Paul and Heather Mills news

2BeatloManьka:

Но судя по заметке, он остался доволен

LIFE STYLE EXTRA (UK) - Sir Paul McCartney's wife Heather Mills is to undergo surgery following complications caused by the birth of the couple's daughter.

The 37-year-old - who shattered her pelvis and lost a leg in a road accident 12 years ago - has reportedly been in agony since delivering daughter Beatrice, who was born in 2003.

Doctors fear the pregnancy interfered with a metal plate that holds the former model's pelvis in place - and have told her they need to replace it.

Heather's spokesman is quoted in Britain's News of the World newspaper as saying: "She is booked into hospital to have some remedial work because the baby put pressure on her pelvis when she was pregnant and it has been causing her discomfort ever since."

Charity worker Heather joined 63-year-old Beatles star Paul on a US tour last year.

An insider revealed: "She found all the travelling between cities very difficult.

"Paul was really worried about her but she refused to leave him, so they consulted doctors out in the States who advised her to have the surgery as soon as possible."

Heather will have the operation later this month.

http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowbizNews.asp...B9884X&headline=heather_mills_to_undergo_operation_

как-то вдруг стукнуло..
А ведь на пару им 100 лет!

Sir Paul heads A-list for Liverpool Performs year Jan 10 2006
LIPA celebrations set stage for culture extravaganza.

SIR PAUL McCARTNEY is to launch the Capital of Culture's Liverpool Performs themed year, the Daily Post can reveal.

The singer is heading an exclusive list of star guests invited to the event, which will be held as part of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts' 10th anniversary celebrations at the end of this month.

Singer Joan Armatrading, chart songwriter Guy Chambers, and former OMD frontman and Atomic Kitten svengali Andy McCluskey are expected to attend.

They will be joined by former BBC director general Lord (John) Birt of Liverpool, and Conservative MP Stephen Norris, who attended the Institute with Sir Paul when it was still a school.

The guests will be treated to a gala performance at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, organised by LIPA, which includes footage of the Institute's history, and performances from the current intake of students as well as its alumni.

After recent criticism over the alleged secrecy of the culture team's planning, the event will finally reveal their programme for 2006, which will focus on the arts, sport and business.

Liverpool council leader Warren Bradley said: "We are looking forward to launching the fourth Capital of Culture themed year - Liverpool Performs - at a joint event to mark LIPA's tenth anniversary.

"We are particularly delighted that Sir Paul McCartney will be in attendance. It will be a fantastic way to start a 12-month celebration of the city's outstanding track record in the business, art and sporting worlds."

LIPA invited the culture company to reveal its intentions for Liverpool Performs at the event on January 30.

It was felt that a celebration of the institute's remarkable achievements was the ideal occasion for such a launch.

The fame school currently has more than 1,200 students and is one of the biggest and most respected in the country.

It cost £15.8m to refurbish, which was raised from a wide variety of backers, including Sir Paul, who gave £1.2m, and includes a network of high-technology recording studios, control rooms, dance studios, rehearsal rooms, dressing rooms, visual arts and graphic facilities, classrooms, and a learning resource centre.

Joan Armatrading held a concert to support the Institute and has made regular visits since it was opened.

Guy Chambers, an official Lipa companion, Andy McCluskey, Thelma Holt and Nickolas Grace have all held masterclasses in their specialist fields.

http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_objectid=16566962&metho...

2Primal Scream:

>2BeatloManьka:
>Но судя по заметке, он остался доволен

Йока всех авторов купила! ;))

Ты думаешь?

Пол и банда репетируют Please Please Me. См. на http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/104-4198997-5651139
Enjoy!

2Primal Scream:

>Ты думаешь?

Честно говоря, мне абсолютно все равно с кем там Пол в молодости спал... ;)

January 12, 2005 -- The Sun

Fatboy: I made Macca dog sick

Fatboy Slim has made a shocking confession ­ he once accidentally fed meat sausages to Sir Paul McCartney's vegetarian dog.

