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September 2006

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September 30, 2006 -- News of the World

Heather comforted by personal trainer

LADY M'S NEW MR MUSCLE

Lonely Lady McCartney has struck up a close relationship with her personal trainer, the News of the World can reveal.

Heather Mills and muscle-bound Ben Amigoni have been almost inseparable since he joined her staff two months ago.

And a source revealed: "If Paul McCartney knew how close they'd become he'd go absolutely nuts."

Macca's estranged wife even took the 24-year-old gym instructor on holiday to America a few weeks ago.

The strapping six-footer has been supporting Heather during her ongoing divorce battle with Sir Paul.

Workers at the ex-Beatle's Peasmarsh estate in Sussex have seen him coming and going in her car and spending hours talking with Heather at her lodge there.

The couple have also enjoyed cycling through country lanes and along the seafronts at Brighton and Hove where her sister Fiona lives.

A source said: "From what she's said, Ben has become like a rock of support for her, and someone who she's really bonded with.

"They're always laughing and joking together or tucked away chatting closely.

"He has become part of her close circle in a very short space of time."

Former model Mills, 38, became pals with Amigoni, during one-to-one training sessions at The Hilden Health Club, Rye, just three miles from Macca's home.

Macca would even watch Ben put her through her paces on the treadmill last summer.

Then in August she asked the trainer, who charged £20 ($37.40) a session, to join her staff full-time.

Heather has since moved out of the lodge and spent the last couple of weeks living in the barn conversion Paul bought her when they split in May.

Ben has joined her at the five-bedroom Sussex home with her security guards, cleaner, two-year-old daughter Beatrice's nanny and a gardener.

A pal of Macca's said: "She can do her own thing without being disturbed.

So Sir Paul McCartney's designer daughter Stella is doing just that.

Five years after she set up her ownname fashion label, she can boast £23million ($43 million) in worldwide sales and a UK turnover of £7.3 million ($13.6 million), double what it was a year ago.

The latest accounts for Stella McCartney Ltd show the business is close to making a profit for the first time. Next week, the designer will show her ninth collection under her own name on the Paris catwalk, 11 years after she graduated. McCartney, 35, is married to Alasdhair Willis, a publisher. She is seven months pregnant with their second child - the couple have an 18-month-old son called Miller.

She now has an empire that includes stores in Mayfair, New York and Los Angeles selling high-end jewellery, eyewear, accessories and a fragrance.

She also has a collection for adidas, a one-off hit line for H&M and, announced this week, a Stella-designed credit card for Coutts bank.

The business, which employs 30 people with staff costs of £2.2 million ($4 million), "will reach its target of profitability" by next year, say the directors.

McCartney's success will come as a huge relief to the Gucci group, which has bankrolled the business without yet reaping a penny in dividends.

One fashion insider said: "Gucci have been patient. She needed someone with deep pockets to get started and they are in it for the long term. From around now they'll be looking to break even and then make that profit.

"They've been guiding her towards more commercially viable stuff and it's paying off. Adidas has been really successful and she's expanding to ski wear this season, while H&M will have earned her a big cash lump sum.

"Stella has also upped her range of accessories and she can make more money on the back of that. Then there's the perfume - and she won't use leather so her shoes and things are vegetarian and people want to buy into all of that.

In the scheme of things, it's all working for her."

The annual accounts reveal that McCartney took a personal salary of £514,500 ($962,216) last year, down from £629,709 ($1.7 million) in 2004.

Her success marks a turning point in the high-profile, but not necessarily easy, career of the daughter of Britain's biggest music icon.

Stella was sent to state school and clothed in hand-medowns by Sir Paul, who was determined to keep the feet of his three children by his first wife Linda firmly on the ground.

He refused to give them a trust fund, insisting it might be a 'disincentive' to them forging their own careers. He had to 'graft' for his money 'and it's not done me any harm', he reportedly said.

Yet critics have accused Stella McCartney of trading on the family name, not least when she invited friends Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to model the show for her graduation from St Martin's.

In 1997, she was made chief designer at Chloe, prompting predecessor Karl Lagerfeld to complain: "Chloe should have taken a big name. They did but in music, not fashion."

However, she was a commercial and critical success and in 2001 quit to set up her own line. Now, it seems, Stella McCartney is proving her father's philosophy correct.

I was originally asked by Anthony Smith, the President of Magdalen College, Oxford. He wanted to inaugurate a new building and wanted this piece ready for that. But as time went on, I said: "I'm not sure that I'll be ready for that" - it took longer than I thought.

I was very excited by the idea. Linda and I went up there and stayed at the college. We went to the chapel, we heard the choir sing.

Harmonically, it was all very interesting - I thought "Wow!"

It showed me the palette of where you could go and that was how it all started.

Writing a choral piece was a huge learning curve for me because my experience is basically doing harmonies with The Beatles.

The idea of formally structuring something like this and making it work was a huge undertaking. I was going at it completely raw so logistically sorting out how to go about it was a big task.

But my theory was that Magdalen wouldn't have asked me to do it if they didn't think I could. Also, I thought about why they had asked me instead of all the other perfectly good choral composers around and I figured that it was because they must have wanted something different.

I got off to a good start and was getting quite a bit of speed on. Then about a year or so into it, Linda passed away, which immediately held things up and it went right on the back burner. Consequently I lost all momentum that I had gained in that first year and had to slowly start putting it back together.

One of the ways that I did this was to just sort of write my sadness out. There is a lament in the middle called Interlude (Lament) which was very specifically grieving over Linda.

I remember playing it to someone and they started welling up, which was great because I hadn't told them that it was anything to do with Linda, but something in the chords communicated itself to this person, who was listening to it for the very first time.

My colleague and I remember actually just sitting at the keyboard, just weeping while doing this piece, so it does it to me every time. It was a very emotional, very sad time for me.

Nevertheless, I got so excited about being offered this project that I didn't think, "Do I know how to do this?" which most people would think - you know, "Can I fly a plane?" before they agree to fly one!

I immediately started thinking of melodies and tunes and harmonies and I was doing this on a computer program. I learned a lot. If I set out to do another choral piece now, I wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

The good thing was that I had a preview at the Sheldonian in Oxford where we just banged up pretty much where I was up to at that point and I realised that, for instance, I was overworking the boys.

A really experienced choral writer would realise that little kids, for instance, young boy trebles, can't be given huge sustained passages because they just haven't got the energy and stamina to handle that.

These kinds of things I was just finding out as I went along, because of course I had written the piece on a computer and the computer can sing for ever without running out of breath.

The boys however did run out of breath! So we had to go back and look at things again - re-organise and re-structure things. These are the sorts of things that choral writers must be taught - don't kill your choir!

The inspiration for the piece started off with just a combination of thoughts - things that interest me, things I wanted to say. It was most definitely thoughts rather than a full story from start to finish.

In this very beautiful ornate church in New York, I saw a crucifix. Underneath, it said "Ecce Cor Meum" and I worked out, by dredging my mind for the Latin that I had learned at school, that it meant "Behold my heart".

Thinking back, I can remember in the Sixties when I had written Eleanor Rigby and I was very excited by the idea that this wasn't a band, it was actually just string players. I thought: "Wow, we can actually make a record with just strings."

I might have been in my mid-twenties at this point, and I remember thinking: "What am I gonna do when I'm 30?"

Thirty seemed like the end of the world. Now, it seems like a very young age. But I had this image of myself in a tweed jacket, with patches on the elbows and a pencil and some manuscript paper, and I thought: "That's what I will do when The Beatles runs out."

In fact, I didn't do it until much later - I continued from The Beatles with Wings and solo stuff, but I did do it in the end.

It is something completely different. I normally write three-minute songs, which is like writing a short story. But writing a classical piece is a novel. You have to look at structure because you can't just tack together a little bunch of short stories that don't relate.

It is just a fascinating process that I really love and it is completely different from my day job.'

A previously unreleased duet between George Michael and Sir Paul McCartney (first reported on the Macca Report July 4, 2005) is to feature on a series of upcoming greatest hits packages.

Michael's "Twenty Five" collections are scheduled to come out in November (13th in the UK), in the form of two and three disc compilations.

Three new tracks will feature on the two CD release, including the Macca track, "Heal The Pain"(Disc 2), plus "An Easier Affair" and "This Is Not Real Love", featuring former Sugababe Mutya.

September 28, 2006 -- PaulMcCartney.com

Paul is on the Cover of Q Magazine (UK)

Paul is one of 20 cover stars for the Q 20th Anniversary Edition due out next week.

The November 2006 issue has 20 different covers including U2, Pete Townshend, Keith Richards, David Bowie, Damon Albarn and Beyonce.

Paul also gives a short interview and covers a number of topics including, recording Free As A Bird, being the first Q cover star, The Beatles song back catalogue, his favourite track of the last 20 years and some of his favourite live shows of the last 2 decades.

Q is out next week.

Paul's McCartney's North American premiere of "Ecce Cor Meum" will be performed at Carnegie Hall in New York on Tuesday, November 14th at 7:30pm.

Tickets go onsale Monday, October 2nd at 8am ET. Prices are $35-$125 Seating Chart

Download Seating Chart pdf

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By Phone
For tickets or information, call CarnegieCharge, 8 AM-8 PM, 7 days a week, at 212-247-7800. Please note that CarnegieCharge stops selling tickets to an event 3 hours prior to the event's start time.

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"Ecce Cor Meum"("Behold My Heart")

Kate Royal, Soprano
Orchestra of St. Luke's
Gavin Greenaway, Conductor
Concert Chorale of New York
American Boychoir

Times Online has five pairs of tickets to the world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall of Paul McCartney's new classical album Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart), a work for chorus and orchestra in four movements to be held on Friday 3 November.

Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) is Paul's fourth classical album since his first was released in 1991, The Liverpool Oratorio. The album has been more than eight years in the making and its origins follow in the historic tradition of composers that have been commissioned to write music for the world-renowned Magdalen College, Oxford. Sir Paul was specially invited to compose something to set the seal on a new concert hall for the college. His hope was for "a choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over, in the same way that Handel's Messiah is".

To be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets, correctly answer the following question:

To which 1960s group did Paul McCartney belong?

a) The Rutles
b) The Beatles
c) The Rolling Stones

Send the answer, your name, address, e-mail address and daytime telephone number to: entertainment@timesonline.co.uk. Please include the words Paul McCartney competition in the e-mail subject line.

Terms and Conditions
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# Competition open to those aged 18 and over and resident in the UK.
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Rye could be gearing up to hold its own protest march as concerns mount over possible cuts at the Conquest Hospital in Hastings.

And Sir Paul McCartney has added his voice to those wanting to protect vital services at the hospital.
The former Beatle, who lives at Peasmarsh, said: "Any cut back in medical services for this and any other region is a real shame.

"These are services for the people of the area and I for one support the efforts of the people who are trying to make sure that these closures don't happen."

Back in 1990 Sir Paul took to the streets of Rye to lead a huge protest march in a bid to prevent the closure of the town's hospital.

He is still a patron of Rye Memorial Care Centre, which replaced the old hospital.

Rye area residents were among thousands who took part in a protest march along the seafront at Hastings last week.

Among them was Rye Mayor Paul Osborne, who said: "As far as I am concerned, to take away services could mean the difference between life and death."

Town councillor Peter Dyce said: "I would support a Rye protest whole-heartedly.

"I have written to the chief executive Candy Morris and to the Secretary of State for Health, but have not yet had meaningful replies.

"I am 100 per cent in favour of doing all we can to frustrate any attempt to cut back the splendid services at the Conquest Hospital."

Rye resident David Clarke said: "We should organise our own protest here. It is places like Rye, and the rural villages, which would be worst hit.

"It is a basic, fundamental thing that people should have easy access to hospital services, especially important ones like casualty and maternity.

"It is not just the inconvenience, it is the suffering and distress involved if someone from Camber injures themselves and then has to endure a two-hour bus journey before they even get to hospital."

Rye councillor Keith Taylor, a retired medical consultant, said: "I am totally against any cuts. The medical profession is divided, but all the doctors I have spoken to are against this.

"It comes down to the fact that individuals do not have a say in determining local health policies."

Patient groups in the Rye area have added their voice to the protest. Harry Payne, chairman of the Northiam and Broad Oak surgeries patients group, said: "We have serious concerns. Getting to Eastbourne by public transport would be virtually impossible.

"Recognising that not everyone is in the position of owning their own transport, the time taken to travel to the hospital would be three hours each way and involve four buses. This journey is only possible Monday to Saturday - so no visits at all on Sundays."

Read more...

Miss Mills's divorce lawyer Antony Julius, has compiled a file of serious claims Heather is making against Sir Paul which, say friends, are likely to become public at around the time of the divorce settlement.

A friend of Heather's said yesterday that despite the air appearing to have cleared over the divorce, with reports of the pair heading towards a more amicable arrangement, nothing could be further from the truth.

The friend said: "Heather has made a number of very serious allegations against Paul which are set to come out in court.

"However, quite apart from that she feels that her character has been irrevocably damaged by a rash of stories which she is sure have been leaked out by Paul's side.

"As the divorce settlement gets closer, she is fully planning to go public with some pretty serious claims about how Paul treated her during the marriage. There is some serious weight behind all of these allegations.

"Heather has made records of a catalogue of incidents which have happened during the marriage. There's a lot to say on Heather's part but she is not prepared to go public with it at this stage. She has been told by Antony Julius to keep her head down and let things take their legal course.

"It's bombshell stuff - every one of these allegations would be front page news. Rest assured, if all goes to plan, what has happened in this marriage will not remain secret. The allegations will see the light of day.

"Heather will not want to go down in history as Evil Heather - the bad guy in this marriage."

The source continued: "Heather feels that she has been struggling against the might of Team Macca since the break-up in May.

"She feels that Paul's side has been constantly dripping out stories that she has been offered £30 million ($56 million) - then £40 million ($75 million) - and turned those offers down.

"The truth is that there has been no offer at all as yet. She has £1 million ($1.9 million) from a bank account from the sale of a flat in London and that is it. In fact the figure is closer to £700,000 ($1.3 million).

"There has been a lot of innuendo to make her look very bad. For that reason, Heather is not going to be happy to go down in history without letting this all out."

The friend added: "Heather said to me this week that nearer the time (of the divorce being finalised) the true story of her marriage will see the light of day. There are some really explosive revelations about Paul.

"However until now - on the advice of her lawyers - she has been very careful to tell no one about these details."

The friend concluded: "Antony Julius is concerned that stories leaking out may make the judge think either side are trying to influence the hearing by putting pressure on the judge.

"Once things come nearer to the date, revelations will start to emerge. The one thing Heather is concerned about as the date of the final divorce agreement is reached is that she will look like the bad apple here."

To that end, Miss Mills' team are understood to be looking into how stories may have leaked out from her camp.

A source said: "There is somebody who has leaked the information to a specific paparazzi agency and a specific national paper who keeps getting pictures over and again of Heather picking up Beatrice.

"I think it may be a security guard or perhaps a nanny. I cannot imagine anyone else would know about the handover of a baby in America and Sussex.

"Also news of the divorce leaking out was something that came after divorce papers were left around the house. The only people around the house are the security guards and the nanny.

"The nanny they have know for years and years and they trust with their lives. But we have no way of proving anything."

A divorce settlement to carve up McCartney's £850 million ($1.6 billlion)fortune does not look imminent. As another source explained: "The lawyers are currently going back and forward and coming to an agreement may take a day and may take a year.

"There is no timetable on this. And of course, the lawyers will not be trying to hurry things through - lawyers get paid for their time."

A key part of evidence Julius is understood to be relying on is the so-called 'Maccagate' tape containing a bugged telephone conversation between Sir Paul and his daughter Stella, a fashion designer, at his estate in Peasmarsh, east Sussex.

A friend said: "The tape is a recording of Paul talking to Stella in the thick of the bitter break-up.

It is pretty explicit stuff - the pair of them speaking unguardedly about their true feelings for Heather. On the tape, Paul is understood to be consoling Stella about Heather's claim to the family's money and to the custody of little Beatrice.

"The fact that this tape fell into Heather's hands has been very unfortunate for Paul - and is bound to cost him dear. Heather's lawyers will certainly be able to use it as a bargaining tool."

Numerous stories have circulated surrounding Heather since the break-up. Hardest-hitting have been those detailing her colourful upbringing and murky past in the world of vice and soft-porn - admittedly before she even met Sir Paul.

A spokesman for Heather Mills refused to comment last night.

Design on the bank cards for Stella

Stella McCartney has turned her talents to redesigning a bank account card.

The fashion designer's swirling blue pattern was developed for private bank Coutts & Co.

Her aim was to combine the "intricacies" of a banknote with aspects of the British countryside, according to the bank.

Stella McCartney said: "It was refreshing to be asked by Coutts to design something I have never done before.

"It is a design area that has been overlooked in the past and it's about time you get to spend your hard earned money with an account card that looks good."

The current account card will be offered to new and existing customers of Coutts, which is the international private banking arm of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

With an impending divorce from Heather Mills McCartney, the last thing Sir Paul McCartney probably wants right now is to be faced with a room full of reporters.

But with a new album released on Monday, the ex-Beatle was left with little choice.

In London to launch his new classical album Ecce Cor Meum, McCartney attended a news conference to talk about the eight-year-long project.

However, as soon as the questions turned to his private life and an article in the UK tabloid Daily Mirror about the recent break up, the musician thanked the reporters and stood up to leave.

"Have we someone breaking away from the script? Yes we have. Thank you very much," he said before walking out of the room.

The 64-year-old did tell the press, however, that he was feeling well and enjoying making music again.

"I'm doing fine, thank you. It's okay, I'm enjoying music as I said to the last questioner, it's something I love to do, something that sustains me and so I'm enjoying it," he said.

The estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney had dropped in on the store while visiting pals in her native North East.

