The greater the potential settlement, the nastier celebrity splits. But the Mills-McCartney divorce is setting new standards of abuse. Andrew Alderson and Roya Nikkhah explain why lunchtime on Tuesday.
Someone with a sense of mischief and perhaps a The material, photocopies of confidential legal documents, was dispatched to two news organisations, the Press Association and Bloomberg. The sender clearly hoped that the lurid claims would be on their way to every newspaper and media group in the land.
that Sir Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, was a and uncaring father.
It was even claimed that, in a drunken rage, he had stabbed his disabled wife, , with a broken wine glass.
In another alleged attack, while Mills McCartney was pregnant, Sir Paul was said to have pushed her into a bath in a hotel room in Rome. Not content with manhandling his wife, Sir Paul was even accused of depriving their daughter, Beatrice, of her mother's milk.
"They are my breasts," the ex-Beatle, 64, is alleged to have told his 38-year-old wife, petulantly.
In an age where divorces are intended to be more civilised, the McCartneys are proof that when the stakes get high, everything - media - is abandoned. In short, the higher the potential alimony, separation in May, they blamed the pressures of four-year marriage.
If both sides had continued to play by the rules of their "amicable" divorce, that would have been their final dealing with news-hungry journalists.
Yet, for a time last Tuesday, the anonymous leaker's plans to use the media went briefly astray. The Press Association and Bloomberg decided the Concerns over divorce law, defamation and privacy meant that they did not write up and distribute the story.
Instead, by early evening on Tuesday, the court papers had mysteriously found their way to the Daily Mail. After frantic late-night phone calls to contacts and even later checks with in-house lawyers, the paper edition. "Heather: Macca 'beat me up' " screamed the front-page headline, which began a four-day frenzy from rival newspapers for stories on the feuding couple.
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