bridal march at their wedding. although the couple announced in May that they were expecting their first child. Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003 at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John's Wood; she was named after Mills's mother and McCartney's aunt. It was later revealed that Mills had suffered a miscarriage in the first year of their marriage. McCartney had arranged for Newman to be interviewed by Mills, but critical reactions were mixed. Mills appeared on other television programmes, such as BBC One's Question Time and ITV's GMTV, and persuaded McCartney to join her on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Separation 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. 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. 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's book: Life Balance: The Essential Keys to a Lifetime of Wellbeing (2006), as it contradicted many of her claims, such as when she praised McCartney 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's father reconciled with her, 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 at the Royal Courts of Justice 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, claiming that she had a tape recording of McCartney admitting his true worth, but the presiding judge, Mr Justice Bennett, based his decision on a forensic valuation of McCartney's finances completed by accounting firm Ernst & Young. The hearing took six days, finishing on 18 February 2008, and the judgement was made public on 17 March that year. The total was £24.3 million () plus payments of £35,000 per annum for a nanny and school costs for their child. In his judgement, Mr Justice Bennett stated: Mr Justice Bennett said in his ruling that there was no evidence of Mills's "charitable giving" in her tax returns, The preliminary divorce was granted on 12 May, and the decree absolute became final a week later. During their marriage, Mills was known as Heather Mills McCartney, but after her divorce, she reverted to Heather Mills, although as the former wife of a knight she is entitled to the title "Lady McCartney" unless she remarries. In 2012, she was called "Heather Mills" and "Ms Mills" in her testimony to the Leveson Inquiry and its subsequent report, though Lord Justice Leveson had referred to "Lady McCartney" earlier in the proceedings. Following her divorce from Paul McCartney, Mills bought a house in Robertsbridge, East Sussex, in 2007. ==Media image==

attending court in London in 2010 Mills's relationship with McCartney triggered considerable media interest. After her divorce, the attitude of the British media was hostile. Mills frequently accused 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. A journalist with the same name, Heather Mills, at that time working for 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, a BBC television programme about Southampton General Hospital. It was reported that she had been nominated for the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize because the Heather Mills Health Trust had donated thousands of prosthetic limbs to landmine victims, but the nomination cannot be confirmed because the identities of nominees remain secret for 50 years. Mills said that she had once been asked to stand for parliament by the three main political parties, In October 2006, Mills announced her intention to sue the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Evening Standard newspapers. All the newspapers said that their 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 questions, The Sun listed six allegations about her, with a blank box beside each of them. The words beside the boxes read: "Hooker, Liar, Porn Star, Fantasist, Trouble Maker, Shoplifter". Later that year, Mills told the BBC that she had received death threats, and on 17 December, 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. Three months later, Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore 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 five-day trial in July 2007, it was revealed that Mills had been physically assaulted in Brighton, by Jay Kaycappa, a notorious paparazzo 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, driving offences and using ten aliases), was found guilty and sentenced to a 140-hour community order and ordered to pay Mills £100, plus £1,000 court costs. Kaycappa later won an appeal against the conviction after the Crown did not respond to the appeal because of difficulties in bringing witnesses to give evidence. During several interviews in October that year, 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 Mills described as having been "chased and killed" by paparazzi – and of Kate McCann. Immediately before her giving these interviews, Phil Hall (a former News of the World editor) quit as her PR adviser. In 2008, a survey commissioned by Marketing magazine showed Mills as one of the top-four most-hated celebrity women, along with Amy Winehouse, Victoria Beckham and Kerry Katona. (The fifth most-hated person was Simon Cowell, who ironically was also among the top five all-male most-loved celebrities.) In December of that year, the Channel 4 television comedy Star Stories broadcast a satirical mockumentary of Mills's 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, 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 (Daily Mail), sent a private letter of apology. 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 Mirror 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 The Guardian columnist Matt Seaton wrote a piece declaring: "There is little that is edifying in the symbolic lynching of Heather. 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." 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, wrote of "every misogynist epithet available" being 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." Smith further said 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." The Daily Mirror ran the headline "Macca marriage to Heather was mistake of the decade", following an interview that McCartney gave to Q magazine. McCartney immediately moved to deny this statement, and then went on to publicly print the original transcript on his official website to prove that the article in the Daily Mirror was false. Celia Larkin, writing on 12 February 2012 in the Irish Sunday Independent, wrote: "There was something very satisfying about Heather Mills finally having her voice heard above the roar of the Red Tops. If you actually take the time to listen to Mills, I mean listen, not just read what's written about her, you'll see she is a strong, sincere, independent woman. She didn't lie down under the weight of McCartney's fame and wealth, she continued to plough her own furrow, campaigning for her charities, maintaining a strong individuality. And that, it seems, is the greatest sin of all. Is it any wonder she was reduced to tears in the October 2007 GMTV interview? Did we feel sympathy for her then? No. 'Heather Mills has Melt Down' screamed the headlines, so now she had lost her marbles to boot. And if that wasn't enough, Carole Malone of the Sunday Mirror, one of the papers that was relentless in its attacks on Mills, accused her of staging an act on live television, in order to further her cause in the upcoming divorce hearing. How cruel can you get?" Phone hacking and Leveson Inquiry On 5 May 2011, The Guardian reported that Mills had met with officers from the London Metropolitan Police who showed her evidence, seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, which could form the basis of a claim against the News of The World 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 later alleged that a journalist working for the Mirror Group had admitted to her in 2001 that he had hacked her phone. Appearing as a witness at the Leveson Inquiry on 9 February 2012, Mills was asked under oath if she had ever made a recording of McCartney's phone calls or answerphone messages, and had ever played it to Piers Morgan or "anybody else"; she replied, "Never ever." Giving evidence in December 2011, Morgan – who bragged in a newspaper column for the Daily Mail in 2006 about hearing the message – refused to say who had played him the recorded message of the call, saying he was protecting a source. Mills told the inquiry that Morgan was "a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years and would have relished telling the inquiry if I had played a personal voicemail message to him". In the official findings of his Inquiry, Lord Justice Leveson said Morgan's testimony under oath on phone-hacking was "utterly unpersuasive. This was not, in any sense at all, a convincing answer", adding "what it does, however, clearly prove is that he was aware that it was taking place in the press as a whole and that he was sufficiently unembarrassed by what was criminal behaviour that he was prepared to joke about it". TV game show appearances Mills was one of the celebrity performers competing on the US television series Dancing with the Stars 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, being paired with Matt Evers. ==Activism==