The stars are neighbours in Hove near Brighton and Fatboy stretched the friendship when he dumped leftovers from his birthday bash on the nearby beach.

But when Macca's pampered pooch Ollie spotted them he scoffed the lot - then promptly threw up.

DJ Fatboy, who lives with TV star wife Zoe Ball and their son Woody, said: "The worst problem with having Paul as a neighbour is that we put our old food out on the beach for the foxes and he has a vegetarian dog.

"I had a birthday barbecue last year and threw all the old meat out - and his dog went and finished the lot. I felt really bad."

Fatboy also revealed how Macca was like a father to him when his marriage hit the rocks.

He said: "Paul gave me a shoulder to cry on. He told me to get out of the UK until the heat died down.

"That was a bad time as we messed up in public. But it turned out to be a two-month blip in a six-year marriage.

"We've now worked out how to keep ourselves to ourselves and get on with enjoying life."

The revelation that Macca's dog is on a vegetarian diet has raised eyebrows among vets. Animal expert Anthony O'Neill warned: "It's unusual for a dog to be a vegetarian as they are carnivores.

"A dog on a veggie diet could be prone to long-term health risks."

To cheer Ollie up, here are Macca's Top Ten dog songs:

1. Bark In The USSR.
2. Strawberry Fields For Rover.
3. Mutt Of Kintyre.
4. Norwegian Woof.
5. Hound On The Run.
6. With A Little Yelp From My Friends.
7. You've Got To Hide Your Bone Away.
8. Please Pat Me.
9. Hey Food.
10. The Ballad Of John And Fido.

Собака подвергается насильственному вегетарианству!

2Primal Scream:

>Собака подвергается насильственному вегетарианству!

Да Пол всегда так над собаками издевался, еще с 80-х :(( Не кормить мясом собаку - это уже какой-то абсурд. Даже слов нет. Пол, что ты творишь? :((

15 January 2006
MACCA: I'M A BRIT YOUNG FOR SONG GONG
EXCLUSIVE MAYBE HE'LL TAKE IT.. WHEN HE'S 64
By Ben Todd Showbiz Editor

SIR Paul McCartney has turned down an Outstanding Contribution gong at next month's Brits Awards... because he says he's too young.

The music legend, 64 in June, was approached by Brit bosses led by EMI head Tony Wadsworth to accept this year's award. They were so sure he would agree they even included a new Macca song, Jenny Wren, on this year's Brit Awards compilation album.

But they were devastated when the ex-Beatle turned them down. A Brits source revealed: "We were absolutely stunned. Sir Paul felt that if he accepted the gong, people would assume it was the end of his career when he is feeling more creative than ever."

Sir Paul, who famously sang about When I'm 64 back in 1967, already has two Outstanding Contribution gongs as one of The Beatles. Ex-Jam frontman Paul Weller will get this year's award at the bash in February. At 47, he is 16 years younger than Macca.

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16587476%26method=full%26siteid=62484%26...

2006 Grammy Nominees
Various Artists
January 24, 2006

1. Gorillaz- Feel Good Inc. Featuring De La Soul
2. Green Day- Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
3. Mariah Carey- It's Like That
4. Paul Mccartney- Fine Line
5. U2- City Of Blinding Lights
6. Rascal Flatts- Bless The Broken Road
7. Bruce Springsteen- Devils & Dust
8. John Legend- Ordinary People
9. Jack Johnson- Sitting, Waiting, Wishing
10. Seal- Walk On By
11. Rob Thomas- Lonely No More
12. Stevie Wonder- From The Bottom Of My Heart
13. Kelly Clarkson- Since U Been Gone
14. Sheryl Crow- Good Is Good
15. Coldplay- Speed Of Sound
16. Foo Fighters- Best Of You
17. The Rolling Stones- Rain Fall Down
18. Neil Young- The Painter
19. Beck- E-Pro
20. Death Cab For Cutie- Soul Meets Body
21. Franz Ferdinand- Do You Want To

