Profile Heather Mills:Will her latest publicity stunt transform the reputation of Heather Mills, the former Beatle wife who is at best barely tolerated and at worst vilified, asks Róisín Ingle
One of the judges on the US reality show Dancing With The Stars said it best when he declared to the only one-legged contestant: "Heather, you've got more guts than Rambo." "And more comebacks than the Terminator," is what Heather Mills, dressed like a thin slice of Neapolitan ice-cream in a lurid yellow and pink dress, might conceivably have been thinking to herself.
This latest assault on the public is one of her riskiest to date. She claims her presence on the dance floor - officially she wants to inspire fellow amputees to dance - is a selfless enterprise and, in fairness, she is giving her fee to the animal rights charity Viva. But participation in a reality television extravaganza with 22 million viewers at a time when her public image has taken a battering is being widely perceived as the act of a desperate woman.
Like Princess Diana, who had also campaigned against the use of landmines, Mills has now entered into a classic celebrity battle for people's hearts, as attempted through reality TV by the likes of Michael Barrymore and Les Dennis with less than spectacular results.
Having failed to win over the public back home in Blighty - her bitter split from Paul McCartney meant she never really had a chance - she is now taking her chances with the more forgiving American audience. As one female US commentator put it, "the British use America like we use rehab".
She had a point. To use one example, Sarah Ferguson's American rehabilitation went swimmingly and it was mainly thanks to crisis-management guru Howard Rubenstein, a name Ferguson invokes the way other people talk about saints. And no wonder. When she arrived in America, she was a washed-up former royal known for toe-sucking, overeating and unmanageable hair. America turned her into a sleek-haired, weight-watching success story who was given the ultimate seal of approval by Oprah. Asked recently whether Mills can manage a similar feat, Rubenstein was positive.
"My guess is that if Heather comes here, does a few good interviews and acts like a lady, doesn't say anything negative about her husband - who is a hero to many Americans - then she'll be embraced. Having a missing leg as a contestant on a dance show may also help, provided the matter can be handled subtly," he said. With a straight face, presumably.
Subtlety is not part of the Heather Mills brand. She ended her first night on Dancing With The Stars with a defiant high kick, stunning even the most cynical who had sniggered about her losing her prosthetic limb during a foxtrot to Dancing Cheek to Cheek. She came seventh out of a field of 11 but while the judges were impressed, contributors to the message board on the ABC television website have yet to be won over. "She is no celebrity, and the only mistake Paul made was marrying her without a pre-nup," wrote one. "Why would ABC put a person like that on a family show?" asked another. "In the UK she has a disabled person's badge. In the US she is dancing and doing high kicks."
IT'S DIFFICULT, WHEN you see just how much people seem to detest her, to imagine how Mills will ever receive a sympathetic ear, no matter how many high kicks she employs. But she is not an altogether unsympathetic character, however grating her constant pleas on behalf of seal pups, cats, dogs or, more recently, sows might be. Her childhood, as relayed in her autobiography Out On A Limb, was tough. Abandoned by her mother as a small child, she was beaten by her father, sexually assaulted by another man as an eight-year-old and ran away to join a funfair by the age of 15. She became a petty thief and got into soft porn and glamour modelling while embarking on a string of relationships with sometimes powerful men. She left her first husband for a ski instructor and it was while working on the slopes of the former Yugoslavia that she first became involved in humanitarian causes, helping to bring refugees from that country to London.
It was around that time that she was knocked over by a police motorcycle while trying to cross a London street. Her left leg had to be amputated from the knee down and several life-threatening operations followed. Mills has said that one of the cruelest things ever written about her was that losing her leg was the best thing that ever happened to the then model because it provided the kind of instant publicity she craved. It's a crass comment, almost as crass as the fact that when the accident occurred Mills called up a tabloid and posed for photographs in her hospital bed.
The accident changed the course of her life. She followed up her refugee work with tireless campaigns against the use of landmines even being nominated for a Nobel peace prize for her trouble in 1996. It was while she was speaking at one such campaigning event in the late 1990s that McCartney first saw her. They married at Castle Leslie in Co Monaghan in 2002 with rumours rife that she was only after his money and that her step-children, including fashion designer Stella McCartney, were avid Heather-haters.
She has always denied the gold-digger claims, saying she had a better lifestyle before she met McCartney and that she gives 85 per cent of her income to charity. "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 ever spoken badly about my husband. I never will," she said.
McCartney might not agree. The messiest celebrity divorce in recent history got even messier when damaging claims by Mills about her mistreatment at the hands of Beatle Paul were leaked to media. In the divorce papers Mills alleged that thumbs-aloft- Macca might not be as genial as his public persona suggested.
Whatever about their veracity, some of the claims were cringe-worthy.
MILLS SAID MCCARTNEY refused to let her breastfeed their daughter Beatrice. "They are my breasts," he is supposed to have said. "I don't want a mouth full of breast milk". On the scale of Things You Don't Want To Hear About Your Favourite Beatle, it rates pretty high. Then there was the one where Mills alleged McCartney refused to let her have a bed pan so she was forced to crawl to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Some of the claims were even more shocking. Mills claimed her husband shoved her into a bath when she was pregnant and that he cut her arm with a broken wine bottle.
These claims of mental and physical abuse proved too much for Beatles fans and their ire was expressed neatly by Jonathan Ross when he presented the Q Awards last year. "Heather Mills-McCartney," he said during a tirade about the leaked allegations. "What a f***ing liar. I wouldn't be surprised if we found out she's actually got two legs". The audience, which included friends of McCartney such as Noel Gallagher, Boy George and Bono, were appreciative in their cheers and applause.
Mills is often described as a fantasist and was berated recently by English police who said she called them regarding her personal security far too often. While the recently converted vegetarian runs around the world railing against people who wear fur she doesn't do herself any favours when speaking out about her personal situation.
Here she is talking to Sky News recently answering a query about when she thought her divorce would be finalised: "Do you know what, I've got no idea. It's like taking blood from a stone . . . it's not down to me, it's all down to the hubby."
The details of the multi-million divorce settlement have not been finalised but there is speculation that it will be reduced, due to further revelations about Mill's widely publicised involvement in the making of a German "sex-manual" - there are no words, only dodgy pictures - in the 1980s.
Even her campaigning collateral has fallen.
She was dropped last month by animal rights campaigners PETA, who couldn't risk being associated with her after her split with McCartney. He and his family are far too valuable to the campaign.
It remains to be seen whether she will win public favour or whether she will remain the estrangedwife of a Beatle and a vociferous campaigner who is at best barely tolerated and at worst vilified. Dame Edna Everage, whose chat show is being revived, has yet to be won over, saying: "I have a lot of stairs and to have her clunking up and down them would be distracting. But, above all else, she is dull." Over the next few weeks, American audiences will be the judge of that.
The Mills File
Who is she?Estranged wife of Paul McCartney, anti-fur and landmine campaigner, the most famous amputee in the world
Why is she in the news? She is taking part in a US-based reality TV show, Dancing With The Stars, in a bid, she says, to inspire other amputees
Most appealing characteristic?Her passionate support of the underdog - and cat and seal and sow
Least appealing characteristic?She pulls strained cross-eyed faces while ballroom dancing
Do say:"May I have this dance?"
Don't say: "Money can't buy you love"