But a staff member recognised her and refused to let her in, saying she was banned for crimes committed more than 20 YEARS ago.

The humiliated ex-model stormed off as stunned shoppers looked on.

And to make things worse, last night it appeared shop staff had got it WRONG.

Sainsbury's bosses said she wasn't banned from any of their stores and was welcome any time.

Heather, 38, hit trouble while visiting the Savacentre in Washington, Tyne and Wear, with a bodyguard. One shopper said: "A woman worker went up to Heather and stopped her going in. She said, 'Excuse me, Heather, you know you're not allowed in there, you know the situation'.

"Heather replied, 'For Christ's sake, that was years ago. Do you honestly think I'm going to shoplift now? I've moved on from there'.

Sir Paul McCartney has said his new album contains his first wife Linda's "spirit" and his grief over the loss of her to breast cancer in 1998.

Sir Paul began composing it before she died but had to stop work on it for two years due to his grief.

He said: "I just couldn't do anything really. I was just grieving."

At a press conference in central London he said of the album, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart): "It has a lot of my feelings for her in it. I gradually got back into it, I just sort of wrote my sadness out."

Wearing jeans, a blue shirt and a pin-stripe jacket, Sir Paul said of his fourth classical album: "I started it when Linda was alive, originally we went to Magdalen College together, so it has a lot my feelings for her in it."

"When she died it stalled me. I took a year or so before I could get back into it. The interlude in the middle is a particularly sad melody and is what got me going again," he said.

"Her spirit is very much in this. It would have been her birthday yesterday (Sept. 24) so it's very appropriate."

The star wrote the piece after being invited by Anthony Smith, then president of Magdalen College, to compose something for a new concert hall at the institution.

Sir Paul also reassured his army of fans "I'm doing fine" following the collapse of his second marriage.

The ex-Beatle, who is locked in a divorce battle with wife Heather Mills, said music "sustains" him.

He said: "I'm enjoying music. It's something I love to do. It's something that sustains me. So I'm enjoying it, finishing this project off and also the next one."

He said the lyrics to the album were inspired by what he believes is important in life - love, honesty and kindness.

Sir Paul said: "When I came around to thinking 'what do I want the words to say?' I just wrote down a whole load of things that interest me about truth, about love, about honesty and about kindness. Stuff that I thought was important in life."

Sir Paul said he was not always comfortable talking about his own music.

"It's not easy to talk about music, that's why you write it," he said.

He said of the album: "I'm very proud of it. I do like it."

He added: "I don't get involved in much instrumental music. It amazes me how you can hear a piece of music and it can reduce you to tears."

"But there are no words so it shouldn't really be telling you anything but it does."

"It doesn't just tell people who are musically educated. It tells everyone. It reaches us. So that's one of the exciting sides of this project, to write instrumental music that can reach your heart."

He added: "I hope to reach new people all the time and I hope my current fans will like it too."

The album was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios, where the Beatles also famously created their music.

Sir Paul said: "It's always nice to work there for me because it brings back lots of memories."

The lyrics, which Sir Paul finished around six years ago, combined both English and Latin.

Sir Paul said at the press conference at record company EMI's offices in High Street Kensington: "I love what I do. I love writing music. If I didn't do it for a living I'd do it for a hobby."

"I just love going in each day and trying to write a piece of music. Each part of it (the album) was a thrill."

He said of the experience of writing a choral piece: "Because I don't officially know what I'm doing, I could do anything. A lot of the stuff I like about the piece is oddball, it's nice to just feel very free."

The organ from the Tower of London was used in the album and Sir Paul got the Latin title for the work from the name of a statue he saw in a New York church.

Ecce Cor Meum will be performed at the Royal Albert Hall on November 3rd.

Carole Cadwalladr tries, and fails, to have a quiet night at Locanda Locatelli

So, it's off to Locanda Locatelli for an all-expenses-paid meal for two. Oh yes, my journalistic boat seems to have finally come in. But who to take?

The logical answer is my Australian friend Pete, since he's over from Hong Kong and is staying the week with me. On the other hand, when I tell him, Lady Bountiful-style, that I've only gone and swagged us a table at the best Italian restaurant in London, I can't help feeling that he's being really rather insufficiently grateful.

'Is it far?' he asks.

Worse, he was a foreign correspondent in Rome for two years, during which time he wrote a couple of stories about the Pope but largely dedicated himself to the task of putting on three stone in weight. Consequently and quite boringly, he now thinks he knows all there is to know about Italian food.

I make this point, because, being a) male, b) Australian, c) a non-UK resident, and d) laconic to the point of bone idle, I wouldn't necessarily have voted him my Friend Most Likely to Have a Fit of the Vapours upon Sighting a Celebrity. Which just goes to show, because not half an hour later he's giggling like a girlie and is too nervous to go to the gents.

But first things first, which in my case is a fresh and creamy goats'-cheese salad with balsamic onions and beetroot and Pete's is ox tongue with salsa verde. Max the sommelier swings by, with his recommendation of an aperitif of marsala, a bread basket with a dozen types of different, delicately flavoured bread and the greenest, fruitiest olive oil I've ever tasted. Pete is slightly sniffy about his ox tongue ('I think I had better back in '99 in Murazzano') but I ignore him and scan the room and there just visible under the mood lighting is Chris Evans.

Oh, this is just typical. One of the best things about the authentically Turkish place just around the corner from my flat and my favourite restaurant in London is that you're never likely to bump into Chris Evans in there. It's one of the reasons why I don't actually like posh restaurants all that much. There's really nothing like a faintly annoying minor celebrity to put you off your food.

And then, just as I'm crabbing about this, in walks Gwyneth Paltrow. Not in some anti-paparazzi I'm-just-a-normal-London-girl type outfit either. She's done up like a Christmas bauble. Her blouse is gold and silky, and her hair so long and shimmery and perfectly coiffed it flows like a river down her back. She's just so golden and shiny that suddenly the backdrop of curvy cream banquettes and large convex mirrors looks impossibly glamorous. And, bizarrely, since there's no way you could have ever predicted this, so do we. We're having dinner with Gwynnie. Pete is holding up quite well at this point. He's looking unimpressed. He's not staring. And then I say, 'Who's the bloke with her?'

'It's a woman, isn't it?' he says.

We both peer at him/her and then both gasp. Although for slightly different reasons.

'Omigod!' says Pete, his fork arrested, on the way to his mouth. 'It's only Sir Paul McCartney!'

It is. With hair that is not only unnaturally full, it's also orange. Pete is so excited he momentarily loses the power of speech. He's a bonafide Beatles bore. I lived with him, years ago, in Prague and the repeated replaying of 'Rocky Raccoon' had a not insignificant part in the demise of our relationship.

Max brings another glass of something zingy and delicious and then our pasta course arrives and a plate of gnocchi with truffle that is truly sensational and that even Pete agrees is beyond compare but it's hard to concentrate because in walks Stella McCartney. She's in one of her sweater dresses which I know are high high fashion but it doesn't stop her looking a bit like Dorien from Birds of a Feather. And there's Chris Martin with his head-boy smile on. And who's the older-looking rock chick with the smudged kohl eyeliner and the birds'-nest hair? Why, it's Chrissie Hynde, of course.

'It's like watching glove puppets,' says Pete. 'You think, bring on Chrissie Hynde! And then in she capers.'

We're actually craning by this point. It's an A-list celebrity meltdown. And yet Chris Evans, on the table right next to them, doesn't so much as turn his head.

'He must have balls of steel!' says Pete. 'You'd have had to have fought in the Battle of Britain or something to be able not to stare.' He continues not-staring as a waiter appears with a little cake and a candle and the whole table starts singing, 'Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Chrissie, Happy Birthday to you!'

It's a bit like being in the front row at your own personal Live Aid. Even our waitress can't help sneaking a peek.

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'There is one man there whom I love.'

'Which one?' we say.

'Bono.'

'BONO!' we shriek. We hadn't even noticed him. He was camouflaged against the celebrity canopy but there he is! Sitting next to Sir Paul. He hasn't got his sunglasses on, a brilliant reverse-disguise technique that totally out-foxed us.

'I've got to go to the loo,' says Pete but at the same moment Sir Paul stands up and heads to the gents.

'I CAN'T GO NOW!' he says. He stands up and then sits down again and then stands up again.

'So?' I ask, when he returns.

'It was completely deserted,' he says. 'Apart from one locked cubicle. From which emanated total silence.'

It's all too much. Much too much. More food arrives, lamb for me, veal for Pete. It's perfect. Perfectly cooked, perfectly served. Our waitress, a pocket-sized version of Sophia Loren, is adorable. Max appears every half hour or so with a glass of some wine that is even more delicious than the last. We've adopted a strategy of saying yes to everything.

Chrissie, unless I'm very much mistaken, is making panda eyes at Sir Paul. Or maybe that's just her eyeliner. Although my theory is that Stella is trying to set her dad up with someone his own age. Because, otherwise, it's just weird, isn't it? That they're all best friends with each other.

And then, suddenly, they've gone. Poof! Like fairy smoke. Bono, out the front door, the rest of them via various secret exits round the back. Poor Giorgio. He begs me to not say who was there. But I'd have had to have been in the Battle of Britain or something not to mention it. His food was quite quite lovely though. As were his staff. And we head out into the night, humming 'Strawberry Fields Forever' all the way home.

September 26, 2006 -- The Telegraph

Sir Paul beats his divorce blues with album for Linda

Sir Paul McCartney returned to the spotlight following the break-up of his second marriage yesterday to launch an album dedicated to his first wife, Linda.

The former Beatle, who is locked in a bitter divorce battle with Lady McCartney, used the launch of his new classical album Ecce Cor Meum, (Behold My Heart) which is about the death of his first wife to reassure his fans he was "doing fine" after the collapse of his second marriage.

Sir Paul had been reported as saying that he was struggling to cope with the break- up of the four-year marriage and was said to have become emotional during a party.

"It's been the most terrible time for me and my family", he was reported to have said. "Having to come to terms with this! It's been horrible, so horrible. The whole thing has been horrible for me... I don't know how to deal with it all. I just cannot talk about it."

But yesterday during a press conference he went out of his way to say he was coping after the split in May. He said his music had helped him to cope with the trauma.

He said: "I'm doing fine thank you. It's OK. I'm enjoying music. It's something I love to do. It's something that sustains me. So I'm enjoying it, finishing this project off and also the next one."

"I hope to reach new people all the time and I hope my current fans will like it too," he said.

September 25, 2006 -- AP PHOTOS VIDEO ITV

Paul McCartney says he's 'doing fine'
Paul McCartney says he's "doing fine," despite the turmoil surrounding the breakup of his marriage. McCartney, who appeared Monday at a news conference to launch his new classical album, "Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart)," did not comment directly on his split from his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney.

Asked how he had been coping in recent months, McCartney said: "I'm doing fine thank you. It's OK.

"I'm enjoying music. It's something I love to do. It's something that sustains me. So I'm enjoying it, finishing this project off and also the next one."

McCartney said he started "Ecce Cor Meum" when his first wife, Linda, was still alive. After she died of breast cancer in 1998, "it stalled me," the 64-year-old former Beatle said.

"I took a year or so before I could get back into it. The interlude in the middle is a particularly sad melody and is what got me going again," he said. "Her spirit is very much in this. It would have been her birthday yesterday so it's very appropriate."

McCartney said the lyrics of "Ecce Cor Meum" were inspired by what he believes is important in life.

"When I came around to thinking, 'what do I want the words to say?' I just wrote down a whole load of things that interest me about truth, about love, about honesty and about kindness. Stuff that I thought was important in life."

Paul and Heather Mills McCartney announced their separation in May after four years of marriage. They have begun divorce proceedings in an increasingly acrimonious split. The couple have a 2-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

"Ecce Cor Meum," which is being released by EMI Classics, is the pop star's fourth classical album. His first, "The Liverpool Oratorio," was released in 1991.

Britain's Magdalen College Oxford commissioned McCartney to create the music more than eight years ago in celebration of a new concert hall.

"I just want to be licked."

Sir Paul McCartney can't wait for a new range of British stamps bearing the Beatles' images.

British rock legend Paul McCartney says he is optimistic about his new album and other endeavors, despite recent personal problems.

McCartney told the Sunday Times of London's Don Cairns his difficult divorce from Heather Mills-McCartney is not overshadowing his optimism over his newest project, Ecce Cor Meum -- his fourth classical release.

Life beats you down occasionally, the former Beatles star said, and when it does, you just have to not try. But I am the eternal optimist. No matter how rough it gets, there's always light somewhere. The rest of the sky may be cloudy, but that little bit of blue draws me on.

McCartney conceded he has agonized when any of his solo projects were not well received by the public, and suggested John Lennon's tragic death might have had something to do with that.

Obviously, people's sympathy is going to go to him, including mine, McCartney told the Times. But the picture did get a bit muddy. People did go over the top and say, 'Well, it was only John, the other three were just hangers-on.' When you've taken so much flak, you do think, enough's enough.

Macca, 64, tinted his hair, put on a suit and joined guests including actresses Scarlett Johansson and Gwyneth Paltrow at a bash in London.

The ex-Beatle, who split from wife Heather five months ago, told a fellow reveller: "I've been to hell and back but now I'm ready to start living again . . . and I mean living with a capital L."

The guest said last night: "Paul was in buoyant mood - and looking good. He was wearing a smart suit and had specially re-dyed his hair for the evening.

"He said it was really the first time he'd been out socially since his split. He said it had been a nightmare few months but he was now ready to start again.

"There was a DJ and I saw him tapping his feet.

"There were a lot of attractive young women there and a lot of the girls were trying to chat him up.

"He was clearly delighted to be out for the evening."

Sir Paul - who is locked in a £200 million ($380 million) divorce battle with Heather, 38 - made his comeback at a first birthday party for furniture firm Established & Sons, run by his son-in-law Alasdhair Willis.

He happily posed for pictures with his arms around daughters Stella, 35 - married to Alasdhair - and Mary, 37, before joining fellow celebrities in the VIP suite.

Then, Sir Paul left his minder and wandered off to mingle with the other 1,500 guests at Saturday's bash in the posh Il Bottaccio nightspot, near Buckingham Palace.

An insider told The Sun: "He chatted to dozens of people. He wasn't one of these stuffy types who just hung out in the VIP area, he was very sociable and stayed for at least a couple of hours."

Macca has kept his head down since he and Heather announced the end of their marriage in May.

Heather - dubbed Lady Mucca due to her porn past - has set up a string of photo opportunities to try to win sympathy from the public.

But shattered Sir Paul, who has a two-year-old daughter Beatrice with Heather, has avoided doing the same.

A pal of the music legend said last night: "Paul is OK and is a very sociable guy.

"But obviously there's still a long process and emotions are still flying.

"There is no date for the divorce to go through yet. But he's getting stronger."

Paul McCartney proved he was bouncing back from his recent troubles when he joined his daughters Stella and Mary for a glitzy party on Saturday night. The legendary musician said he was feeling positive, despite his well-documented split from estranged wife Heather Mills, as the family put on a united front in London's West End.

"Life beats you down occasionally," said the 64-year-old. "But I am the eternal optimist. No matter how rough it gets, there's always light somewhere. The rest of the sky may be cloudy, but that little bit of blue draws me on."

The former Beatle was enjoying a night out with his friends and loved ones at a launch party thrown by his son in law Alasdhair Willis. And the rock and roll veteran was seen chatting warmly with Stella's husband, who had staged the event to promote his furniture company Established & Sons.

Among the other big names rubbing shoulders at the exclusive soiree were Tintseltown starlet Scarlett Johansson, who turned plenty of heads by wearing a metallic boilersuit, and Oscar-winner Gwyneth Paltrow, who was accompanied by her singer husband Chris Martin.

The former Beatle confessed he was struggling to cope with the break-up of their four-year marriage. Macca, 64, said: "It's been the most terrible time for me and my family.

"Having to come to terms with this! It's been horrible, so horrible."

He opened his heart at a reception in London thrown by daughter Stella McCartney's husband Alasdhair Willis.

Shaking his head and looking visibly distressed, Macca told a fellow guest: "Of course, it's bad.

"The whole thing has been horrible for me ... I don't know how to deal with it all. I just cannot talk about it."

Partygoers at the bash, hosted by the design and manufacturing company Established & Sons, were shocked to witness Sir Paul's emotional state. One said:

"Someone went up to him and started chatting and he seemed friendly and together.

"He was explaining he couldn't pick up his GQ Man Of The Year award in person last month because he had flown in from the States that day and was very tired.

"But as soon as the subject of Heather came up, his demeanour totally changed.

"He started shaking and there were tears welling up in his eyes.

"It was really sad to see - you could tell he really thought their marriage would be for life and he's obviously in bits about the separation."

Macca and Heather, 38, who have a daughter Beatrice, two, are now facing a bitter divorce.

But despite his battle to deal with the collapse of his marriage, he remains optimistic about the future.

In an interview to promote his new classical album Ecce Cor Meum, which is out today, he details his philosophy for coping with life's up and downs.

"Life beats you down occasionally," he said. "But I am the eternal optimist. No matter how rough it gets, there's always light somewhere.

"The rest of the sky may be cloudy, but that little bit of blue draws me on."

Macca, 64, was talking about the dark days following the death from breast cancer in 1998 of his first wife Linda.

He discovered he could not make music and cried for a year.

McCartney also revealed how he loved choirs as a boy - but failed to make it into the Liverpool cathedral choir.

"I was not musical enough, obviously," he grinned. Recalling his schooldays, he added: "The teacher would put on a record - Tchaikovsky, something like that - then he'd leave.

"We just took it off and when he came back we put the last couple of bars on."

Message from Brian

Ahhhh, friends!

How have you all been? I've been a busy boy lately with many new things. I needed a little break from the international super highway... I guess I got a little MySpaced out! But..... I'M BACK!