VARIOUS ARTISTS Brit Awards 2006
(2006 2-disc Dual Disc set comprising of 32-track collection of 2005/06's biggest hits including Madonna - SDP Extended Vocal Mix [Audio Only], Robbie Williams, Girls Aloud, Charlotte Church, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight and more... plus DVD side featuring 31 Accompanying Music Videos!).
released 13 February 2006

Dual Disc One:
1. Madonna- Hung Up - SDP Extended Vocal Mix [AUDIO SIDE ONLY]
2. Robbie Williams - Tripping
3. Sugababes - Push The Button
4. James Blunt - High
5. Daniel Powter - Bad Day
6. Girls Aloud – Biology
7. Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone
8. Will Young – Switch It On
9. Charlotte Church – Crazy Chick
10. KT Tunstall - Black Horse And The Cherry Tree
11. Britney Spears – Do Somethin’
12. Mario – Let Me Love You
13. Akon – Lonely
14. Mylo - In My Arms
15. Faithless – Insomnia

Dual Disc Two:
1. Coldplay - Speed Of Sound
2. Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc
3. Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle
4. Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To
5. Kaiser Chiefs - Oh My God
6. Razorlight - Somewhere Else
7. The Darkness - One Way Ticket
8. Hard-FI - Hard To Beat
9. Basement Jaxx - Oh My Gosh
10. Jamiroquai – Feels Just Like It Should
11. Anastacia – Pieces Of A Dream
12. Natalie Imbruglia - Shiver
13. Jem - They
14. Kate Bush - King Of The Mountain
15. Paul Weller - From The Floorboards Up
16. Paul McCartney - Jenny Wren
17. David Gray -The One I Love

Хизер рассказывает о том, как отучала Макку курить "травку"...

The cat's whiskers

Sunday January 22, 2006
The Observer

Her journey from cardboard city to Lady McCartney won her as many enemies as admirers. Now, as she prepares to take on the fur trade by buying 100,000 dogs, Heather Mills-McCartney talks to Tim Adams about land mines, life with Paul and why she prefers Linda to the Beatles

I spent the best part of two days with Heather Mills-McCartney before I managed to ask her a proper question. She is, according to her publicity, among the most sought-after speakers in the world. You quickly see why.
We met in a bar at a Brussels hotel. The following day she was due to present evidence to the European Union about the trade in dog and cat fur from China. She had just flown in from LA, where she had been accompanying Sir Paul on his sell-out American tour; he was now back home in Sussex looking after their daughter Beatrice. She was tired, she had said on the phone, and so cold that she thought she might 'lose her other leg to frostbite'. So she only fancied a quick chat. In the event, it was me who had to make my excuses.

Before I could, Lady Mills-McCartney did what she does best. She talked with an extraordinary, slightly unnerving compulsion about the cause that is currently closest to her heart. Two million dogs and cats were being skinned alive each year in China, she said, pretty much by way of greeting. It was happening in the Czech Republic, too, and even here in Belgium, where she had evidence that cats were being stolen to order: why did I think there were all those 'missing moggy' signs on street corners?

She had become involved in all of this, she explained with hardly a pause, nearly a year ago, and since then it had all been a bit mad, like her landmines campaign. She first saw the film of the Chinese animal skinning when it was given to her by Dennis Erdman, a director of Sex and the City. He had watched it for 45 seconds before he fainted. She had watched it over and over, and put some of it on her website. Eleven months on, she was hoping for a Europe-wide ban on fur from China. Her husband was doing his bit. He has refused to play in China until the practice is made illegal. 'I pull him in for specific events,' she said, 'just at the right moments.'

She had wanted to go undercover herself to film the cat farms in the Czech Republic, but she was in hospital in the end, sorting out problems with her leg. She had not been idle, though.

In New York she had heard Jennifer Lopez on TV being asked about the fur she was wearing and saying, 'Oh, I guess I need to be educated.' Mills-McCartney decided to educate her. She went to J-Lo's office with the video of cats and dogs being skinned. It was Fashion Week in New York and the office was just over the road, so she was like the Pied Piper with all these journalists in tow. In the scuffle that followed the papers said that security had knocked her over and she had lost her prosthetic leg, but that was not true; or that she was having trouble with her leg at the time and she just stumbled.

