[lovely bones]

This is a long story, so I truncated it a bit. If you have the energy to follow the link and read toward the end, it's really rather sad...if it's true.

Porn and a very bitter war

by NATALIE CLARKE and NICOLE LAMPERT




Sir Paul McCartney is in no hurry to face the world and its 'we-told-you-so' gloaters. He remains hidden away at his Sussex farmhouse, where he has been staying since announcing that he and his wife are to separate. He is deeply depressed and unhappy, consumed by anguish and regret. What on earth made him marry the woman? He feels like a prize idiot. But no one could say he wasn't warned. "He bitterly regrets marrying Heather Mills and dragging his children into this awful situation," says a friend.

And it becomes more awful by the day. Even in McCartney's worst nightmares it is unlikely he could have envisaged yesterday's front-page headline in The Sun: Lady Macca Hard Core Porn Shame, accompanied by a picture of a young, virtually naked Heather Mills in what is often described as a 'steamy clinch' under a shower with a man, also half-naked.

The picture is one of a series of pornographic shots taken for a 112-page German book, Die Freuden Der Liebe - The Joys Of Love - published in 1988. More pages inside the newspaper were devoted to pictures of Heather. In one she is wearing handcuffs, in another she is smearing baby oil on the man. A third, almost comical image, shows the male porn star popping a strawberry into Heather's mouth with his tongue. The newspaper gleefully tells us that many of the images are too explicit to be published.

There have long been rumours that Lady McCartney's past was rather murky, but even her worst detractors have never suggested she was involved in hardcore pornography.

Her estranged husband, of course, is utterly mortified. It goes without saying that he had no idea. He must be wondering how he is going to look his children in the eye. The latest salacious revelations are proof, if proof were needed, that the divorce case of McCartney vs McCartney looks set to be one of the bloodiest and most vicious of any in modern history.

Just who gave the book to The Sun? There is some suggestion that somebody spotted the book for sale on the internet and contacted the paper. So febrile are the rumours now circulating around the couple that yesterday it was even suggested a group of people close to McCartney - unbeknownst to him - had hired a private investigator to check out Heather's background. Could such a drastic action really be true?

Whatever the reality, there were two distinctly different reactions to the pictures from the two camps yesterday. Last night, Heather's lawyers admitted that she had taken part in the erotic shoot. But they denied that it was porn. "This photo shoot, undertaken approximately 20 years ago, was for the purpose of a 'lovers' guide" to caring relationships and instructive sex in the same way as are many other books on the market," her lawyers Coyle White Devine said. "The photo shoot was not pornographic or for the purposes of gratification of the viewer."

The lawyers added that "she did not have sex with the male model", and tried to play down the picture, saying: "It is widely known that our client was a model and has done nude shots in the past."

Meanwhile, sources close to Sir Paul admitted he was "devastated" by the pictures as he had always believed she had been nothing more than a topless model.

"There has never been any evidence about exactly what she got up to before," said one source. "But now Paul can see with his own eyes the secrets of Heather's past.

"Until now he has always believed her when she said all the stories about her past were rubbish, but now he knows one is true it is not such a leap to start believing the others. He is utterly devastated."

It is believed that Heather is now out of the country, her whereabouts known only to a close-knit group of friends, led by her sister Fiona, who is waging the counter-offensive against the McCartney camp.

Before the photographs were published, Sir Paul had, in these testing past few weeks, acquired a new toughness in regard to his estranged wife, whom he used to indulge rather too much in the early days.

He has been telling his family and closest friends that while he may have been a fool in love, he certainly won't be one in divorce. The proverbial gloves are off.

Story continues here