I want to announce that my solo CD, Mondo Magneto will be released in stores as of Oct 10 through the good people at Burnside Distribution. I am also in talks with a few labels for a release in stores all over Europe.

I just finished a new video for my song "I Liked You Better", which features animation and live footage of my band, Black Unicorn. I will be releasing it very soon for all to see! Watch out for an eCard from me in the coming weeks. Hope you dig it, I think you will. I would love your support in getting it seen far and wide.

I will be adding some info about the recording of my CD to my site as well... Maybe a few pics from the sessions too.

Many of you have been asking about Paul McCartney's tour plans for '07.. there is no official word as of this printing. BUT, there WILL be a release of the DVD from our '05 US Tour of the U.S. very soon!

Stay tuned and I'll see you around the campfire.

Until next week,
Ta!

Brian Ray

Established & Sons is Alashdair Willis' furniture company. Alashdair is married to Stella McCartney.

Check out the photos on Getty Images. In three photos Paul has his hand on Stella's very pregnant belly and is feeling the baby kick!

"But the family run-ins seemed a long way from her mind and she looked like she didn't have a care in the world.

"She sat enjoying her Beck's, but her trainer stuck to water."

Ex-Beatle Sir Paul, 64, got a little help from his friends after 80 of them held a bash for him in the upstairs room of the Masons Arms in Kensal Green, west London.

A source said: "The party was a real old-fashioned get-together at a proper pub over a few pints.

"Macca 's pals feared he was spending too much time on his own.

'They wanted to get him out and in the company of those who care for him.

"Paul had a great time and when he left he was accompanied by two mates who helped him into a waiting car.

"He has a house only a few miles down the road in St John's Wood. It was great to see him with a smile and thoroughly enjoying himself again."

Since his split from wife Heather in May, the rock legend has rarely been spotted out.

But last week it seemed both were determined to escape the Lonely Hearts Club for a while.

AM: Sir Paul, first of all thank you very much for sparing us some time this afternoon to talk about Ecce Cor Meum.  Is it right that you were asked to compose a piece by Magdalene College in Oxford and that was how it all came about? And you'd actually heard the college choir sing there?

PAUL: Yes, I was first of all asked by the then president Anthony Smith and he invited me to come and listen to the choir and look around.  He wanted to inaugurate a new building and he wanted this piece for its opening but it took longer than I thought.  Linda and I went up there.  We stayed at the college, we went to the chapel and we heard the choir sing. It's a beautiful place and the choir were great, they were doing a lot of stuff I'd not heard before - I don't know what it was - but their choirmaster has interesting tastes. Some of it would be what you'd expect but some of it would be harmonically really interesting and I was thinking 'wow'. 
 
AM: What did you start with first ­ was it the music or the subject matter of the commission?

PAUL: It was the music. I got so excited that I immediately started thinking of melodies and tunes and harmonies. I was doing it on a computer programme on a keyboard that had a choir so it sounded quite realistic.  I thought that I could just play it into this keyboard and a score would appear.  Of course that's not true, and anyone who knows anything about composing knows that. You have to set up a tempo and you have to stick strictly to that.  If you want to alter from 4/4 let's say to 3/4 time, you've got to tell the computer that.  And I didn't know all these things. Looking back on it now it's laughable, but it was quite a while ago, about 1997, when I started. 
 
AM: What about the experience of having written the Liverpool Oratorio and Standing Stone? Did that help? Did you draw on your experiences of those two works for this?

PAUL: It's a funny thing for me. You make a great album, a successful album and you come to make your next one and you think; 'I know how to do it now because I just made a great one', but you don't.  Each time you come to it you relearn the whole thing.  It's as if you forget it all and your memory goes blank.  In a way it's quite a good thing and what I used to do play the last album to remind me where we were up to and what I now wanted to try. So with the Oratorio and with Standing Stone, they obviously helped because they were experiences that I needed but it was still a blank canvas.
 
I'd been involved with another choir for a memorial for Linda, who'd died by this time and was obviously a huge setback to me.  This is why I think the piece took so long to write.  I started it and I had the whole thing going then suddenly Linda died and it just stopped me.  And I had to take a year out just to grieve and then I picked it up after that.  There's an interlude in the middle of Ecce Cor Meum, which is a very sad piece of music and I remember actually sitting at the keyboard, just weeping when we were doing this piece.  It does it to me every time
 
AM:The words came about through a concert you were working with John Taverner - is that right?  And inspiration struck thanks to a statue of Christ.

PAUL: I was at a reception connected with the memorial for Linda and there were choral writers there. And one of them asked me what I had used for the text and I didn't quite understand the question.  It was only then I realised that most people do it the other way round from how I'd done it.  They find a great French poem or a piece of Shakespeare and set it, which would have been really much easier.  So then I started going about the process of the words and that was then the next stage.
 
I wasn't looking for something that was specifically Christian but John Taverner had asked me to narrate a piece of his that was by a Greek poet called Kadafi. I agreed to do it and went to New York to a church there - a very ornate, beautiful church. While I was waiting for my go, I was looking around the church and I saw a crucifixion statue up on the wall and I saw underneath it 'Ecce Cor Meum'. So dredged my mind for some Latin from school trying to work out what it meant.  'Ecce' meant 'behold', it was one of the key words ­ 'behold Caesar, ecce Caesar'.  'Cor' and 'Meum' meant 'heart' and 'mind'.  So I realised it was 'behold my heart' and that started the idea for the lyrics. 
 
AM:I wanted to ask you a bit about the performance because you recorded it at Abbey Road earlier in the year.  Did you like being on hand to give feedback or do you just sit there quietly and speak when you're spoken to if anyone wants your opinion?

PAUL: A bit of both.  I like being there ­ it's my baby. If there's a wrong note, I'll hear it. I know how it sounds so it's useful for them to have me there. Being a musician as well, I relate to the musicians and their task, so I don't give them a hard time.  I try to be really sympathetic with them and I think that comes over.  During the space of the week, we had quite a good time together. It's something that I don't do every day, even though I'm in a studio and work with orchestras, a whole big piece like that was quite an effort but when we finished it, it was very satisfying.
 
AM: Do you think you've started something of a trend?  Other musicians have turned their hand to classical music like Elvis Costello; Sting is about to release an album of lute music and Chris Martin from Coldplay has said that when he's 40 he wants to go college to study classical music.

PAUL: I can sympathise with Chris Martin because when I'd written Eleanor Rigby in the 1960s I was excited by the idea that this wasn't a band it was actually just string players.  For 'Yesterday', I had a string quartet and George Martin helped me. I'd go round to his house and I'd show him the chords and he would re-voice them for a quartet. In rock'n'roll I would play within one octave, but classical composers in the past would voice it. George would give me little tips on those sorts of things and we'd have fun moments. On 'Yesterday' George was taking chords down from me and looking at the voicing of them and there was one little bit where I wanted a seventh and George said 'a classical composer wouldn't do that' and I said 'all the more reason to do it, stick it in, come on.' We had nice little experimental moments like that. About the time of Eleanor Rigby I did have this image of myself in a kind of tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and a pencil and some manuscript paper and I thought that's what I'll do.  That's what I'll do when The Beatles runs out.' 

AM: Can I ask you just finally if there are any classical composers or pieces that you couldn't live without, you love to listen to or revisit from time to time. 

PAUL: I do have lots of pieces I like but if I just had to choose something to go on a desert island, it would be Chopin's 'Nocturnes'. It's something I come back to all the time, so that would be my choice.

He was composing a classical album for a choir and orchestra when Linda died of breast cancer in April 1998. The work, Ecce Cor Meum, Latin for Behold My Heart, is finally released tomorrow.

Speaking on a podcast made available this week exclusively to readers of The Sunday Times, McCartney, 64, says he eventually learnt how to "write my sadness out".

"For a couple of years I couldn't do anything, really. I was just grieving," he says. "And when I eventually came back to it I started doing some particularly sad bits.

"There is a piece called Interlude. It still affects me. It is quite a sad thing. The chords are very sad and it is strange, really, how something with no words can affect you so deeply, can affect your emotions."

The former Beatle, who is now putting the finishing touches to a new pop album, adds: "I gradually got back into it through that. I just sort of wrote my sadness out. I was able after a year or two to pick it up again and complete it.

"When I came round to thinking what do I want the words to say, I just wrote down a whole load of things that interested me, just about truth and love and honesty and kindness, just stuff that I thought was important in life."

He does not mention the name of his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, with whom he is locked in a divorce battle, either in the podcast or in an interview in the new music section of today's Culture magazine.

When McCartney was invited to write the new work for the choir at Magdalen College, Oxford, he asked a scholar at the college to translate it into Latin.

"There were some words I loved but just couldn't work in," says the composer.

"Carminabundas [Latin for versifying] being one of them. Car and minibus in the same word. Fantastic. A new surreal vehicle."

Paul McCartney opens up

In his new choral piece, McCartney asks us to 'behold my heart'. He opens up to Dan Cairns

"You'll be met at the station," teases Paul McCartney's publicist, "where you'll be blindfolded and driven to a secret location." In fact, the assistant who picks me up and drives me in her battered estate car to McCartney's Sussex recording studio couldn't be friendlier. No walkie-talkie earpieces or security gates to speak of (although the phrase "hidden devices" almost certainly applies), just an unkempt gravel lane winding through lawns and past rose bushes to a group of buildings high on a ridge, overlooking the English Channel. Oh, and a windmill, naturally.

The property is a short hop from his farm, location of the infamous log cabin over which McCartney is currently in dispute with the planning officers. He is mired in certain other legal disputes, too, and the publicist is at pains to point out that questions on this are verboten. So Heather Mills- McCartney is off limits. Long may she stay that way.

Her estranged husband, far from looking weighed down with anxiety, exudes bonhomie. It is in stark contrast to his demeanour when I last interviewed him, five years ago.

At that time, he was emerging from the deep slough of despair that had claimed him following the death of his first wife, Linda, and was gearing up for his second marriage. Tellingly, he came across then as strident, hectoring, uncomfortable in his skin; he looked old and angry. Today, he is youthful in comparison. Putting the finishing touches to a new pop album, McCartney is doing what he has always done in adversity - seeking refuge, therapy, even, in music.

The only time in his life, he says, when he found this escape route blocked was when Linda died. Music was impossible. He cried for a year. "Life beats you down occasionally," he says, in his Liverpudlian singsong, "and when it does, you just have to not try. But I am the eternal optimist. No matter how rough it gets, there's always light somewhere. The rest of the sky may be cloudy, but that little bit of blue draws me on."

This is one of two points in the interview where what is unspoken hovers, clamorously, in the air. We are sitting in a huge, memento-filled room above the studio, a space filled with light and with views out to sea, above which banks of stupendous clouds scud across a sky that is luminously, unmistakably blue.

You have to keep it together in a situation such as this. When, to illustrate a story he is telling, McCartney drags his sofa closer to the one I'm parked on and begins, "Working with John, like this, him there with his right-handed guitar and me here with my left-handed one", you feel the finger of history running its nail up your spine. Ditto when you notice that his feet, famously bare on the Abbey Road sleeve, are unshod again. It is an effort to maintain concentration.

But we can dip in and out of all this.

In June, the $170 million Beatles-based Cirque du Soleil show LOVE opened in Las Vegas. Last month, it was announced that the Fab Four's ever alert Apple Corps is suing EMI over unpaid royalties. And in the past fortnight, it has been announced that the Casbah Coffee Club, in Liverpool, where the then Silver Beatles played their first gigs, has been awarded listed status; and that postage stamps bearing the Beatles' faces are to be issued in January. "And in the end," they sang in the closing bars of Abbey Road. But it never did end. It goes on.

I ask McCartney if, even now, he has moments where he wants to pinch himself, where he goes: "Eh?" He says at once: "Oh, yeah." And, in an echo of those sharp early press conferences, where the Fabs toyed with their inquisitors, putting them to the sword with Scouse wordplay and wit, he says of the stamps: "I just want to be licked."

He is back in the promotional fray to talk about Ecce Cor Meum, his new work for choir and orchestra, which he began working on eight years ago. It's his fourth classical release, following Liverpool Oratorio, Standing Stone and Working Classical. None was especially well received, but then nor were the majority of his post-Beatles solo albums, nor his paintings, nor his book of poetry. In part, this is because the Lennonists have tended to John's shrine with, it sometimes seems, burnt offerings in the form of McCartney's poor-relation reputation. Back in 2001, the latter spat back at these snipers. "I, particularly, took a lot of flak with John," he said.

"The break-up, and then, of course, when John died ... very tragically. Obviously, people's sympathy is going to go to him, including mine," he recalls. "But the picture did get a bit muddy. People did go over the top and say, 'Well, it was only John, the other three were just hangers-on.' When you've taken so much flak, you do think, enough's enough."

There is no trace of that anger today. Rather, he seems sanguine, more able to accommodate the whole mad journey he was a part of. And it is clear that he sees Ecce Cor Meum as very much another stage in that journey. This insistence on continuity, on a thread linking the Beatles with Wings, with his solo career, maddens detractors. But to him it is an inescapable fact. He got "in the vehicle", as he calls it, when he was a boy, and he is still at the wheel today.

"I love choirs," he says, explaining the alacrity with which he accepted Magdalen College, Oxford's commission of a new choral work. "I was in one as a kid, St Barnabas at Penny Lane. And I tried out for Liverpool cathedral, and sort of got to the last stages. But" - and here his faces creases into a delighted grin - "I was not musical enough, obviously. At school, in terms of musical education, I got zero. We'd all go into the classroom, about 30 Liverpool boys, and the teacher would put on a record - Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, something like that - then he'd leave the room. So of course we just took it off, posted a guard on the door, got the ciggies and the cards out, and when he came back, we put the record back on for the last couple of bars. He'd go, 'What did you think of that?' And we were like, 'Oh, really good, sir. Fabulous.'"

Ecce Cor Meum both benefits and suffers from this lack of training. Between reeling out the lines of melody and hauling them back in for each of the four movements' conclusions, McCartney's writing - which he did chiefly on a synthesizer, prior to orchestrating it - can potter pleasantly, if aimlessly. His extraordinarily forensic musical ear has picked up not just the rudiments, but somehow also the vernacular of English 20th- century choral and operatic music: echoes abound of Parry, Tippett, Vaughan Williams, William Henry Harris, Herbert Howells; more globally, Berlioz and Bernstein are clear creditors. Moreover, his untrained approach can produce moments of hair-raising modulation and digression. Interlude, which divides the piece, is the most shattering example of this. Set for oboe and choir, its wordless, lulling structure was written in tribute to Linda. "I've played it to some people," says McCartney proudly, "and said nothing, and I've seen them welling up. It's an amazing phenomenon," he continues quietly. "How chords can be... sad."

Writing Ecce wasn't just a case of not following the rules, he says; it's never been about only that. "We didn't know the rules. I remember in the very, very early days in Hamburg, asking Tony Sheridan what he thought of one of our songs, and he said, 'Well, it's just a scale.' So much of what we did (he starts to sing)...'Last night I said these words'; so you've got to go, 'To my girl.'" Again, the finger works up the spine. "You've got to break it and not have it too scaley. Scales are great, they're hooky. But then you think, 'Okay, now let's get away from that, let's do the one-note thing.' I remember when I was writing She's Leaving Home, trying to not change the chord." He sings again. "So, you know, it's 'She's... leaving... home', and it just stays on that chord. So then, when it lets go, it's lovely. You get the release."

The crude characterisations of McCartney the soppy dramatist, Lennon the visceral diarist, were always just that: partisan simplifications that obscured far more than they unearthed. It was McCartney, after all, who first experimented with tape loops (a process that bore glorious fruit in Tomorrow Never Knows); who was into Berio and Stockhausen, and part-funded the avant-garde Indica gallery, where, ironically, Lennon first met Yoko. That all this is often overlooked is, McCartney says, because of what he calls "the surface image". "I didn't want to shout about them, but I'd like them on the record. But it is an image thing. Mine has always been a bit sort of clean-living or whatever, until" - and here he twinkles mischievously and pauses - "... not always."

He is, he says, beginning to be able to assess what the Beatles achieved, what they meant, what they still mean. He found the Cirque du Soleil show very emotional. "Because it's my mates, and because of the fact that it's no more, except on record - physically no more. In the middle of the show, I was sitting next to Ringo, I was welling up, and I just turned to him and said, 'F***ing great band. Listen to these noises. How did we do that?'" He is still making those noises; is still, he admits, in pursuit, hearing a chord, bumping into a phrase and off he goes.

Downstairs, post-interview, he takes me into the kitchen, where a table is laid with food, and makes me a doggy bag for the train, including a slice of sponge cake.

"Excuse fingers," he says.

Like I was going to insist on an ex-Beatle using the tongs.

Briefly, I toy with putting the cake up for auction on eBay. But you know what? I ate it instead, fingerprints and all. But I kept the napkin he wrapped it in. As you would.

A life in music

1964 Things We Said Today Macca at his most plaintive and melodically meandering on this minor-key gem from A Hard Day's Night.

1966 Eleanor Rigby McCartney's most evocative lyric, and a song that did justice to The Times's famous Schubert comparisons.

1968 Helter Skelter George called his record label Dark Horse, but it was McCartney, on this White Album, Manson Family-inspiring shocker, who emerged, black as night, from the Beatles stable.

1970 Maybe I'm Amazed People say Patti Boyd inspired great love songs (Something, Layla), but Linda did too.

1975 Listen to What the Man Said One of many songs where you think: nobody else would have bothered to write a bass line this complex and this beautiful.

1982 Here Today From the great Tug of War, the first album McCartney made after Lennon was killed, a heartfelt but unblinking ode to his erstwhile friend.

2001 Blackbird Singing McCartney mixed song lyrics with poetry in this book, writing movingly about Linda.

2005 Riding to Vanity Fair A return to old wounds on last year's Chaos and Creation album? John's ghost haunts it.

Ecce Cor Meum is released tomorrow on EMI Classics.

