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Doomed from the start?
18/03/2008 07:24 - (SA)
London - All you need is love, Paul McCartney once sang, but critics said his marriage to Heather Mills - with whom he finally struck a divorce deal on Monday - was doomed almost from the start.
The union between the pop music legend and the model-turned-campaigner lasted five and a half years, although rumours of strife were circulating years before they headed for the courts.
When they met at an awards ceremony in 1999, McCartney - who at the age of 65 is 25 years older than Mills - was still recovering from losing Linda, his first wife of 29 years who died of breast cancer.
Mills was giving a speech about her anti-landmines charity.
First impressions
"I thought, 'wow she looks great'," former Beatle McCartney said in 2000. "A very beautiful, true, fine woman. That was the first impression and then when I heard her speak I was very impressed.
"So I found out her telephone number - like you do - and rang her up and said we should talk about some charity stuff and I like what you're doing."
Mills said McCartney had played it cool and their first meetings were "prim and proper".
"I thought he was very cute but it didn't enter my head that he fancied me," she said. "At the end of one of the last meetings I got into a lift and just felt these eyes in my back.
"I turned round and saw him peeping round a corner."
The pair worked together on her charity single in late 1999 but McCartney denied rumours of a romance. In March 2000, he confirmed they were "an item".
McCartney said his children found it "puzzling and confusing" that he was in a relationship and the age gap was a "big shock" for them.
Stella couldn't stand Mills
Reports said daughter Stella McCartney could not stand Mills.
The pair got engaged in July 2001 during a break in the picturesque Lake District in north-west England.
"When I proposed I was a bit nervous but I managed. We've had a good reception from relatives and friends and from the media," McCartney told reporters.
Mills said: "It just all happened all of a sudden."
McCartney was knighted for his services to music but Mills said: "I won't be using the title Lady, I'm not into all that pretence."
They married in a lavish ceremony at Castle Leslie in Ireland on June 11, 2002. Around 300 guests were invited.
Mills "wept tears of joy whilst making her vows", McCartney's spokesperson said.
Mills gave birth to a daughter, Beatrice Milly McCartney, in October 2003.
Gold-digger?
But endless speculation about their marriage, with reports of furious rows, soon surfaced.
The press never grew fond of Mills and both husband and wife publicly denied that she was a "gold-digger" after his giant fortune.
McCartney defended her, once issuing a statement attempting to "put the record straight" about "ridiculous stories" because "it hurts me to see her wounded".
They announced their "amicable" split in May 2006 - triggering open warfare between their rival camps.
Mills publicly accused McCartney of dragging his heels over the divorce. The pop star kept quiet, preferring to leave it to the courts.
Mills denied being behind leaked documents from the divorce battle which alleged McCartney had been violent towards her.
In October 2007, Mills toured the television studios, breaking down as she claimed her treatment by the press was worse than a paedophile or a murderer and had driven her to contemplate suicide.
'I still love him'
The same month, McCartney told the Radio Times magazine: "Going through a divorce is a very painful thing. As Winston Churchill once said, 'If you're going through hell, keep going!'
"The only solution is to remain dignified. If I don't keep a silence about it, I lose this idea of being dignified."
Mills said the pair were still friends.
"It's only his lawyers that are a nightmare," she told CNN television. "I still love him."
On Monday she sounded less in love as she told reporters, on the steps of the High Court in London that he had agreed to give her just short of £25m, about a fifth of the £125m she had sought.
- AFP
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South Africa