Which charity was she doing this work for? I started to ask.

Well, her special skill, she said, was to bring all the charities together. They all needed her, so she made them work with each other. The Humane Society, Peta and so on. ('Talks a lot about being needed,' I wrote in my notebook, not entirely fairly.)

As we were speaking, a woman walked into the bar wearing a full-length fur coat. 'The thing is,' Lady Mills-McCartney said loudly, 'people who wear fur are always so ugly. The coat just makes them even uglier.'

I was not sure the woman understood English. Mills-McCartney turned back towards me.

'Would you go out with someone dressed in an animal?'

Crikey, me?

She had tried to stop haranguing people in furs, she said. But sometimes in a shop she could not help herself going up behind someone and starting to stroke their coat, before asking them how many dead animals it was made from. That seemed to work.

One of the people whose coat she would no doubt like to stroke is Naomi Campbell: 'That stupid, superficial hypocrite', who has started modelling fur, having previously led Peta campaigns. Another is Anna - 'Cruella de' - Wintour, who, as editor of US Vogue, has championed fur, and who was at the very least 'in league' with the fur industry and its advertisers.

When she paused from this monologue briefly, her sister Fiona, who is her agent and right-hand woman, acted as a prompt: about cat-fur festivals in Germany, and about how the animals in China were skinned alive because a bullet or an injection was too expensive. They explained how they had plans to go to China and buy, say, 50,000 dogs in crates at a market for a dollar each, the going rate, and set up a sanctuary for them. Or 100,000 dogs. They would then educate the men who had skinned them in how to look after animals. (I had a brief image of the pair of them barking orders to Chinese dog minders in their impassioned Geordie.)

'The thing is,' Fiona said, 'with something like this you have to do it full time, six days a week.'

And how did the tour go?

'It was good, but I didn't sleep well,' Lady Mills-McCartney said. 'The screaming always goes on in my head.'

What, I began to say, the screaming of Paul's fans? Outside the hotel? Does that still happen ...?

'No,' she said, just a bit impatient, as if I had not been paying attention. 'The screaming of the dogs and cats I had seen on the videos. Little puppy dogs and pussy cats, their faces so trusting. Just before the noose comes.' And she was off again.

The following morning, bright and early, I watched Mills-McCartney explain a lot of this once more in a lecture hall at the European parliament, flanked by the Conservative MEP Struan Stevenson holding a piece of cat fur. The impact of her presentation was dampened a little by the fact that no one knew how to turn down the lights so we could see her film. But she was undaunted; in the corridors afterwards she railed against fur for the benefit of television stations from across the continent.

A few days later, back in London, I caught up with her again. She was spending the morning in Bond Street, giving out horribly graphic leaflets to Christmas shoppers in fur coats while another film crew followed her. ('Did you know,' she wondered, repeatedly, 'that two million cats and dogs in China ...? She has the kind of celebrity that makes people double take, but often not be quite able to place her. As she accosted hapless coat-wearers, passers-by asked each other, 'Who is it?' or noted, 'She's prettier than you imagine isn't she?' A paparazzo had picked up her presence. She gave him a leaflet ('Did he know that ...').

Some of her targets were robust. One woman in a stole informed her to 'keep your opinions to yourself young lady', which I knew, by now, was never really going to happen. 'If I had kept my opinions to myself I would never have done half of what I have done,' Lady Mills-McCartney shouted back. 'Everyone thinks I'm a nutter,' she said to me cheerfully. Some fur-flaunters scuttled away or pretended not to speak English. One woman in a hideous floor-length chinchilla hid in Pied a Terre until the coast was clear.

Mills-McCartney's other mission in the shops was to buy Chinese fur and take it away for DNA testing to see if it was cat or dog. By the end of a long morning, her sister was laden with bags of evidence. I wondered at one point if Heather had got Paul anything for Christmas yet. She'd just seen some brilliant crocheted shoes in a shop in Burlington Arcade, she explained, but they also sold fur scarves so she could not get them.