The work receives its world premiere at the Albert Hall, SW7, on November 3

CLASSICAL CORNER

Paul McCartney - Ecce Cor Meum

Paul McCartney used to be able to knock out a tune in an afternoon but rather surprisingly has taken 12 years to write and record the classical-style Ecce Cor Meum,

There are five very long tracks, 56 minutes long, strings, male choir and even some little Penny Lane-esque trumpets near the end.

But the best thing about this album? It has a hugely calming effect on the soul. Listening on a train journey I was transformed from angry young man to chilled out dude.

The fat passengers didn't annoy me and the commuters who secretly fart didn't rile me. Bliss. If you need soul food, tuck in.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK

PAUL McCARTNEY: ECCE COR MEUM (EMI Classics)

Paul bares his classical heart - 'Rousing': Macca's ambitious classical work Ecce Cor Meum is a medolic success.

After all that Sir Paul McCartney has been through of late, you might think he'd want to kick back, take a long holiday or just lie around in his backyard strumming on a guitar. It seems, however, that nothing - bar death - can hold the Beatle back when he sets his mind on something.

This time, that something turns out to be yet another classical work (his fourth since 1991) and his most ambitious to date. Ecce Cor Muem (that's Latin for Behold My Heart) is an oratoria in four movements for choir and orchestra and, despite the inherent absurdity of a rock star reinventing himself as a classical composer, it is actually rather good.

No doubt classical purists will turn their noses up but Macca's Beatle-esque nose for a good melody is evident throughout this emotional and rousing work. And one suspects that its occasional tone of gentle contemplation is all the R&R McCartney wants or needs.

Heather Mills is set for fresh humiliation with more X-rated shots of her poised to be published.

Lady Mucca, 38, who's heading for divorce from Sir Paul McCartney, 64, has already seen old hardcore porn pictures of herself in the papers.

But Sharon Osbourne, 53, claims the bondage shots in a US booklet called Sexual Secrets are not the naughtiest she's seen.

She revealed she's had a peek at even steamier yet-to-be-released photos.

And on last night's Sharon Osbourne Show she said: "I've seen the pictures that have circulated around of her.

"And then there were the extra naughty ones, which everyone was passing around."

Guest Darryn Lyons from the Big Pictures agency said it won't be long before they are printed.

Paul McCartney, "Ecce Cor Meum" (EMI Classics)

The influence and ubiquity of Paul McCartney in pop circles is undeniable. Perhaps lesser-known, however, is the former Beatle's classical output, a genre he has been releasing albums in since 1991.

On "Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart)," his fourth classical album, McCartney eschews the large number of shorter-length pieces found on his last two classical albums, choosing to construct "Ecce" as an oratorio in four parts. Where past efforts seemed disjointed and scattershot, "Ecce" revels in its majestic fluidity within, and between, movements and is beautifully scored for choir and orchestra.

On opener "Spiritus," a crescendoing chorus and strings gradually melds with soaring horns and thumping timpani drums before calming down mid-track and opening itself up to soprano Kate Royal. As the movement continues, a flurry of strings and organs seems to work both with, and against, the chorus, brilliantly showing the entire spectrum of musical emotion. This diverse scope of expression, ranging from near-whisper to thunderous roar, sets the scene for the majority of "Ecce."

McCartney has long been recognized as a master pop songwriter and on "Ecce," he steers his attention away from the whimsy that has defined so much of his work and onto graver-sounding pieces. The result, whether it's the mellifluous tranquility of "Interlude (Lament)" or foreboding "Phantom of the Opera"-style organ, "Ecce Cor Meum," is a mature, stunning piece of work that should elevate the status of McCartney's "other side."

Today Paul McCartney announces the world premiere performance of his new classical album Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart). Ecce Cor Meum is a work for chorus and orchestra in four movements.

Ecce Cor Meum will be performed by Kate Royal (soprano); Academy of St Martins In The Fields Orchestra; London Voices; Boys Of Magdalen College Choir, Oxford and Boys of King's College Choir, Cambridge. They will be conducted by Gavin Greenaway. This is the same cast that appears on the studio recording, which is released by EMI Classics on September 25th.

Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) is Paul's fourth classical album since his first was released in 1991, The Liverpool Oratorio. The album has been more than eight years in the making and its origins follow in the historic tradition of composers that have been commissioned to write music for the world-renowned Magdalen College Oxford. Paul was specially invited by Anthony Smith (President of Magdalen College 1998 ­ 2005) to compose something to set the seal on a new concert hall for the college. His hope was for 'a choral piece which could be sung by young people the world over, in the same way that Handel's Messiah is'.

In November 2001, the first version of Ecce Cor Meum was given its preview performance by the Magdalen College Choir, which was conducted by Bill Ives at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. This was a great learning experience for Paul. "Eventually I made it all come together through correcting a lot of misapprehensions ­ a lot was learned before the Sheldonian performance, but a lot of it was learned afterwards. An experienced choral composer knows that children can't be given huge sustained passages; they don't have the energy and the stamina. At the Sheldonian there was some quite hard stuff that I didn't realise because I'd done it on the synthesiser (which has endless stamina!), but during that first performance the solo treble couldn't come on for the second half ­ I think I'd used him up in the first half! These are things that people either learn because they are taught them immediately at the first lesson, or you learn through the years, so it was good to go through the piece a lot of times, and we took out huge choral sections and gave them to the orchestra. If it had been a Beatles song I would have known how to do it. But this was a completely different ball game."

The Royal Albert Hall performance will be a very special evening. Tickets go on sale from today.

Friday 3rd November
Royal Albert Hall
Doors 6.30pm Performance 7.30pm
Tickets available from 020 7589 8212, 0871 230 2603
Or online at www.royalalberthall.com ticketmaster.co.uk
Ticket prices for this performance will be £60.00, £55.00, £45.00, £30.00 and £20.00.
SEATING CHART

Since the premiere of his "Liverpool Oratorio" in 1991, Sir Paul McCartney has been repeatedly impelled to compose concert music. In 1997 his second large-scale work, the choral-symphonic poem "Standing Stone," had its premiere; it not only hit the top spot on both the British and American classical charts but earned him National Public Radio's New Horizon Award, in recognition of his work broadening the appeal of classical music.

Speaking by telephone from his studio in England, Sir Paul says that his primary aim with his classical works is that they be "accessible, so that people in Cleveland can perform them, or people in Helsinki or Tokyo. I'll meet someone in a grocery store in Orange County wearing a Liverpool Oratorio T-shirt. So I'll say, 'Excuse me, how come you've got that?' And they'll say, 'Got it when I sang in it.' Then we have a chat about it. And that is very much what it's all about for me."

Next Tuesday, EMI Classics is releasing the CD of the four-movement oratorio "Ecce cor meum," with the London Voices, the combined boys choirs of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Kings College, Cambridge, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields under conductor Gavin Greenaway. This is Sir Paul's third large-scale choral work and took him nearly eight years to complete. That long gestation has yielded a richly melodic score (no surprise from one of the most felicitous lyrical inventors of our time). The influences are apparent -- Sir John Tavener's serenity, the timeless quality of Gregorian chant, the comforting warmth of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924), a clarion touch of Giovanni Gabrielli (1558-1613). But the score's stylistic homogeneity shows an advance over the greater eclecticism of his previous concert works, and the engaging quality -- the voice -- is pure McCartney.

Sir Paul mentions that the whole project started with an invitation from Magdalen College, Oxford, to compose a new work to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the college's founding, which was to be celebrated in 1998.While deliberating about the text, he was invited by Sir John Tavener to be the narrator in a Tavener work that was being performed at New York's St. Ignatius Loyola Church. "I was a little reluctant," says Sir Paul, "because I thought that my voice was, perhaps, a bit regional for a narrator. But John assured me that the Greek poet of his text, a bloke called Cavafy [Constantine Cavafy, 1863-1933], had been brought up in Alexandria, so he himself would have had the equivalent of a regional accent." In the church, Sir Paul's eye was caught by a representation of the Crucifixion, beneath which was the phrase "Ecce cor meum" (the first word of which he pronounces with a hard c, as he was taught in school). "I worked out the translation, 'Behold my heart,' which to me meant 'let me show you what's in my heart, the things that are important to me.'"

From that idea he evolved "a kind of prose poem in English." Then, he asked the Latin tutor at Magdalen to translate his text into Latin. "I wanted to see if there was anything exciting there. And there were a few words and phrases that I liked and eventually used. One of the words I didn't use was the Latin for song, 'carminibus,' which sounded to me like a sort of hybrid automobile."

That choirs feature in all three of his full-length works prompts me to ask if Sir Paul himself sang in school choirs. He responds that he did sing for a short while in the choir of Liverpool's St. Barnabus church, in Penny Lane. "I used to turn up at this old church, go in the back door, put on my surplice, fall in with the choir, and try to look suitably holy. But though I quite enjoyed the experience of dressing up, I can't remember any of the music we sang."

Subsequently, he says, he did try out for the choir at Liverpool Cathedral. The prize included free school books. "That appealed to my parents, who weren't very well off. And the chance to sing in a grand cathedral appealed to the theatrical in me." Although he made it to the last few rounds, he didn't make the final cut. Nevertheless, he says with a chuckle, "I got my revenge with the Liverpool Oratorio, which was performed in the cathedral, so I returned there in great splendor."

Because he had no formal musical training, Sir Paul says that when composing, "I'll have some happy accidents, if I'm lucky, and I'll find my way in via the knowledge I gained through the Beatles and Wings and through my pop music career -- I hate that term -- you know, my other career. I'd explore things I'd learned there, like harmony and melodies."

Those harmonies and melodies actually preceded the text of "Ecce Cor Meum," he says. "Then I had to fit all my words to the music I had already written. Sort of customize it all."

I ask if he feels his composing technique has progressed since the previous work. "With the 'Liverpool Oratorio' and 'Standing Stone,' I've been learning what goes into the making of big pieces," he says. He is also quick to credit several musical associates, among them EMI recording producer John Fraser. Nevertheless, because he composed "Ecce cor meum" entirely at a synthesizer, which not only allowed him to produce melody and harmony but choral and orchestral textures at the same keyboard, he did find "things I was doing that I needed to correct. For instance, when I played the work for some choirmasters, they informed me that I was murdering the choir by giving them too much to do. At the same time, I hadn't been writing enough for the orchestra to do. So I started adjusting, taking a bit of music that overtaxed the choir and giving it to the orchestra. Eventually we got it right: The trebles of the boys choir don't get too exhausted, the main chorus of voices don't get too exhausted, the orchestra has plenty of nice passages to shine while the voices are resting."

Composition took longer than he thought it would -- in fact, the first version of the work wasn't ready until 2001. Personal matters, as well as musical ones, both caused the delay and inspired the beautiful Fauré-tinged interlude for solo oboe and wordless choral accompaniment between the second and third movements. "I started composing the score while Linda was alive," he explains, "and I was getting on quite well. Then she died [of cancer in April 1998]. And I couldn't work. But that interlude was one of the things that got me working again, because it was really a lament for her. And I vividly recall sitting...at the computer, writing that piece and just weeping."

During the work's gestation, he would play this episode for people without telling them anything about the music. Each time, they were emotionally moved. "And," he observes with almost childlike wonder, "every time this happens, it strikes me as fantastic that just some chord structures and a melody can touch your heartstrings this way."

Ahead of the release of his new classical CD 'Ecce Cor Meum', Sir Paul McCartney will be giving an exclusive interview on Sunday 24th September at 11am on Classic FM.

Talking to Anne-Marie Minhall, Paul will explain how his schoolboy Latin helped him to write his new album, how working with George Martin on Beatles classics 'Yesterday' and 'Eleanor Rigby' helped him to find new ways with music and why making 'Ecce Cor Meum' was a daunting yet fascinating experience.

'Ecce Cor Meum' is Paul McCartney's fourth classical album and its origins follow in the footsteps of many great composers who have been commissioned to write music for Magdalen College, Oxford.

The result, is an Oratorio in four movements, scored for choir and orchestra, with the text a combination of both English and Latin. It was recorded in March this year at the legendary Abbey Road Studios and features performances from the soprano Kate Royal; The Boys of King's College Choir, Cambridge; The Boys of Magdalen College Choir, Oxford and The Academy of St Martin In The Fields conducted by Gavin Greenaway.

Listen to Classic FM on Sunday at 11am (6am ET) to hear Paul talk about the making of 'Ecce Cor Meum'.

Behind the Music members will be able to download the interview in full, straight after the show. Not a member? Sign up here

Ecce Cor Meum is released on Monday 25th September. For more information go to www.paulmccartney.com

You can listen to Classic FM online, on DAB Digital Radio 100-102 FM, Sky Channel 0106 and NTL Digital Channel 877.

A Saudi Arabian arms dealer thought to have had a relationship with Sir Paul McCartney's estranged wife Heather Mills is set to reveal all in a TV interview.

Adnan Kashoggi has always remained silent about the alleged 1990s romance, which Mills has always denied, until now.

But the 71-year-old has agreed to a full-length television interview with US journalist Daphne Barak.

A source tells British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, "It has been claimed that Heather spent time with Khashoggi in the early 1990s.

"Previously he did not want to become involved, but Khashoggi has now decided to give Barak a lengthy interview in which he tells all."

The source adds, "Intriguingly, after the interview had been recorded, Khashoggi sent Paul a letter, but the contents of the letter remain a mystery."

The interview is due to air in the US in November.

Her bitter split from Paul McCartney was a world away as Heather Mills enjoyed a good chuckle on a night out with friends.

Swigging a beer at the £10 gig in a grungy bar, she grinned and mingled unrecognised in the crowd.

Heather, 38, was watching her elder brother Shane playing trombone in his rock band Dead Singer.

Gone was the gaunt, haunted look as she forgot the showbiz world of her mega rich husband.

Wearing a strapless black dress and black knee-high boots, she clapped and whooped after getting to the front of the crowd for Shane's set.

At one point she even tried a spot of headbanging - throwing her long blonde hair all over the place before collapsing in giggles.

Shane, 41, smiled when he saw his sister from the stage and raised his beer in her direction.

Proud Heather told the Mirror: "That was my brother's band. They were fantastic, weren't they?"

But when asked about her divorce battle with Sir Paul, she said: "I have absolutely nothing to say on the matter."

Up to 100 people were at the smoky Spitz bar in East London for the Saturday night event called Murder! - a showcase of several little-known bands.

After the show, Heather, Shane and friends headed round the corner to eat at Scarlet Spice in Spitalfields market.

Heather, who has been assaulted twice since her split from Sir Paul, was shadowed by her minder Sean Ghent.

How writing it was "like talking to a therapist"

By John Vincent

Paul McCartney's 2005 album 'Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' has become the focus of fans searching frantically for clues to the reasons for the former Beatle's marital breakdown.

This follows claims in the press that the scathing lyrics of 'Riding to Vanity Fair' were addressed to his wife Heather Mills McCartney.

When the album was released, one critic in The Guardian described another track 'At the Mercy' as sounding "bewildered and despairing".

The lyrics throughout 'Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' certainly provide much material for speculation.

In an interview with Line Abrahamian published last year in the Reader's Digest, McCartney was quoted as saying: "Normally, if I'm hurt, I just swallow it and get on with my life. That's the kind of person I am - I just repress it.

But what I've found myself doing more on this album is to put those feelings into the song. So that particular song ('Riding to Vanity Fair') is about all the times when I've offered friendship to someone and it's been rejected, which happens to everyone, all the time."

On the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row, broadcast in August 2005, McCartney admitted that 'Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' was a 'very personal album', adding: "I think it's a bit like therapy writing stuff. I remember, on many occasions, you'd just be so fed up that you'd have to go off into some little dark room somewhere and take your guitar. And it would be like talking to a therapist, you know. You're just moaning at the guitar. I've done it a million times.

I just go off often because I don't want to ... I don't want to let anyone hear me in this process. It's a bit embarrassing. It's a bit personal, you know. In the first ten minutes it may be terrible so you just .....

I nearly always try and find the furthest away room, the darkest room, and go sit where I know no one will hear me. And then I just get my most personal thoughts out. And it may just change .....

It may just turn into Desmond and Molly in the market place or it may just suddenly become symbolic of what I'm thinking. But often, you know, you just are moaning to your guitar."

The poignant image of a heartbroken Paul McCartney moaning to a guitar in a darkened room in 2002 is cruelly at odds with our memories of the triumphant young pop god of the 1960s.

Amazing twist in Beatles legend's divorce battle Macca fury over £1M ($1.9 million) wages for army of helpers

Sir Paul McCartney was left fuming over estranged wife Heather Mills' spiraling wage bill for her Staff.

Sir Paul, 64, was stunned to learn that the 13 helpers dubbed "Heather's Hunks and Honeys" could cost him up to a staggering £20,000 ($38,000) a week. The issue is bound to fan the flames of their bitter divorce battle.
Her staff number only two fewer than the ex-Beatle's own 15-strong entourage.

"Team Heather" includes a GARDENER, a BMW-driving CLEANING LADY, a full-time PERSONAL TRAINER, a PERSONAL ASSISTANT and round-the-clock protection from a team of BODYGUARDS.

The personal assistant even has her OWN assistant, too. A source close to the couple revealed: "Paul is up in arms. He sees this as yet another attempt to extract money from him."

Heather spent time last week at a luxury log cabin on Sir Paul's Sussex estate that she still has the use of.

Locals told how her aides were spotted driving around in convoys of up to five cars.

Among them were Rachael the gorgeous blonde cleaner, Michelle the pig-tailed gardener and a handsome minder called Jamie.

A source said: "Heather's staff bill is going to be an issue at the hearing into financial arrangements for the divorce."

But a pal of Heather, 38, said: "She thinks she is behaving perfectly reasonably.

Paul just has to accept that she will be looking after their baby daughter Beatrice after they divorce.