In 2005, Mills became a patron of the British animal rights organisation Viva!, and the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation (now Viva! Health), which are both run by Juliet Gellatley. In March 2006, McCartney and Mills 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 per cent of the sealers live. McCartney and Mills protested against seals being clubbed to death, pierced with boat hooks and sometimes skinned alive. 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's relationship with PETA ended in 2007, when McCartney's daughter Mary was chosen in her place. In 2008, an old video surfaced of Mills wearing a mink coat that she had owned in 1989, but she 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. After her divorce, Mills pledged to give a 'large portion' of her £24.3 million divorce settlement to Adopt-A-Minefield, but as of September 2008, the charity had not received any of this money. 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 talking during her speech, saying: 'Listen up at the back. I haven't been up for 24 hours and flown here from London to be ignored.' Mills's publicist of four years, Michele Elyzabeth, stopped representing her on 25 July that year. Mills was an executive producer for the 2024 British documentary film I Could Never Go Vegan. ==Commercial interests==

On 4 July 2009, Mills opened a vegan restaurant called VBites at Hove Lagoon, East Sussex. Mills was quoted as saying that she intended it to be the first in a worldwide chain of vegan restaurants. While promoting the restaurant, Mills gave an interview to the BBC, stating that she had been very proactive in the building stages and that now it was open, would give as much time to it as she could, working it around her charity work. In May 2013, she sold the restaurant premises to local musician Norman Cook (better-known as Fatboy Slim); the restaurant is now Big Beach Cafe at Hove Lagoon on Hove Seafront. In 2013, Mills opened a new, enlarged VBites in East Street in Brighton which closed in September 2017. Also in 2009, Mills bought a vegan food manufacturer, The Redwood Wholefood Company, which she renamed VBites Foods. The company in Corby, Northamptonshire, sold 50 meat-free products under the brand names Cheatin', VegiDeli and Cheezly. In 2014, two products sold under the brand 'Wot no Dairy' were recalled, because it was revealed that they contained traces of dairy products and consequently could possibly cause adverse effects for those with dairy product intolerance. In May 2018, Mills bought the 180,000 sq ft former Walkers Crisps factory in Peterlee, County Durham, which had closed in 2017. In 2019 Mills bought the site of a former Coty factory in Seaton Delaval ( north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne), which closed in 2018. Mills said that it would offer vegan businesses manufacturing, storage and office space. According to The Guardian, "Mills said it would make the region a 'world centre for the creation of planet-rescuing ideas' and the 'northern powerhouse for the brightest vegan minds'." Mills' company VBites went into administration on 11 December 2023. At the time it was operating two factories: one in Corby, and one in Peterlee. ==See also==

• • • 2nd edition of Out on a Limb • • • ==External links==