Crocheted shoes? I said.

To finish her morning's filming she decided to go to Stella McCartney's shop to prove that fur-free can be fashionable, and to pick up some clothes to wear for the Observer's photos. She called Stella, who was away in the Far East, on her mobile. After a brief chat it seemed that Stella had said it was fine, but she might want to check with head office.

At the shop she explained to security, 'I'm not sure what you'd call me. Her stepmother, I suppose.' They looked bemused, but let her in. Chrissie Hynde, fellow animal-rights activist, happened to be in the fitting rooms. They hugged and talked about the merits of Stella's vegan stilettoes. One of the shop assistants came across to tell her how the cats and dogs video on the website had made her cry. On the whole, it could not have gone better.

A couple of days before Christmas, she is in a studio in north London wearing Stella's dress, holding a cat, and smiling into the Observer's camera. The cat will not behave, quite, and the hours tick by, but nothing is too much trouble. Over lunch she informs everyone how much pus there is from infected cow teats in the average glass of milk. Most people decide to have their coffee black.

Afterwards she sits by a gas heater in the airy room, trying to coax a little circulation into her bad leg. For the first time, since I've seen her, I have a slight sense that she might be capable of relaxing. Of all the people I have met, I suggest to her, truthfully, I have never met anyone with quite her sense of self-belief.

She rubs her good foot. 'I have,' she says, 'a disbelief in the impossible.'

Where does it come from, her determination?

'I think seeing so much injustice when I was young made me very sensitive to what is unjust,' she says, referring to her abusive childhood. 'It's like the dogs and cats. You may not want to watch these things, but I think you have to.'

Does she ever let herself stop?

'When I am on I am full-on completely,' she says. I nod. 'But then I can switch off completely, too. On Tuesday I was working from 6 to 10.30 doing TV and radio and stuff. The next day it was my husband's office Christmas party. I always go along. So I played with my daughter all day, switched off the phones. I have to do that occasionally.'

Now aged 37, her sense of mission redoubled after she lost her leg in 1993 when she was run down by a police motorcycle, but she'd always had it really, she says. 'It's like a drug. Or at least it keeps me sane.' When she met Paul, or when he first saw her speak, she was giving an award to a young girl who had lost her arms and legs from meningitis. The girl had been studying to be a top pianist. She went on to help others and now she is a TV journalist. 'People can be in a black tunnel and you have to let some light in so everything looks a bit brighter and more colourful. Once you get out of it, if you start to help people, you'll find that you haven't got time for therapists and "woe is me".'

As she explains this philosophy she returns a few times to the well-trodden story of her childhood. 'It was survival when I was young,' she says. Or: 'I knew that I would never be frightened of anyone after my father.'

Her dad was violent towards her, her brother and sister throughout their childhood. When her mother left home with a Crossroads actor, and ran away to London, she left Heather to cope on her own. At 12 she was running the house, getting her sister off to school, occasionally stealing a bit of food for dinner. Her father would beat them if things were not right. He once threw Fiona through a plate-glass window. She must still feel tremendous anger towards him.

'I think he is mentally ill,' she says. 'My problem and my attribute is that I can always see the other person's side. My father had a hard life. He was adopted when he was seven, from care. God knows what happened to him before that. He had a great love for animals; he used to work for the RSPCA, but he obviously had a more troubled relationship with human beings.'

She hasn't been in touch with him since he phoned her in hospital after she had lost her leg and asked her if he could have money for a new TV and video. Before then she had always paid his debts. 'It was a realisation, really,' she says. 'It's like when you put your hand in a fire and you keep putting it back in. I was the last to give up. My brother and sister had given up on him years before. He had another child who is 20 now and she does not see him. A person only has so many chances I think. He never learned from his mistakes.'

Did it make her desperate to be looked after, that lack of love?