"Heather needs help juggling her busy schedule with her role as a mum. She also fears for the safety of her daughter and herself as a result of her status as Sir Paul's former wife. She has been assaulted twice since they split and can no longer go out alone because she fears people who have taken sides will attack her.

"She only wants to look after herself and her daughter."

Former model Heather's team of professional minders is headed by South African rugby player Sean Ghent.

The 16st (224 lb.) six-footer was poached from Sir Paul's security team in August. She now rarely goes anywhere without personal trainer Ben and at least two bodyguards.

Sources close to Sir Paul said there had been friction between his minders and Heather's. Earlier this month the couple met for 40 minutes to discuss the future of Beatrice at Sir Paul's holiday home on Long Island, New York.

He is estimated to be worth up to £1billion ($1.9 billion) and makes £50 million ($94 million) a year in royalties.

Alasdhair Willis, furniture maker

The reason I've chosen the painting by Hans Bellmer is because it's quite a significant piece in terms of my relationship with my wife [Stella McCartney] and it has a high-level of sentimentality to it.

I trained at the Slade art school in London, so I was aware of Bellmer's work. He was a German surrealist, but I didn't know much about him until I went to a show at the Hayward Gallery four or five years ago. The show coincided with the time I met Stella. We'd gone to see the exhibition together, which proved to be a wonderful experience - not only because of the work, but also where we were in terms of our relationship. When we left the show we both said how much we loved Bellmer's work, the jewel-like size of the paintings, and talked about the way he had been massively overlooked as an artist. It was that time in a relationship where things begin to gel, our personalities and interests.

Stella bought this piece for me at auction later on. It was a surprise present. So for her to go away from the show and for it to stick with her, there was a huge romantic element to it and it was the first piece she bought for me.

We now have a small collection of art, everything from 16th-century work right the way through to Bill Viola and other bits and pieces. It's not a vast collection, but it includes works that we really love.

Alasdhair's company, Established & Sons, will be exhibiting on 23-24 September at 9 Grosvenor Place, London SW1 (www.establishedandsons.com)

In a blisteringly frank interview, Heather Mills' first husband reveals the lies, infidelity - and secret abortion - that drove them apart. Paul McCartney, look away now...

Sir Paul McCartney and Alfie Karmal have only one thing in common - the never to be-forgotten, dizzying, rollercoaster experience of being married to the beautiful but complicated Heather Mills.

Nothing, apparently, is quite as bracing, and as the McCartney-Mills divorce lurches from one public spat to another, Alfie is clear about where his sympathies lie. Having been through it himself, he is resolutely on 'Team Paul'.

"You could say we've both been 'Heathered' - no, make that 'tarred and Heathered'," says Alfie, 48, now a successful businessman living in Vancouver, Canada. "She really knows how to put you through the wringer. Everything with her is so acrimonious, so confrontational. I feel sorry for Paul because I've been there and I know what he's probably going through right now.

"Heather is the kind of woman who can take you to the most incredible highs and then to the lowest of the lows. It's famine or feast - there's no middle ground.

"Here is a man who has spent most of his life, despite being a worldwide icon, privately living under the radar and now all his dirty linen is being washed in public, which must be devastating for him. For a divorce to be this bitter, the marriage can't have been that wonderful, and knowing Heather I can't say I'm surprised.

"With Heather, you get to a point where you hate her and hate the way she is. She is a chameleon. At first she will be whoever she thinks you want her to be, but then you discover that just isn't the reality. I think she is a lost soul. She doesn't know what she wants."

The prejudiced words of a bitter ex-husband, or the wisdom of hard experience? This, after all, is the man who discovered only recently that his former wife had been a 'party girl' entertaining rich Arab men and was, unknown to him, the mistress of a Lebanese multi-millionaire during their five-year on-off relationship.

Then, of course, there was the distressing revelation that the affectionate and seemingly loyal young woman he adored was posing in pornographic shots with a male model for a supposedly 'educational' German sex manual, when he thought she was going off to lingerie shoots.

Certainly, on Heather Mills's website, her younger sister and chief defender Fiona says of Alfie that 'he seems never to have got over Heather' and 'he should move on'.

So no love lost then. Except that Alfie Karmal doesn't sound like a bitter man. Happily remarried for ten years with a daughter aged eight and a son of five, he recounts his experience of being 'Heathered' with the wry laugh of someone who has survived to tell the tale.

"Oh I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was a complete misery," says Alfie, who was a dishwasher salesman when he fell in love with 18-year-old Heather.

"The stories about her past don't upset me. If anything, they are a relief because a lot of the gaps have been filled. Everyone likes to know the truth."

Alfie is only doing this interview to try to put a line once and for all under the whole Heather episode. He really does want to 'move on' and is exasperated by his past association with her.

I don't hate her

He insists this will be the final time he talks about the woman who would, to his eternal surprise, go on to become Lady McCartney.

"You know part of me feels sorry for Heather. I don't hate her. All she has ever wanted is to be loved, cared for and liked, but now with all these damaging stories about her past it seems no one in Britain likes her - which must be absolutely devastating for her," he says.

"She has a very tender, caring, compassionate side which is what makes her so attractive in the first place, but she also has this other fiery, confrontational side and a very elastic relationship with the truth.

"When we were together she left a trail of lies of deceit. That was the one big issue in our relationship. It reached the point where I couldn't trust a word she said. If she told me it was raining, I couldn't believe her until I'd checked."

Alfie, the son of a Greek mother and Palestinian father who served in the British Army for 16 years, met Heather in 1986, when she was working as a cocktail waitress in a London club called Bananas. Ten years her senior and going through a divorce from his first wife, he was immediately smitten.

"She was very bubbly and vivacious," recalls Alfie, who moved into the computer industry soon after they met, but had yet to make his fortune.

"She looked a bit brassy with her big hair and short skirts, but how she looked and what she presented to me were two very different things.

"She told me she'd only had one serious boyfriend before me and I believed her. Perhaps I wanted to believe her, but I was later to find out Heather could never tell the truth, even about the smallest little things.

"I remember on our first date she told me she could drive, so I agreed when she offered to drive us home because she didn't drink much.

"I had a new BMW at the time and she got in and we started kangarooing down the road and I said: 'What are you doing? Are you sure you can drive?' And she said: 'No.' She didn't even have a licence.

"In her early days she desperately wanted people to like her, so she built herself up into something she thought they wanted her to be. She told me she had three A-levels, but she didn't."

Alfie, at the time living in a bedsit and financially supporting his two young sons, nevertheless showered Heather with gifts. He paid for a new, smarter wardrobe, Cartier jewellery and cosmetic surgery when she complained her breasts were sagging. He also poured money into her modelling career.

"I shudder to think how much I spent on her. She wanted for nothing. I think the only thing she ever bought during our five years together was some curtains for the house.

"I remember once she phoned me to say how much she wanted to buy a Cartier bracelet from a friend and I just said: 'Oh, OK then.' It cost £2,000 ($3,800) which was a lot of money at the time.

"She was one hell of an ambitious character. She was always trying to get rich quick, but there was never any kind of longevity to her plans. She wasn't the kind of person to get a job and work hard to become something.

"Heather was always drifting around saying: 'I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do.' She was always searching for some meaning to her life. She said she wanted to be famous, a television celebrity, but didn't seem to know how to go about it.

"She did a bit of modelling, but nothing major and I set up model agency for her to run with my business partner, but she lost interest pretty quickly. She tried to sell it for £5,000 ($9,500), but no one would buy it."

Alfie believes that Heather regarded him as a safe port in her stormy life, one which she would return to time and time again during their five-year relationship.

Heather was born in Washington, Tyne and Wear, the middle child of Mark and Beatrice Mills. That much we know, but the veracity of her account of her childhood - recounted in her autobiography Out On A Limb, published after she lost her leg in a road traffic accident in 1993 - has been the subject of some debate over the years.

She claimed her father, a former Army officer, was a feckless, socialclimber who was incapable of showing affection towards his children, dragging his family from pillar to post as his fortunes waxed and waned. Heather was forced to shoplift and lie to the rent man in times of hardship.

Some of the more colourful anecdotes have since been dismissed as exaggerated fantasy by members of her extended family and friends. Alfie - in Heather's defence - says he has no doubt that Heather did endure a terrible childhood.

"Her father was very abusive. I was so angry about the way he treated her, I banned her from seeing him for a while. Because of her childhood, I would give her the benefit of the doubt," he says.

Aflie claims the 'off' periods in their relationship occurred every time he confronted her over her lying.

"I ended up checking everything. Once we were due to go out and she turned up late at my office and came out with a story about how her car had been clamped and she'd had to pay £90 ($170) to collect it from the pound.

"When I phoned the pound, they said her car had never been there... it turned out she'd been shopping with a friend. Another time I found out she'd applied for a job at an escort agency, but when I challenged her she said she'd had no idea, that she thought it was just a job showing tourists around.

"Every time I confronted her she'd run off and disappear and I'd have no idea where she was."

In 1987 Heather ran off to Paris, where Alfie believed she had secured a modelling contract with a cosmetics company. True, she did some modelling but she also became a 'party girl' and ultimately the mistress for two years of multimillionaire Arab businessman George Kazan, now 64, who set her up in an apartment and funded her jet-set lifestyle.

She returned from Paris after two years. "When she came back, she plagued me. She'd turn up every afternoon at my office with gifts. One day it was a coat, the next it was plane tickets. She begged me to marry her. She was very determined, but I like to believe that she genuinely loved me," says Alfie.

"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.

"I went to one session and the psychiatrist told me it was a very common problem for abused children, and for me to give her the benefit of the doubt, so when she lied I'd think: 'Oh, it's her upbringing.' Now I wish I'd never been to see the doctor, then I wouldn't have married her." The couple married in 1989 in a lavish ceremony, and moved into a four-bedroom home in Dobbs Weir in Hertfordshire.

For the first year, he says, they were blissfully happy and he really believed Heather had turned a corner. They were both thrilled when she got pregnant, because early in their relationship they'd felt compelled to abort an accidental pregnancy because they were not financially secure enough to bring up a child.

"Heather was desperate for a baby and this pregnancy was planned, but we were both devastated when she suffered an ectopic pregnancy a few weeks later. I remember both of us crying our eyes out at the hospital," says Alfie.

"Heather has since claimed I wasn't very supportive of her afterwards, but I thought I was. At the time I had just started up a nightclub business and was working hard, so perhaps I wasn't there enough for her. But that ectopic pregnancy was the turning point. It all went downhill after then."

It was Alfie who paid for Heather to go on a skiing holiday to Slovenia in 1991, travelling with his ex-wife and two young sons, to help her get over the pregnancy. It was here that she met a ski-instructor called Milos, for whom she would leave Alfie.

"She just took off and left. She came back on the Saturday and by the Monday morning she'd gone. She told me on the Sunday night she'd had another ectopic pregnancy and I thought she'd disappeared because she was upset," says Alfie. "When I got home from work that night, the bedroom looked as if it had been trashed. Wallpaper had been scraped off the walls by her suitcases as she dragged them down the stairs and she'd slammed the front door so hard in her haste to leave, the glass panel next to it had shattered. At first I thought we'd been broken into.

"I later found out that she'd gone straight to a car dealership and sold her £20,000 ($38,000) BMW convertible for £12,000 ($22,800) cash and all her Cartier jewellery. It was only some weeks later that I discovered through friends that she'd met this ski instructor. I was devastated.

"I managed to track Heather down, and confronted her on the phone. She told me she loved this guy and that was that. She didn't say she was sorry, she was very coldblooded about it. That was the most upsetting thing, the lack of compassion."

Alfie tried to forget about Heather, but once more, a few months later, she turned up unexpectedly at his office, begging him to give her a second chance. "She said: 'You are my husband and I want to make it work and I'm sorry.'

"We spent the evening talking at a restaurant and she was crying. She phoned this guy while I was there to let him know she was getting back with me... and the next day she was off again.

"The following morning I had to go into Bushey private hospital to have a lump removed from my chest, which doctors thought might be cancerous, and when she came to see me after the operation she said she was leaving again. My sister Madeleine was so cross she threw her out of the hospital.

"So our second go of it had lasted all of 12 hours and for most of that time I'd been under sedation in hospital. I was devastated, very, very upset. I felt bloody awful.

"I then started divorce proceedings. She's one fiery woman, a scrapper, who likes to change her mind at the drop of a hat. No wonder she can't agree a settlement now with Sir Paul.

"With me she would say 'I want £12,000 ($22,800), no I want £14,000 ($26,600), no I want £18,000 ($34,200), no I want £20,000' ($38,000), and even though I probably got off lightly because she wanted a quickie divorce, it was tortuous.

"But in the end she just wanted enough to go and start a new life with this penniless ski instructor who couldn't support himself, let alone her."

With the divorce done and dusted, Alfie thought that was the last he would hear of his second wife. Over the years, however, he has watched with some fascination Heather's reincarnation, following her road accident, from glamour model to celebrity, from high profile anti-landmine charity campaigner to titled wife to one of the most famous men in the world.

"I was surprised that someone who could pretty much have any woman he wanted, would be interested in her. I think Paul probably thought she was another Linda and has obviously found out that she isn't. Poor guy," says Alfie.

"Personally, I don't believe she deserves millions and millions of his fortune. He made most of it before he even met her and you should only take out what you put in.

"But in some ways I also feel sorry for Heather. She has a genuine need to be loved and liked. Now, it seems, she is neither."

HEATHER IN A HUFF

With a face like thunder, Heather Mills huffs and puffs back to estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney's country home after a cycle ride.

For the sake of their two-year-old daughter Beatrice, the former Beatle, 64, let Heather stay at his leafy estate in Peasmarsh, East Sussex.

Heather, 38, wore a sporty cap and rolled up one trouser leg for an intensive biking session with her personal trainer. It might have been the exercise, but she didn't look too pleased to be returning home.

The rock legend has been locked in a dispute with planning officers over the secluded timber lodge and gym built in the grounds of Woodlands Farm near Rye, East Sussex.

He even offered to demolish one of the houses on the sprawling country estate in order to be allowed to keep the cabin.

Macca, 64, said he needed the two-bedroom lodge for "privacy, seclusion and security".

But the council refused him retrospective planning permission for the structures, because it said they harmed the landscape quality of the High Weald area of outstanding natural beauty.

Today, planning councillors met at Bexhill Town Hall and decided not to back the recommendation of officers to approve the scheme.

Sir Paul was not present at the meeting as councillors instead voted in favour of a site visit.

Photographs and drawings of the site failed to satisfy some members of the impact the changes would have.

Councillor David Vereker said: "If we go along this route we will be creating a very, very difficult precedent."

Breast cancer centre triumph

The future of Liverpool's pioneering Linda McCartney Centre was secured last night after it won a contract to run the city's breast cancer services.

The Royal Liverpool Hospital which operates the centre ran a bitter battle against Liverpool Women's Hospital to take over treatment of the illness, which is currently split between them.

Health officials decided to merge the services amid concerns about patients having biopsy wires inserted at one hospital, then being sent by taxi across the city for treatment at the other.

Last night, Liverpool's Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) backed a recommendation by an expert panel to move all breast cancer diagnostics and surgery to the Royal.

Maggie Boyle, chief executive of the city centre hospital, said: "I am delighted with the support given by the Liverpool PCTs to our proposals today.

"I look forward to working with the PCTs to ensure the effective delivery of the best possible service for patients with breast cancer."

But the decision means the end of the nearby Women's Hospital's plans to create a £6 million ($11.4 million) purpose-built centre with prosthetic facilities, and out-patients services.

The design was drawn up with patients and included space for support groups, a patient information centre, a wig fitting service, and a garden, at the Upper Parliament Street site.

Yesterday's announcement will also cut funding from the Women's, under the Government's controversial new Payment by Results system.

Recent changes mean funding is now directly linked to the number of patients treated, with hospitals receiving a set sum for each treatment instead of a block grant.

The chief executive of the Women's, which was among the first to become an independent foundation trust, said patients would continue to receive a quality service until the merger.

Louise Shepherd said, "Naturally, we are very disappointed that our proposal to provide an integrated breast service for women in Liverpool is not the preferred option of the PCTs.

"We now need to discuss the full implications of this with staff who currently provide breast services at the Women's, and through our membership council, with our wider members.

"Our first priority will be to work closely with all of our health colleagues to ensure that services for patients continue to be delivered to the highest level during this period."

Currently patients go to Liverpool Women's for preoperative clinics and surgery.

Outpatient clinics, diagnostic services, screening assessment, chemotherapy and palliative care are provided at the Linda McCartney Centre.

The decision will go before a city council scrutiny panel. Work is expected to start shortly after on moving surgical care from the Women's Hospital.

Derek Campbell, chief executive of the PCTs, said: "Having considered how best to improve services for people with breast cancer we have decided that the service should be developed at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital.

"We have had two excellent hospitals to choose from and their proposals have been of a very high quality."

The row between the hospitals escalated during recent months with officials at the Royal insisting the pioneering Linda McCartney Centre would be forced to close if Liverpool Women's won the contract and would lead to redeployment or possible redundancy of staff.

Both hospitals submitted their plans to Liverpool Primary Care Trust earlier this year.

They were considered by a panel made up from patient representatives, a consultant breast cancer surgeon from Newcastle, GPs, public health specialists and members of the Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Network .

It unanimously decided the Royal's proposals would offer the best package of care for patients.

Leonie Beavers, director of strategy at the PCT, said: "We have done a lot of work as a PCT to map the best possible path for breast cancer care.

"With the opening of Broadgreen the Royal felt it could coordinate the services all on one site.

"We reviewed both proposals according to a set of criteria.

"We looked at how each proposal compared with the model standard set for the services and looked at access issues.

"The environment was also taken into account and potential for added value above and beyond what needs to be offered.

"Deliverability was also considered. We are aware that this cannot go on for years and years.

"The process was as objective and robust as it could be."

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"He doesn't want his dirty washing aired in public and she knows that. The more that appears in the papers about her being locked out of the house and the bank accounts frozen, the more embarrassed he becomes and the more pressure he is under."

In an echo of the bitter fight between Prince Charles and Princess Diana, they even hired the lawyers who represented the heir to the throne and his late wife.

The stakes are high.

McCartney could lose up to a quarter of his estimated 825 million pound ($1.55 billion) fortune. That would equate to roughly a million pounds for every week of their four-year marriage.

With tabloids peppered with tales of the break-up, publicists, paparazzi and lawyers all agree -- it has turned nasty.

McCartney, 64, and former model Heather Mills, 38, announced their separation in May, blaming media intrusion for the collapse of one of the most high-profile celebrity marriages.

At first the pair insisted the break-up would be amicable for the sake of their daughter Beatrice, who will be three next month.

But since then, Mills has found that divorcing a national icon can turn everyone against you.

Lurid allegations about her past littered the tabloid press. She hit back with stories about being locked out of the family home in a bid to win sympathy as the wronged party.

Caroline Kean, media lawyer at the London firm Wiggin said: "It is getting more and more acrimonious by the day. I suspect there will be a quiet settlement at some point. There cannot be anything positive for either of them carrying on this way."

But, like the break-up of Diana's marriage, the McCartney split sells newspapers and celebrity magazines and one leading photo agency saw little sign of the appetite waning.

"This is going to go on right through to the divorce settlement. Editors will be swayed by the interest in it ," said Alan Williams, chief executive officer of Big Pictures.

"She is well aware of the power of publicity."

He fears two high-speed tracks could disrupt recording sessions.

And he is worried tunnelling work and vibrations from trains could make the building in London's Soho unsafe.

The ex-Beatle has sent a letter to MPs demanding COMPENSATION if the railway goes ahead.

Sir Paul, 64, also wants assurances he will not be forced to sell his company MPL's base at Soho Square. The Crossrail Bill is looking at plans for a new line from Berkshire to Essex, through central London.

In a letter opposing the Bill, lawyers say his "musical and recording activities are susceptible to interference."

It is the latest legal headache for Sir Paul, who has offered wife Heather a £40 million ($76 million)divorce settlement.

And it revives memories of the original Cavern Club in Liverpool, where The Beatles found fame. It was torn down to make way for a rail line.

Friends have told how he poured out his heart in his album last year with several thinly-veiled comments about the relationship.

In the album - Chaos and Creation In The Backyard - McCartney appears to accuse his 38-year-old wife of humiliating him, shunning his attempts to rebuild their friendship and preferring publicity to love.

One of the most startling examples comes in the bitter track Riding to Vanity Fair, which at the time some claimed could have been about Geoff Baker, the PR man he sacked, or even John Lennon.

The song, according to friends, has much more to do with Miss Mills, who gave an interview to the American magazine weeks before their marriage in 2002.

'All Paul's emotions and troubles because of the marriage to Heather are in that song,' one close friend told the Sunday Mirror yesterday.

'He is saying how the love has gone out of their relationship and is putting the blame squarely on Heather.

'Paul tells Heather how she has humiliated him and treated him like a fool. He says he was prepared to put up with that treatment because he loved her. He wrote how he permanently wanted her to be his friend.

'But the song says she turned down the chance - because she was more interested in publicity.

'Paul was using Vanity Fair to symbolise her love of the limelight generally.'

One line says: 'I was open to friendship, But you didn't seem to have any to spare, While you were riding to Vanity Fair.' The song was recorded at the Ocean Way Recording Studio in Los Angeles last March, 14 months before 64-year-old Sir Paul decided to end their fouryear marriage. The album, released in September last year, reached number ten in the UK charts.

Other songs such as Friends To Go, Certain Softness and Anyway, viewed with the benefit of hindsight-all suggest more than a hint of Heather as inspiration.

The News of the World claimed Sir Paul and his wife were close to agreeing a £40million divorce settlement. But a source close to Miss Mills denied this.

Paul's omen in a song

Riding To Vanity Fair 'You can put me down, But I can laugh it off, And act like nothing's wrong. You're not aware, Of what you put me through, But now the feeling's gone. I was open to friendship, but you didn't seem to have any to spare, While you were riding to Vanity Fair.'

Friends To Go 'I've been waiting till the danger is past, I don't know how long the storm is gonna last, if we're gonna carry on I'll be waiting on the other side, for your friends to go.'

Certain Softness 'A kind of wildness, in her style, haunts my memory, more than I ever thought it would, A touch of wildness, in her style, got me hooked.'

Anyway 'If we could be, closer longer, That would help me, help me so much. We can cure each other's sorrow. Won't you please, please, please get in touch.'

MACCA'S SONG TOLD OF LOVE HEARTACHE A YEAR AGO

RIDING TO VANITY FAIR

"I was open to friendship but you didn't seem to have any to spare/While you were riding to Vanity Fair..."

Troubled Sir Paul McCartney sang of his failing marriage more than a year before he and Heather Mills split.

The former Beatle recorded Riding To Vanity Fair in Los Angeles last spring. Now friends have revealed how the song - which featured on Macca's CD Chaos And Creation In The Backyard - is a thinly-veiled comment on the couple's unravelling marriage.

And it shows how Macca was convinced their romance was collapsing because Heather had humiliated him, refused his bids to repair their friendship and preferred publicity to love.

In one line, distraught Macca sings: "I was open to friendship but you didn't seem to have any to spare/While you were riding to Vanity Fair."

The revelation comes a week after it was revealed Paul and Heather had held a "peace summit" to discuss their separation at the singer's US home in the Hamptons.

One friend revealed: "All Paul's emotions and troubles because of the marriage to Heather are in that song.

"He is saying how the love has gone out of their relationship. And he is putting the blame squarely on Heather."

The song - published by Macca's MPL Communications - was recorded at the world-famous Ocean Way Recording Studio in Los Angeles last March and April. It is believed to have been written by Macca, 64, two months before. The friend added: "In the song, Paul tells Heather how she has humiliated him and treated him like a fool.

"He says he was prepared to put up with that treatment because he loved her. And he wrote how he permanently wanted her to be his friend.

"But the song says she turned down the chance - because she was more interested in publicity. Paul was using the US magazine Vanity Fair to symbolise her love of the limelight generally."

Heather famously gave an interview to Vanity Fair three years after they met but weeks before their marriage.

At the time she told the publication that she would have signed a pre-nuptial agreement - although Paul didn't want her to - because she said, 'I wanted to prove that I love him'."

However, she also said she would always remain financially independent. "I believe every woman should have a reserve because you never know what will happen in life. Guys can get bored."

A close friend said: "Paul's frustrations in the marriage were boiling for a long time.

"Not long after they married, Heather seemed to become more interested in being in the limelight than being with him. This song just demonstrates how low he felt for some time before they split." The album - made with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich - was released last September. It made it to No 10 in the UK charts and No 6 in the US and was hailed as a return to form for the ex-Beatle.

Speaking of the song at the time, Paul would only say it was about "certain instances that were hurtful, where the hand of friendship was rejected".

At the time the show business world overlooked the poignant lyrics believing that 38-year-old Heather and Paul - who wed in June 2002 - were still happy. The friend added: "Paul has been renowned for heartfelt lyrics ever since the early days of The Beatles.

"At the time of the album's release no one considered the song may be about his marriage - and Paul wasn't going to announce it. Suffice it to say, though, that Heather will have known the song was all about her."

The Sunday Mirror revealed back in May how Sir Paul had walked out on Heather because he was fed up of being a "doormat".

Rock legend Sir Paul McCartney has offered Heather Mills a £40 million ($76 million) divorce deal to buy her silence, the News of the World can reveal.

He will pay the money over 20 years and in return she must keep quiet about what went wrong in their marriage for the rest of his life.

Macca, 64, who is worth about £825 million ($1.5 billion), came up with the deal as the mud-slinging between the pair eased.

A source close to the couple said: "They are thrashing out a deal which would amount to between £30 million ($57 million) and £40 million ($76 million) over 20 years and there will be strict conditions.

"Heather must reveal nothing about their personal lives... no books, no TV specials.

"She has one hell of a story and Paul wants a settlement to make sure it never comes out.

"Heather has no intention of telling it because she knows it would only hurt their daughter Bea, but it would always be lurking in the background.

"Any breach of the conditions would allow him to stop the payments - so basically he has control of Heather for the rest of his life.

"There's a long way to go but it looks like that will form the basis of the settlement."

Shocked

The pair, who met in 1999 and married three years later, have been locked in a bitter divorce battle since splitting in May.

But we can reveal they got together three days ago at his Peasmarsh estate in East Sussex.

The source continued: "Heather was with Bea on Thursday and Macca just turned up unannounced. She was shocked because usually she has to leave in advance.

"They were talking and getting on - and that's a far cry from recent months when they haven't been able to be in the same room together.

"This isn't the beginning of a reunion. But they are realising they can have a reasonable relationship and can talk as friends."

The News of the World can also reveal there was no 'peace summit' in the Hamptons near New York two weeks ago.

Heather, 38-dubbed Lady Mucca because of her porn past - was staying at Celebrity Big Brother star Dennis Rodman's estate while Macca was at his place nearby.

The source went on: "They simply saw each other most days to hand over Bea.

"Time is a great healer. When they split up initially Paul wouldn't have anything to do with Heather. He wanted her totally frozen out.

"But his anger is dying down. He doesn't hate her. In fact, he quite likes her and enjoys her company. He also realises she's the mother of his daughter - and a good one at that - and she's the woman who he once fell madly in love with.

Talk

"I don't think there is a chance that they will get back together but the war is over.

"They have reached a new stage in their relationship where they can talk, be around each other and co-operate in the best way for Bea. It's a huge relief for both of them."

A source close to Macca, who is planning a world tour next year, said: "He really hopes this latest move will see the end of it and give them both a chance to get on with their lives."

McCartney talks!

But not about his soon to be ex-wife. Instead, he is doing what he does best: composing

As his marriage crumbled, he maintained a dignified silence. Now, Sir Paul McCartney has finally broken cover to give his first interview since the break-up. He talks about music, love, life and death. Everything, in fact, except her. While he is full of praise for his late first wife Linda, he makes no reference at all to his soon to be ex-wife Heather Mills.

Sir Paul gave the interview last month, in which he talks about his latest album, a classical work called Ecce Cor Meum. He had been recording over the past few months, although the writing of the score had been ongoing for eight years. It began in 1997 and was interrupted by Linda's death from breast cancer in 1998.

"I started it and I had the whole thing going and I was on a fast track then suddenly Linda died and it just stopped me. And I had to take a year out just to grieve," he said in the interview to be broadcast by Classic FM on 24 September, the day before the album is released.

Sir Paul revealed how, even after four and a half decades in the music business, he has to relearn the process of writing when he begins each new project. "You make a great album, a successful album, and you come to make your next one and you think, 'well, I know how to do it now because we just made a great one', but you don't. Each time you come to it you relearn the whole thing. It's as if you forget it all. It's as if your memory goes blank."

Sir Paul, who was commissioned to create the new work by Oxford's Magdalen College, has previously written two classical works, Liverpool Oratorio and Standing Stone. He said it was producer Sir George Martin's string scores for the Beatles which had sown the ideas of classical composition in his mind.

"It was round about 'Eleanor Rigby' when I thought, 'What am I going to do when I'm 30?' I had this image of myself in a kind of tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and a pencil and manuscript paper and I thought, 'That's what I'll do. That's what I'll do when the Beatles runs out.'"

Heather & Paul: No Truce

When photographers spotted Heather Mills McCartney leaving her estranged husband Paul McCartney's Amagansett home Aug. 30, British tabloids speculated that the pair were trying to reach an amicable divorce settlement. No deal. Though Mills has been staying in the Hamptons while McCartney vacationed at his 11-acre estate nearby, a source close to Mills sees no white flags waving anytime soon.

"They chatted for about 40 minutes, then parted," says the source, adding that they met about 2-year old daughter Beatrice.

"They do everything they can to make things look peaceful for Bea".

Five days later, Mills, back in London, took another meeting--with Anthony Julius, her high-powered divorce attorney.

Proud dad Tom Cruise nicked the idea for his family portrait with baby Suri from Sir Paul McCartney.

The Mission: Impossible star showed off his daughter for the first time by cradling her in his jacket while fiancee Katie Holmes looked on lovingly.

But the pose is a dead ringer for a shot of Beatles legend Macca, now 64, snapped with his daughter Mary more than 35 years ago.

Sir Paul's late wife Linda captured the tender family moment, which went on to become an iconic image.

The snap featured on the back of Sir Paul's first solo album McCartney, released in 1970.

It was also used as the cover for Linda's Pictures, a collection of photographer Linda's work first published in 1976.

Tom, 44, and Katie, 27, have already taken a panning over the photo, one of a series published in US magazine Vanity Fair. Fans who have waited four-and-a-half months for a glimpse of Suri were astonished by her long black hair and dark olive skin.

A top behavioural psychologist claimed the photo would do nothing to halt crazy "alien" rumours circulating in the States about the tot.

And the amazing similarity to the Macca snap will only fuel the wild theories surrounding Suri.

One Hollywood insider said last night: "People have had to wait a long time to see Suri, but the photographs have not ended all the speculation.

"The problem is they look very contrived. Comparing them to the McCartney photograph will leave fans even more unconvinced."

Mary, now 37, was Sir Paul and Linda's first child together.

Family friends say she has always been the apple of her dad's eye, especially as she reminds him of Linda, who died of breast cancer in 1998.

"HIGH IN THE CLOUDS" by Paul McCartney, Geoff Dunbar & Philip Ardagh

CLICK TO PRE-ORDER!!

This is the new front cover for the paperback edition of Paul's animated children's book 'High In The Clouds'. The paperback edition hits the stores in October 5th (UK)

Imagine a land where all the animals are free . . . To the creatures of the woodland, the land of Animalia sounds like a dream ­ a tropical island where all the animals live in harmony. They are over-shadowed by a much more evil community; the polluted Megatropolis, whose dirty skyscrapers block the horizon.And then one day, Wirral the Squirrel's woodland is destroyed by developers and he is thrown into the nightmare world of Megatropolis. But Wirral believes in Animalia and he joins with Froggo, a world-class amphibian balloonist, and Wilhamina, a girl squirrel, to lead the enslaved animals of the city to a new life. So begins an exciting adventure through the mean streets of Megatropolis, over the sea and through the sky. Developed out of an exceptional fusion of creative talents, this story explodes onto every page. The plot is fast, furious and funny; the illustrations are full of rich depth and colour; and the characters live on long after you have turned the final page.

"High in the Clouds" has developed out of an exceptional fusion of talents, and the result is a book that will delight children of all ages and is sure to become an enduring classic.

Alfie Kamal told the Evening Standard he was not surprised the marriage had collapsed in acrimony. He had issued a "Buyer Beware" warning when the former Beatle began dating Mills and his prediction of disaster had finally come true.

" We have both been Heathered," he said. "If there is anything I have in common with Sir Paul it's probably that."

Kamal, whose marriage to Mills ended when she left him for a ski instructor, added: "I'm not really surprised the marriage is over. Our marriage lasted just under two years - we had been together for five years off and on. But she ran off lots of times.

"It was a bit like the Runaway Bride. I used to think she had a permanent pair of sneakers on under her shoes. She always ran away. If you had an argument with her she would run away. When you caught her out lying she would run away.

"I don't know the details of why their marriage has broken down but from what I can make out they cannot bear to be in the same room together. That's how it goes with her. You get to a point where you start to hate her and hate the way she is."

Kamal, a wealthy businessman, said Mills, a former model, should not receive any money from Sir Paul, whose estimated fortune is £825 million.

"I don't think anybody deserves to lose hundreds of millions of pounds," he said, "I don't agree with divorce laws. Somebody who has made a significant amount of money from his own talents should not have to pay out huge sums just because a couple were once married.

"It should all be based on contribution - what you take out, you should have put in. If she took out of the marriage what she put in she would walk out with minus a million bucks."

Kamal wed Mills, 10 years his junior, at All Saints Catholic Church in Harrow in 1989. But he says she walked out after falling for the ski instructor on holiday in Slovenia.

He added: "I got off quite cheap. That is because she had ulterior motives and wanted to run off with the ski instructor and just needed enough money to go and live with him."

During their marriage she had suffered two ectopic pregnancies, which had put their relationship under considerable strain.

Kamal met Mills when she was a teenager working in a café in London. He fell in love and after several break-ups they married and set up home in a five bedroom house with a pool in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. Mr Kamal takes credit for encouraging Mills to pursue a career in modelling. The businessman had two children from a previous marriage. She has said in the past that she was probably more in love with the children than with Kamal.

Kamal, 48, has another two children by his latest marriage and now lives happily in Vancouver, Canada.

When news of Sir Paul's divorce leaked, he was besieged with offers from newspapers to sell his story for up to £30,000 ($57,000). He spoke to the Standard today for nothing because he wanted to set the record straight but did not want to be seen to be profiting from his failed marriage.

Mills has said their relationship fell apart after her first ectopic pregnancy and they started to row "over the silliest things".

When she quit the marital home it is alleged that she slammed the door so hard the glass panel smashed. She drove off in a BMW convertible, then worth £20,000 ($36,800).

It is unclear why her marriage to Sir Paul, 64, has fallen apart but despite assurances the couple would keep it amicable for the sake of their daughter Beatrice, who turns three next month, the divorce has become increasingly acrimonious.

With Sir Paul McCartney, Bono and Chris Martin all out together, it was like a Live8 reunion at London's Locanda Locatelli restaurant on Wednesday night.

Our spy says: "They were chatting away. Macca was quiet at first but he soon livened up."

A quarter of the workforce at a frozen food factory in Fakenham which produces the Linda McCartney meat-free range is being made redundant, it was announced last night.