No, she says, with some conviction. 'Though certainly they were crap parents. My mother's dead now, but I can understand her wanting to run away. You've got three kids, abuse for 12 years and suddenly a man comes along who will take you away, but he won't take your kids. I know myself I could never do that. But I know, too, that if she took us my father would have come after her. Unfortunately, I didn't get on with her new partner either.' When the three children turned up at their mother's doorstep Heather was made so unwelcome she left, aged 14, to go and sleep rough on the streets. 'My stepfather did a story with Channel 4 recently and then wrote to me to apologise,' she says. 'He said he needed the money. He was a good actor. He played Henry Higgins.'

I ask if she sees her mother in herself at all.

'I think I am a bit like her as I get older in that she was a psychologist so she counselled people, she was a homeopath at the Royal Marsden. She had a PhD in psychology. When I got my honorary doctorate I wondered a bit what she would have thought. Her boyfriend had told me that I would never get anywhere in life.' She smiles broadly at this idea.

Obviously, she could never have quite imagined how her life would go, but did she have a sense then of where she wanted to be?

'What I wanted when I was 15,' she says, 'was just to get out of Washington, Tyne and Wear. I wanted to earn money so I could get my brother and sister through their education. And I never wanted to have to ask anyone for anything.'

In that desperation, she suggests, she was prepared to try anything. She stole. And she got married young, and wrongly, to a Lebanese businessman who wanted a trophy wife. He introduced her to glamour modelling. The relationship that perhaps kept her going through all of that was with her sister. I say I'm amazed that they can work so closely together.

'We have had one row in 37 years and that was because of the press,' she says. 'We had two libel cases going and something was supposed to go to the lawyers and I was in Rome and Paul was demanding attention: half a million people were turning up to see him and I said to her, "For God's sake, how could you have forgotten to do that?" Then we both burst into tears. We never would let that happen again.'

When she talks about her husband it is with the same matter-of-fact, chirpy normality that he has made his own defence against the strangeness of his world. 'I was devastated for two years when I first met Paul,' she says.

I laugh.

'No,' she insists. 'It was like, I love this man but I want out of this life completely. But then doors started opening. President Putin wanted to have a meeting about land mines. President Putin. And I knew suddenly that was the reason Paul and I had met. Obviously we were in love and there was our daughter and everything, but I knew that was the reason. Paul can open these doors, but he won't have time to do the work. He needs me because I do the work.'

Given her life, I suppose, it's hard not to believe in fate, or fairytales.

'Oh, everything in my life is fate,' she says. 'My mother almost loses a leg [in a car crash] then goes on to help others and then leaves us. I lose a leg at the same age, use it to help others. Then [Princess] Diana appears for eight months. She got involved with land mines around 1997, after I had been doing it for many years. Then we lost her, sadly. Then Paul came along and everyone wants to know about land mines again. How can it not be fate in some way?'

Does that sense translate into a religious faith?

'Nah,' she says. 'I don't have time to follow any religion. But I very much believe that things happen for a purpose.'

Given all her work, it is clearly a great shock to her that she generally gets so bad a press. A recent Sunday Times piece suggested that given her desire for publicity 'the best thing that ever happened to her' was the crash in which she lost her leg, broke her pelvis and punctured her lung. I turned on the TV the other night and heard a comedian I'd never seen before describe her as 'a two-bit Geordie with a wooden leg'. Both her husband and her sister have been moved to make public statements in her defence. Paul, 63, explained, among other things, that she did not make him dye his hair, he was doing that before he met her, and actually she got on pretty well with his kids. Fiona argued that she was just about the best sister anyone could have.

She is quite shaken by the hatred she evokes, though. 'It's jealousy, I suppose,' she says. 'One of the first things Paul did was to tell me to look through the cuttings of what was written about Linda, who had, by any standards, lived a pretty blameless life. I could not believe it. From 1993, when I lost my leg, to when I met Paul I literally never had a bad word written about me. But as soon as I met Paul that all changed overnight. I was totally floored.'

When she talks you often have the sense that she is prone to exaggeration. She claims to have investigated all of the journalists who had written badly about her.