Hain Frozen Foods in Holt Road, part of the American-based Hain Celestial Group, said 50 full and part-time positions among its 197 staff would go after a review showed output exceeded demand.

The job cuts will be across all parts of the factory.

Company managing director David Arrow said it had been a "difficult decision" to announce the redundancies but it was "vital to protect the long-term sustainability of the facility in Fakenham and the remaining workforce".

The company, which bought the facility from HJ Heinz on June 13, is a leading player in the natural and organic food and personal care products market.

About half the products made at Fakenham are in the Linda McCartney range.

The factory - which has no union representation - also produces meat-free products under the Ross brand and desserts under various names.

Hain Frozen Foods also has a sister plant at Luton which produces chilled food products and Mr Arrow insisted the location of the Fakenham factory had "no bearing" on the job losses.

Staff were told the news on Wednesday and a 30-day consultation period is underway to identify which staff will go.

Voluntary redundancies are being considered and Mr Arrow said he hoped the matter would be resolved by October 6.

He said a strategic review had been started soon after the Fakenham business was bought, adding: "We looked very closely at the business and the dynamics and demand for the products manufactur-ed there and what the short to medium- term requirements are likely to be."

Mr Arrow added: "It became clear throughout the review that available production hours were significantly ahead of demand."

He said the business had to be put on a "sound footing" and made viable in the long term for the area.

"We are committed to making a success of the Fakenham facility."

Mr Arrow said the extent of the job losses would have come as "some surprise" to workers but people would have seen that output was outstripping demand.

The Hain Celestial group has its headquarters in New York and the news from Fakenham came just two days after the group reported record results, announcing net sales over the past year of $739m, a 19pc increase over the previous year.

BUY "Linda McCartney's Frozen Vegetarian Dinners" online (USA) and have them shipped. CLICK HERE

September 7, 2006 -- The Sun

Peace wielding Macca is backa

It's been a while since we've seen Macca smiling and doing his famous peace salute.

But I'm pleased to see he's back home in Britain and looking happy again.

He's had a horrible few months since he walked out on Lady Mucca and found out the truth about her murky porn pics past.

Paul has spent the last few weeks in America with the couple's daughter Beatrice.

Mucca flew back into Britain this week too ­ and went straight to see her divorce lawyer.

Macca, who headed to the famous Abbey Road studios yesterday, arrived at his North London home late on Monday night.

US TV producer Dennis Erdman said the "supportive" former Beatle had agreed to let estranged wife Heather Mills, 38, stay close to him in The Hamptons for the sake of little Beatrice.

Dennis, who lent Heather his home there, said two-year-old Bea spent the mornings with her mum and the afternoons with her 64-year-old dad. Heather, hosted a mother-and-toddler party yesterday at Sir Paul's estate in Peasmarsh, East Sussex.

Good news for Lady Mucca (Heather Mills-McCartney that was) who seems to be on the verge of making a telling contribution to society to justify all those tales of her viewing herself as the "New Diana''. For I learn that her divorce from Sir Paul could generate a tasty windfall for HM Revenue & Customs.

Mike Truman, a tax expert at LexisNexis who provides information to the accounting and legal professions, reckons: "Sir Paul's fortune currently stands at an estimated £825 million ($1.5 billion) and, if Heather Mills is awarded £200 million ($380 million), Gordon Brown looks set to receive approximately £32.5 million ($61.6 million) through capital gains tax - not a bad haul for someone who hasn't had to go through the arguments or split the record collection.'' Quite so.

Set of six Beatles albums stamps


Set of four 1st class Beatles Memorabilia stamps

The Royal Mail in Britain has finally put the Beatles on postage stamps.

Starting January 6, 2007 the stamps will be available for posting letters from the UK.

The stamps will be issued in this configuration.

Set of 6 self-adhesive stamps:

1st class 'With the Beatles'
64p 'Help!'
72p 'Revolver'
1st class 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'
64p 'Abbey Road'
72p 'Let it Be'

Miniature sheet of 4 x 1st class stamps (conventionally gummed) showing Beatles Memorabilia:

toy guitar
lunchbox
45rpm single
tea tray

Other memorabilia are shown on the stamps (mainly badges) and sheet margins.

September 6, 2006 -- Macca Report Exclusive

Paul will be featured in the December issue of GQ magazine with photos taken by his daughter Mary.
(Thanks to Macca Report Dottie Spathis)

McCARTNEY AND DAUGHTER TEAM UP FOR GQ (From May 06 - Macca Report News)

Sir Paul McCartney insisted on being captured by his photographer daughter Mary for a photo shoot in the British edition of GQ magazine's 20th anniversary issue.

The 36-year-old snapper was thrilled to be asked by her megastar dad, although she admits she was terrified of getting it wrong. She says, "They normally provide a photographer but he asked for me specially.

"It's always difficult working with someone you know well because you're worried you're going to do a c**ppy picture.

"But dad doesn't have a bad side - both are good, so it's easy.

"The magazines always airbrush a few wrinkles out."

Earlier this week, it was reported that Mills was shelling out close to $80,000 for a weeklong Hamptons rental so she could be near Beatrice, her 2-year-old daughter with Paul McCartney.

But in fact, McCartney's soon-to-be-ex-wife had been in Los Angeles doing business last month when her close pal, producer-director Dennis Erdman, whose credits include "Gilmore Girls" and "Grosse Pointe," offered her use of the Amagansett home he shares with his boyfriend, Darren Star, creator of "Sex and the City," for the long Labor Day holiday.

"We are working on many animal campaigns together, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to further discuss some of our plans," Erdman, an avid animal rights campaigner, told Page Six.

"The additional plus is that Paul was going to be with Beatrice in Amagansett, and therefore Beatrice could see Heather, as well. Heather discussed this with Paul and he was totally supportive about Heather coming to stay with me and share time with Beatrice.

"In fact, a couple of times, he dropped her off . . . and one time with a child's bike in the back [of the car], so Beatrice and Heather could go bike riding."

Erdman said Mills got Beatrice for the first half of the day and McCartney got her for the second - "and she always spent the night with Paul, since that was his week to have her."

Meanwhile, Beatrice was said to be doing fine and "she is not traumatized" by the bitter public McCartney-Mills divorce battle, which has included accusations of lock-changing and phone-tapping.

"Paul and Heather shield her from it. She does cry now and again . . . just like every 2-year-old child," according to Erdman. In thanks for the lovely weekend, Mills stocked her host's fridge with a load of vegan goodies.

The former Beatle was unable to attend the event. However GQ Editor paid tribute to the popstar saying: "This year he has been embraced by the Great British public like no time before. And with good reason. Paul McCartney is not only one of our greatest living legends, he's also probably the most dignified."

Meanwhile, striding out side by side, Heather Mills was pictured for the first time with her lawyer - the man who famously represented Princess Diana.

Eyes hidden beneath her trademark sunglasses, and clad in five-inch high wedges, the 38-year-old activist emerged from an intense 3-hour legal consultation.

Looking just a little worn down by his demanding client, Anthony Julius - Mishcon de Reya's acclaimed senior consultant - escorted Miss Mills out of the London office and into a waiting cab.

Of course, for £500 an hour ($950), a little personal service never goes amiss.

Miss Mills' meeting is the latest development in her acrimonious divorce battle with Sir Paul McCartney.

When the 64-year-old former Beatle took on Fiona Shackleton, who represented Prince Charles during his 1996 divorce from the Princess of Wales, Miss Mills retaliated by employing the services of 50-year-old Julius - the man responsible for Diana's £17.5 million settlement.

Since the couple announced their separation in May, their relationship has steadily plummeted.

Today they are barely on speaking terms, with their sole communication revolving around their two-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

But the former Beatle, who has endured a torrid year because of his split with wife Heather Mills, was not set to attend the awards.

GQ Editor Dylan Jones said of the decision to award the Man of the Year title to Sir Paul: "Paul McCartney turned 64, produced one of his best albums in years, orchestrated the 90-minute Las Vegas Beatles spectacular, Love, finished a record-breaking tour of America, and this month releases his fourth full-length classical work, Behold My Heart."

The former Beatle has been attending private classes in The Hamptons in New York with actor Alec Baldwin and producer Lorne Michaels.

Macca, 64, has been going three times a week to 90-minute private sessions of Hatha yoga - which are designed to provide "a balanced and wholesome approach to achieving perfect physical and mental health, happiness and tranquillity".

Macca really is a paperback writer

Should Paul McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills prove overly expensive, it's good to know that he has an easy, money-making scheme up his sleeve. According to his friend, writer Hunter Davies, Macca has penned a novel.

'He came and stayed with me in Portugal in the 1960s and because my wife and I were writing novels, he borrowed my typewriter and started writing one himself,' says Davies. 'He finished it when he was jailed in the Philippines (sic) for drugs. I've had a look at the manuscript. It's sitting in a safe somewhere until he decides what to do with it. I think he is being careful not to look like an idiot'.

Some might say it's already too late for that.

WEBMASTERS NOTE: Paul was jailed for nine days in Tokyo, Japan (January 16, 1980) for possession of marijuana, not in the Philippines.

"Looking back on it from this perspective, I can't believe I did it. It's wacky, you know. . . And when you see the guy in customs opening my suitcase and pulling out not a small amount- it's a huge amount of it [marijuana]--I do not know what was going through my head, to tell you the truth..." --Paul McCartney

It looks as if bounced Beatles bride Heather Mills McCartney is following a long and winding - and very expensive - road to see her child.

Mills, who usually calls Britain home, is shelling out $80,000 a week to rent a posh East Hampton pad located near estranged hubby Paul McCartney's retreat, where he has been vacationing with their 2-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

The model was spotted in East Hampton last week with Beatrice on her hip after McCartney had spent about two weeks gallivanting around the East End with the tot.

When Mills arrived in the Hamptons last week, she had a dramatic, 40-minute meeting with her soon-to-be ex at his East Hampton getaway. It was the pair's first face-to-face powwow in more than two months.

The warring couple tried as best they could to smooth over their differences, according to the Sunday Mirror of London.

They "decided to put their difference aside for the sake of their daughter," a source told the paper.

The pair's well-publicized travails have included everything from McCartney allegedly freezing their joint bank account to changing the locks at their formerly shared London town house so Mills initially couldn't get in.

The feud had gotten so bad that both refused to see the other, using intermediaries to pass the child between them for visits, according to the Express newspaper.

After last week's apparent truce, Mills whisked Beatrice off for a stay at the East Hampton Village rental, which reportedly goes for $80,000 a week and is about three miles from McCartney's 11-acre Amagansett vacation home.

Mills has since been seen strolling the village's quaint streets and taking her Beatrice toy shopping.

But according to Britain's Mail on Sunday, the holiday has not been all fun for the child, who was spotted throwing a fit at popular eatery Babette's on Thursday. "She is normally a well-behaved girl, but it looks as if the trauma of the divorce is getting to her," a source close to the family said.

But it is not quite the gig of Heather's dreams.

Macca's longtime pal and former press aide Geoff Baker has invited ex-porn model Mucca to appear in a Naked photoshoot for the cover of a new single by the band he manages, Purplemelon.

The track is called "Queen Diva". Geoff and Heather fell out in 2004 after she insisted Sir Paul dump him as his publicist after 15 years working together.

In his cheeky letter offering her the job, Geoff writes that she will add "a touch of class" to the shoot.

I reckon Heather may decide she'll be busy washing her hair that day ...

"PLEASE LET IT BEA...FOR ME," says the Star's headline.

This is the latest update on the divorce of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills McCartney, aka Lady Mucca. And the news is that their daughter Bea is upset.

Indeed, the two-year-old has "thrown a series of tearful tantrums". In one scene, Bea had a "temper fit" with her mum and a minder as they dined in a health food restaurant in East Hampton, Long Island.

Onlookers say that Beatrice was carried "kicking and screaming" into the street. Heather and her bodyguard were forced to "abandon" their meals.

It was a scene of genuine horror. And it comes just days after Bea had a "similar fit" while playing on the beach. Holidaymakers claim the toddler was "crying and yelling".

This is just awful. It was meant to be so different. Heather and Bea are renting a £42,000-a-week ($80,000) property two miles away from Paul's home in the area. This was a shared holiday, a time of peace and coming together.

"It's a difficult time for everyone," says Heather's spokesman. Indeed. But with the right handling things can yet improve.

And one day Bea might just get over her angst and upset. And that day might be around the time of her third birthday, when the terrible twos end.

And the other terrible twos are divorced...

The former Beatle is increasingly worried about the effects of their split on the two-year-old.

Despite hating being in the same room, they have agreed to be "civil to each other" and have met for the first time in two months.

Macca, 64, is also understood to be pushing for a quickie divorce so he can escape the public scrutiny the break-up has generated.

A family friend said: "Paul's priority always has and always will be for little Bea. He has found the marriage breakdown difficult to handle, so goodness knows how it is affecting their little girl.

"It must be quite confusing for her to go from living with mummy and daddy to suddenly spending time with them alone.

"They are very keen to make sure Bea has a stable, loving relationship with both of them and that her life is disrupted as little as possible.

"The best way to do that is to try to patch things up between them and be civil to each other, at least in front of Bea.

"That said, it doesn't mean that everything is rosy between them.

"There is still a lot of hurt and pain which doesn't go away overnight. But it is fair to say they are both making an effort."

Sir Paul invited Heather, 38, into his East Hampton home in New York last week as she arrived to collect Beatrice.

He is apparently worried their divorce could drag on for years.

As a former member of the most famous band ever, he has lived most of his life in the spotlight and been seen to do no wrong.

But he is unhappy by the way his private life is being pawed over by the public. A source close to him revealed: "Paul absolutely hates being in the spotlight over their break-up. Although he filed for divorce first, he would be prepared to compromise and soften the petition if Heather asked him to do so.

"He wants this to be sorted as soon as possible and it can't hurt if he is getting along better with Heather."

Legal advisers for both parties are believed to have been locked in intense talks over the past two weeks to speed up the process.

Both sides have been told by their lawyers to say nothing on the negotiations to prevent details being leaked. Any final agreement will contain a confidentiality clause to prevent them from talking publicly about the breakdown.

Sources have hinted "an explosive incident" ended the marriage but that will be buried when the hush-hush legal papers are signed.

Meanwhile, a new documentary says Heather could win £100 million ($190 million) in the divorce settlement.

Divorce lawyer Mark Stephens said if the case comes to court, Sir Paul could have to pay more than he wants to.

In tonight's ITV show, Mr Stephens says: "They'll say Heather Mills McCartney is entitled to... the child is entitled to... and they'll make the award and that will be bigger, I think, than Sir Paul wants to pay. I think Heather, if she pushes, could get up to a hundred million."

His sentiments were echoed by publicist Max Clifford, who agreed she was probably "after £100m".

Macca and Heather split in May after four years of marriage.

Their divorce has been increasingly acrimonious after Heather was locked out of their home in St John's Wood, North London.

They have both been in the US on holiday but are due back this week.

The estranged pair held the peace summit to thrash out a truce for the sake of two-year-old daughter Beatrice.

Heather's agent Phil Hall said: "I suggested to Sir Paul a truce meeting to clear the air."

A pal said: "They have very different views on why the marriage collapsed but agree the most important thing is Beatrice. For her, they want a more amicable path."

Lady Heather Mills McCartney could win £100 million ($190 million) in her bitter divorce from Sir Paul McCartney a divorce lawyer has claimed in a new documentary.

Legal expert Mark Stephens said although there has been publicity on both sides, if the case comes to court, Sir Paul could be forced to pay more than he wants to.

In the (UK) ITV documentary, due to be shown tomorrow (Monday) at 10pm, Mr Stephens said: 'They'll say Heather Mills McCartney is entitled to, the child is entitled to, and they'll make the award and that award will be bigger, I think, than Sir Paul will want to pay.''

He added: 'I think Heather, if she pushes it, could get up to a hundred million.''

His sentiments were echoed by publicist Max Clifford, who agreed Lady McCartney was probably 'after £100m''.

The half-hour documentary explores the acrimonious break-up of the couple, which has dominated newspaper headlines for several months.

It looks at the early days of their relationship, their marriage and birth of daughter Beatrice, before examining how their originally amicable parting deteriorated after old photos of Lady McCartney posing topless in an adult magazine were exposed.

The documentary claims that following the split, Lady McCartney has become 'fair game'' for newspapers as she no longer has the more influential backing of Sir Paul.

It also says recent images of Lady McCartney locked out of the couple's London home were staged, and Sir Paul had actually changed the locks sometime earlier. The photos were plastered across national newspapers, sparking rumours photographers had been tipped off. These claims have been denied by Lady McCartney's advisers.

The programme, McCartney v McCartney, also reveals new research which shows that since their separation, Lady McCartney has had much more publicity than Sir Paul, with 216 photos in the tabloids, compared to his 165.

But despite the PR battle, the documentary reveals the couple appear to have decided to call a truce.

It said: 'Last week the couple met face to face for the first time in 70 days to acknowledge the PR war has to end.''

It was supposed to be a blissful summer holiday for the little girl at the centre of the pop world's most acrimonious divorce.

Instead Sir Paul McCartney's daughter, Beatrice, has become the talk of East Hampton, the chic seaside resort where the two-year-old spent several days with her father before being collected by his estranged wife, Heather, with whom she is spending the rest of her American holiday.

Heather watches worriedly as the screaming golden-haired toddler struggles in the arms of a minder after throwing a tantrum over lunch at a fashionable health-food restaurant last Thursday.

"She just seemed very distressed and confused about what was going on," The Mail on Sunday was told by an East Hampton resident, who had been eating lunch at the same restaurant, Babette's. "She was sitting in her minder's lap at lunch while Heather was eating a plate of vegetables and then she started to throw a temper fit. They couldn't calm her down so finally the minder and Heather both left without finishing their food.

"Beatrice began to really struggle in the minder's arms and then, as they reached the car, she started to scream and people were stopping in the street to watch.

"It could just be that she was looking for attention but a few days ago, she was on the beach with a group of Paul's friends when she threw a similar scene. It's obvious that this child loves both her parents and doesn't want to be parted from either of them.

"She is normally a well-behaved girl but it looks as if the trauma of the divorce is getting to her."

With tension between her parents at an all-time high after Heather's hiring of Anthony Julius - the divorce lawyer who won Princess Diana her £17 million settlement - Beatrice spent the first half of her holiday at a secret hideaway with her father about five miles from East Hampton.

The modest wood-framed house was acquired in 1998, a few months after the death of Sir Paul's beloved wife, Linda, by a corporation called Oakleaf Investment that is based at the East Hampton office of MPL Communications, the umbrella company for his business interests.

Oakleaf had previously acquired eight acres of woodland that shields the house and its small swimming pool from public view. The singer's spokesman, Paul Freundlich, refused to comment on whether Sir Paul owns the house and surrounding land.

The 64-year-old ex-Beatle arrived in East Hampton by helicopter two weeks ago and was collected by a security guard in an old truck. East Hampton's fabulously wealthy residents were amazed when they began to see Sir Paul pedalling through the town's quaint streets on a pushbike in the afternoons, towing Beatrice in a buggy.

"He was sweating heavily the first time I saw him," one said. "He had clearly come quite a distance and it was a very hot day.

"He took Beatrice to the local playground. Most kids go there with their nannies so it was quite something to see this multi-millionaire cycling there and pushing his little girl on the swings. He was very patient with her. She complained she was uncomfortable because she was wearing a wet swimming costume so he had her take it off and wrung it out.

"Another dad told me that the only help he had at home was a part-time chef. He looked after Beatrice himself which I assume will be a big plus for him if he decides to go for custody, as everyone has been predicting."

Another East Hampton resident said: "I was on the beach several days ago when I heard her crying and yelling. The people she was with tried to calm her down but finally they had to take her home."

Beatrice flew into Heather's arms when the former topless model arrived to collect her. The child is now staying at a rented house near East Hampton with her 38-year-old mother, who flew to the New York area after a trip to Los Angeles.

Asked about Beatrice's tantrums, Heather's representative, Phil Hall, said: "I am not aware of the incidents but it is a difficult time for the family."

EXCLUSIVE SIR PAUL'S 40-MINUTE PEACE SUMMIT WITH ESTRANGED WIFE HEATHER

Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills spent 40 minutes alone together in a dramatic peace summit at his US holiday home.

The former Beatle invited Heather inside his East Hampton house on Wednesday morning as she picked up their daughter Beatrice.

Paul's surprised personal security guards were even ordered out of the way while the couple tried to put a halt to the bitterness between them.

It is understood that Sir Paul, 64, had instigated the meeting earlier by contacting Heather's representatives and suggesting it was time the pair called a truce.

Heather, 38 - who last saw Sir Paul at their daughter Beatrice's Sussex nursery 70 days ago in June - is holidaying just two-and-a-half miles from Macca in the exclusive US coastal resort.

She is staying in a sprawling mansion which costs around £42,000 ($89,000) a week to rent.

A source revealed: "Paul and Heather have been doing their best to avoid each other for months.

"But they have decided to put their differences aside for their sake of their daughter Beatrice.

"Heather seemed very happy afterwards - smiling after she was reunited with Bea.

"Both Paul and Heather have realised that there is more to life than their personal battles - with Bea being their adored daughter.

"Many of us just hope this will mean it is the beginning of the end of the war between them."

Heather took a helicopter to East Hampton from New York on Tuesday night after jetting to the East Coast from Los Angeles with her confidante Mark Payne, a US make-up artist.

They immediately drove to the lavish mansion, which consists of two houses. "It is one of the most exclusive and expensive places in the whole of the Hamptons," a source revealed.

The following morning Heather headed to Macca's house - where she had enjoyed a holiday with him and Bea the previous summer.

Paul had spent much of the previous two weeks there with the youngster, who will be three next month.

In recent months the estranged couple have done their best to avoid coming face to face with each other. Heather was even locked out of their home in St John's Wood, North West London.

But thousands of miles from home and away from the glare of the spotlight, they have started to put their differences aside.

The source revealed: "We just hope - and believe - this means Heather and Paul are finally moving on and being adult about the break-up.

"Their main concern has to be Bea, who adores both her mum and her dad."

The source added: "England had become such a pressure cooker for their emotions.

"But with time away - in a place where they had been happy as a couple - they were able to be dignified and adult.

Neither side has ever doubted that Heather and Paul are wonderful parents to Bea. She is their joint pride and joy."

Heather and Payne - billed as the "make-up artist to the stars" - have become inseparable in recent weeks. She has told friends that he is her "closest confidante".

Later on Wednesday Payne joined her at a chemist shop picking up toiletries while Bea was taken to a toy shop by Heather's minder.

She then communicated by walkietalkie with the burly security man to meet up with the youngster again.

Since the meeting with Macca, Heather - who lost more than a stone following her marriage break-up - has appeared happier than she has done at any time since the split three-and-a-half months ago. An eye-witness revealed: "Heather has been absolutely beaming for much of her stay.

"She has been enjoying herself around the town, smiling and laughing with Payne. It is the cheeriest she has looked in months."

Paul and Heather's rapproachment comes after their split turned into the most acrimonious in showbusiness history.

The couple announced their separation in May after almost four years of marriage.

At first they insisted the break-up was amicable, blaming the media for their split.

But it all turned sour after sordid photographs of Heather in the 1988 German sex manual Die Freuden Der Liebe were published.

Aides for Heather insisted that Paul - whose first wife Linda died from cancer in 1998 - had always known of her past.

But friends of Paul's said he had only been told she had been a glamour model before - and did not realise the extent of her porn past.

Friends then said he may use the revelations to reduce the divorce settlement.

There were also allegations that Heather had been a prostitute - although she has vowed to sue over these claims once her divorce has been finalised.

At the end of July, Paul - who is worth around £1billion - began divorce proceedings against Heather, citing her unreasonable behaviour for the breakdown of their marriage. Heather has since launched a counter-claim.

As the split turned nasty, the Sunday Mirror revealed how a private conversation between Macca and daughter Stella had been bugged.

The tape - which featured Stella launching a ferocious attack on Heather - was played to him by his estranged wife.

She received it from a third party and knew nothing about the bugging beforehand.

We also revealed how Macca offered Heather a £30 million "quick and painless" divorce, which she turned down - although she insisted no formal offer had ever been made.

And we told how the split had reached ridiculous levels of bitterness when Paul sent Heather a legal letter after her cleaner took three half-empty bottles of cleaning fluid from the cupboard.

Police were later called to Paul's house in St John's Wood, North London, after Heather was mistaken for an intruder at the £8 million home.

The warring couple have now hired the divorce lawyers who acted for Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Fiona Shackleton - who remains solicitor to Princes William and Harry - is representing Sir Paul while Diana's lawyer Anthony Julius is representing Heather.

And just a week ago, the Sunday Mirror revealed how Heather had posed nude for 12 photos for an anti-fur calendar on Sir Paul's Peasmarsh estate.

Mary's despair over Heather

Troubled Sir Paul McCartney is holed up in his American hideaway after a new family bust-up over his disastrous marriage.

His normally-reserved daughter Mary hit out at her father for ignoring his children's warnings not to wed model Heather Mills.

Macca, 64, was left stunned after the dressing down and decided he needed time alone.

The former Beatle jetted off for a long break at his mansion in East Hampton near New York.

A source told The People: "Mary decided to speak her mind.

"She reminded him that he decided to marry Heather against the advice of nearly all of the family."

Friends say Mary, 37, also made it clear she is unhappy at the way her father's bitter divorce battle has led to the family facing the glare of publicity. The source added: "Mary likes to lead her life as quietly as possible.

"Paul's legal rows with Heather mean a lot of what has been going on in the family is being made public. This hasn't gone down well with Mary in particular. She would rather it wasn't happening like this."

The former Beatle understands Mary's distress as he would have preferred a quiet and amicable settlement with Heather.

Mary loves and respects her father - as do his other children Heather, 43, Stella, 34, and James, 28. She has always been the apple of his eye, particularly as she reminds him so much of his late wife Linda. Mary is even a photographer, like her mother. Although Mary and the others were all at their father's wedding in June 2002 it was obvious they did not get on with Heather.

Fashion designer Stella was loudest in her objections. But Mary made her disapproval clear by refusing to get involved in any of Heather's activities.

A source said: "Right from the start Mary and Stella disliked Heather. Considering how close the family is, Heather was just so out of place.

"Mary tried to accept it, but Stella was open about how much she didn't want her dad marrying Heather."

Sir Paul met Heather, 38, in 1999, a year after Linda died of breast cancer. They have a three-year-old daughter Beatrice.

Their divorce became increasingly acrimonious as details of Heather's racy past emerged. The People revealed two weeks ago how Macca wants to offer her a multi-million pound divorce deal if she promises never to talk publicly about their marriage. Heather is now staying with friends in Los Angeles.

Mary married TV producer Alistair McDonald in 1998 and had two sons. But the couple split up last year.

Paul once said of Mary: "I'm so proud of her. She's one of my best friends."

The estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney was photographed without her clothes last month at her Surrey home to boost a charity close to her heart.

According to her publicist, Heather had hoped the pictures would be used for a 'I Would Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' campaign by PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals).

In fact the images will not be used by the anti-fur charity. Indeed, the organisation, which has had close links with the McCartney family for nearly 20 years, last night confirmed they had 'no plans' to work with Heather in any campaigns.

A spokesman for PETA told me: "We do not know where the story came from. PETA is not producing any naked ad campaign with Heather at all."

Poignantly, the charity did confirm it is hoping to use Stella McCartney, Sir Paul's fashion designer daughter, for a campaign later this year.

It is the latest blow for 38-year-old former glamour model Heather, who has previously worked with PETA. A friend of the McCartneys told me: "She jumped on the PETA bandwagon when she married Paul, but really it was his late wife Linda's thing. Heather getting involved was one of the issues that most infuriated Stella and Mary.

"PETA want to keep their links with the McCartneys and seem to be distancing themselves from Heather."

Just weeks ago Sir Paul pulled out of performing at Heather's landmine charity concert - because he could not bear to be in the same room as her.

On a sunny summer afternoon in London, McCartney is giving a rare interview. She refuses to talk about her private life, neither confirming rumours that she is expecting her second child with her husband Alasdhair Willis nor commenting on her father's forthcoming divorce from Heather Mills. She will talk about the new perfume, though, and some of her experiences in the fashion world. And she's not one to be swayed once she has made up her mind. She refused to join the mighty house of Gucci over animal-rights issues, and only finally agreed to come on board when they agreed to 'no use of fur or leather' in her work for them.
Click to learn more...

Dressed in one of her own off-the-shoulder sweater dresses, she comes across as accessible and playful, yet savvy. Her hair is pulled back into a trademark chignon, while her long legs are set off by a pair her own sexy gold sandals with vertiginous heels (vegan, of course, as all her accessories are).

She is visibly enthusiastic about the new fragrance, describing it as a progression from the first one, but with a twist. "We were really proud of Stella," she says between mouthfuls of sandwich. "And we wanted to introduce the fragrance to another audience. We separated the amber and peony in two different vessels, so you can mix them yourself and put them together in the amounts you want. I like to keep perfume bottles - empty ones, too - on my dressing table. I think they are really collectable and look great when displayed."

Amber is a scent McCartney favours not only because of how it smells, but also because it has a connection to Willis. "My husband wore amber when we met," she smiles. "I love it on men, and now I love it on women."

She married the furniture designer in 2003 in the private chapel at Mount Stuart House, on the Isle of Bute. The guest list included celebrity friends Kate Moss, Gwyneth Paltrow, Liv Tyler, Pierce Brosnan and Madonna. Her wedding dress was her own work, designed in collaboration with Tom Ford, her boss at Gucci, and was inspired by the gown her mother Linda had worn when she married Paul in 1969. The couple's first child, a son named Miller, was born in February 2005 and McCartney is rumoured to be pregnant again.

I ask why she thinks so many women want to wear her clothing and perfume. "I'd have to say that I put honesty into all my products," she says. "If you are like-minded and identify with that honesty, you would like my products.".

McCartney's eponymous couture line is owned by the Gucci Group. It has taken her a few years finally to establish herself as a guaranteed money-maker for the label (after a successful stint as chief designer for Chloé back in the 1990s), but it's clear that her instincts for design are beginning to pay off. Famous friends not only wear her lines, many have also commissioned her to create one-off pieces for them - Madonna, for instance, who wore a McCartney creation for her 2000 nuptials at Skibo Castle.

But McCartney's recent success in branching out with diffusion lines for the sports brand Adidas, the aforementioned H&M and her fragrance has been unexpected. "The response to the H&M line was a huge surprise to me. But the reaction to the first perfume was even more astonishing, because I don't have any real training with perfume-making and I've just learned as I've gone along," she says. "When the first Stella perfume was such a success, it was a real confirmation for me that my instincts were right. It's almost weird to think that so many people live with that fragrance in their homes and use it in their own lives, because it's such a personal product - even more personal than clothing."

Born in 1971, McCartney grew up in the East Sussex countryside surrounded by animals on her parents' farm. Summer holidays were spent running wild on the Mull of Kintyre, where the family had a bolthole a world away from the pressures of the music business. McCartney says that much of her creative inspiration is drawn from her close family and upbringing. "I'm definitely inspired by the way I grew up," she says. "I was raised in the countryside and was aware of animals, crystals, flowers and nature. I think everything I do is inspired by my mother and my dad, but more indirectly by the way they brought us up."

McCartney appears to be sufficiently self-confident to tackle any project that she desires, but she claims she's never quite sure how the public will receive her ideas until she launches them. "I work with my design team on my clothing, and we talk it all through. I do have to ask myself the big questions, which is why my name is on the label. If I had to ask somebody else those big questions, their name should be on the label instead of mine. But the answer to what works and what doesn't in any collection is quite clear in the end. Hopefully people will like what I try to do each time, and every time we try something new we will have the confidence to take more risks."

McCartney often combines both masculine and feminine looks in her designs. This is down to her inner tomboy, she says. "I can't get away from that contrast thing I do," she laughs. "If I do a design in chiffon with a lovely print on it, I just have to put a heavy hem on it. If I do a really pretty, delicate blouse, I always have to put a man's tailored jacket over it. That's in every area of my life: my clothes, my home, my furniture, even within my personality.

"It's not that it's only about my kind of taste here. I think most women have both those sides to them: we identify with the masculine too," she says. "And men can identify with their feminine sides, if they let themselves. There's a balance there that I'm attracted to."

As a teenager, McCartney would scour vintage clothes shops and rifle through her mother's wardrobe to find items she could put together to create interesting looks. She made her first jacket at 13, and by the age of 15 had worked as an apprentice under Christian Lacroix for his debut couture collection. Today, McCartney's own popularity has fuelled a host of imitators, but does she mind seeing her designs copied by cheaper labels? "I don't see it a lot, but I do think it's flattering if it does happen," she says. "When I was young, I used to buy very cheap designs myself, and the first time I saw my designs copied I couldn't believe it. I thought it was a coincidence. But it's a compliment to be copied.

"Besides," she adds, "I don't know anyone who, if they can afford a Stella McCartney couture jacket, doesn't sometimes buy a £20 pair ($40) of shoes to go with it. You're allowed to dress like that now. There's nothing wrong with it. It's good that there are so many choices. My whole vibe has been that you can take one of my tops and wear it with almost anything you like. It's not about the attitude that you can only wear this top with those shoes, and that jacket must be worn with this bag. I don't dress like that and I don't know anyone who does. We have the freedom to dress as we like."

McCartney also insists that, despite her line of work, she doesn't feel pressurised to appear in only the most fashionable outfits. "I only dress this way when I have something special happening, like today. At home I like to be relaxed and I always dress down when I'm working. I don't always wear make-up, and I often throw on something very un-dressy. But when I'm out, I do try to look halfway decent, like any woman would."

So how would McCartney describe both herself and her creations? "I'd have to say 'modern' is a good word to describe me and my designs. 'Balance' is another. I'd also say 'chic' - but not too chic, if you know what I mean. Also, I might use the word 'understated', but not 'minimal'. But I hope what I do is always on the button, no matter what it is that I'm involved with."

MPL has petitioned the House of Commons to amend their Bill so that owners of properties affected will be reimbursed for damage cause by the tunnel construction and that care be taken to construct the tunnels with the least impact on the properties. They also ask for reimbursement for business loss during the time of construction. There is fear the the constant vibration from the trains in the tunnel will disrupt the nature of the business.

McCartney has a recording studio located in the basement of MPL called Replica modeled after Abbey Road Studio No. 2.

See entire petition by MPL. CLICK

September 1, 2006 -- Las Vegas Sun

Yoko wears Stella

Yoko Ono is spending enough time in Las Vegas lately to headline her own show on the Strip.

Ono, who has visited Vegas several times this year, is back again - this time with her late husband's art in tow. Ono is showcasing some of John Lennon's artwork during the "Imagine" weekend at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel, the hotel announced Wednesday. The dates are Sept. 8-9, and on display will be an extensive collection of Lennon's original drawings and signed pieces, along with a few limited edition prints. A tribute act known as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band will perform on both nights.

Ono has become quite the Vegas socialite in 2006. In the spring she was confirmed to be in the audience for a few dress rehearsals of "Love" at the Mirage and was spotted at various locales on the Strip. And on June 30 she attended the production's gala opening performance and party, with longtime friend and associate Elliot Mintz on her arm.

Ono sets a couple of conditions for her interviews - no questions about Paul McCartney or Julian Lennon. But when she walked the red carpet at "Love" in June, her gleaming white pants were designed by Stella McCartney, Paul's star fashion-designer daughter.

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