'One of them is in prison now as a paedophile,' she says.

Who was that?

'I can't go into that. It's confidential,' she suggests quickly. 'But if someone writes lies then I will get myself into their lives and see how they feel about it. I am not used to having everything taken out of my control. And when I looked at these people they had done nothing with their lives. One was an alcoholic. One had been divorced three times and was refused access to her kids. So when I realised no one nice had written anything bad about me that was OK. I moved on.'

Does she divide her life into two - before and after the accident?

'Not really,' she says. 'Though I can still see my leg there with blood all round it and my training shoe still on my foot. It was a new trainer so I thought, "Blimey, that's going to take some cleaning up."'

Most of the time when her leg is not hurting she tends to forget and runs down the road like everyone else. She's due for a revision amputation because the muscle tissue has come away from the bone. She will have to spend eight weeks on crutches. 'I can't imagine being eight minutes on crutches with the world I have at the moment, carrying my baby on planes and trains,' she says.

She must be relieved as much as anything to have found Paul, I say. For a long time it looked like she was a sort of runaway bride. Three relationships ended after engagements.

'I'm just a romantic,' she says. 'I always thought, you know, this was the one. Ironically, it was not like that with Paul at all. It was the longest pursuit I have ever had. I'd been very much let down by the boyfriend previous to him - the director Chris Terrill - who was not what he said he was, and I was very much in love with him. In fact, every boyfriend I ever had asked me to marry them. And I was in love with all of them. I've only had seven boyfriends. I meant it each time I said yes.'

How hard was it to step into Linda's place?

She says she has never been a jealous person. 'All my boyfriends have said that. I've always thought that if they want to go off with someone else that's their choice. So all I can do is be the best I can be. When I met Paul and he had had this amazing love with Linda for like 30-odd years, I just thought if I was lucky enough to have any of that love it would be fantastic. Some people don't know how to do it. A lot of people are terrified of being that vulnerable.'

She doesn't feel that by doing her animal welfare work she is turning herself into a copy of her husband's first wife?

'She was a fantastic animal-rights campaigner. She was the kind of person I would admire much more than, say, a Beatle. Yes, they wrote some good songs and got rich, but even while they were doing it sometimes they would admit it was for a swimming pool or to build a bigger house. Linda was not afraid to speak out for what she believed in.'

In that way, she suggests, Paul thinks they are similar. In all other ways she believes they are completely different. One thing she has changed in her husband's life is to stop him smoking pot. 'Him and Linda,' she claims, 'had smoked it every day for the whole of their lives together. But I would not get married to him if he was taking drugs. I hate it. I counselled people on drugs. Fifty per cent of people can smoke joints their entire life and be fine. But the other 50 per cent, if there is a history of depression in their family or in their genes, then they can not smoke marijuana. If I had it I'm sure I would go wacky because we obviously have this history of mental instability in the family. And I could not have him lying to our child about not taking drugs and then going out for a sneaky puff.'

Did he find it hard to give up?

'He says he had a good incentive.'

I wonder if her desire to be clean, and in control, which is perhaps the dominant impression she gives, comes from her nights sleeping under Waterloo Bridge as a teenager. She must have seen a lot of addicts.

'In those days there were lots of camp fires and so on. There were winos and druggy people, I suppose, but even now I'm really crap at spotting anyone who is off their head. I've never taken drugs in my life. One time at Ascot two models ran into the toilets and sniffed some cocaine off the cistern and I was, like, totally shocked. I never drank either until I met Paul. I was drunk yesterday on two glasses of wine at the Christmas party. I'm a very cheap date.'

She laughs, says she has a train to catch: she has to get home to cook supper. 'The thing about me,' she says 'is that I didn't want to get to the end of my life and think I hadn't done all I could, used all my opportunities.'

I don't think there is any danger of that.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1691337,00.html

Просто факт. Пол и Мадонна прибыли в Лос-Анджелес для участия в церемонии "Грэмми" в одном самолете.