Her bitter divorce battle has turned Lady McCartney into the people's pariah. Genevieve Fox, who knows her, believes she is misunderstood
Poor, demonised Heather. The brash, brassy Geordie never stood a chance with a British public as soft on rich, ageing Beatles as they are on donkeys holed up in animal sanctuaries.
Pitted against a pretty, posh and placid first wife killed by cancer, the pretty but common and fiery second wife would never measure up.
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Speaking as she finds has never endeared the wilful Lady McCartney to the masses. Sophistry is not her fort e : take me as you find me, like me or lump me, peg leg and all. Just don't ask me, to coin a phrase that suited that other prize public punchball, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, to put up and shut up.
Diana became the People's Princess because she played the victim card: sharing her pain, lowering her eyes, whispering her heartache. Heather is not for whispering, as we will doubtless see if the case reaches the open courts. She may relish the fight her latest move, would indicate she is armed for battle thereby confirming her status as the People's Pariah in the process.
What people now overlook, however, is that Heather has expended a lot of energy fighting other people's battles, as I discovered when I shared an office with her seven years ago.
There were six or seven of us in the converted warehouse in north London, all self-employed and working in everything from television to educational publishing. It was 2002 and this lippy, life-loving divorc e e had just published her autobiography, A Single Step.
She had already met Paul at a charity awards event, but refused to be totally submerged by the former Beatle's life. She was also presenting a children's hospital programme and counselling families whose loved ones had lost a limb.
Meanwhile, the rest of us toiled away in an atmosphere of convivial application, all following the unspoken rules of open-plan office etiquette: not speaking too loudly on the phone, lowering our voices to chat, turning down the answerphone.
Then Heather would arrive like so much tumbleweed and all hell would let loose. She would stride to her desk, play her messages at full volume and bellow down the telephone in that unmelodious voice of hers.
Boy, could that girl talk. And I should know. Her desk was about five metres from mine.
In between excited property calls she was buying something near Piccadilly Circus at the time she counselled desperate parents whose children had lost a limb. She would spend 30 to 40 minutes telling them how their child could, in time, lead a normal, happy life.
Her loud, tinny voice used to drive us mad.
Sometimes I used to think I may as well abandon my own work, swivel my chair round and listen up. Treat it like a trainee counselling session. Instead I would sit there, fuming, trying to summon up the courage to reprimand her.
I did, once, scuttling over and asking her if she could please turn the volume down. She was playing back messages. My face went all red and puffy.
Hers showed complete surprise. She stared at me for a second, then turned down the dial. The office rules had completely passed her by; like some gauche, slightly deaf dinner-party guest, she simply didn't realise how loud, and at times, rude she had appeared to everyone else.
What did impress me, though, was quite how seriously she took the counselling. A parent would be seeking advice on a prosthetic that chafed, or didn't fit, and she would offer solutions. This ball of energy and ambition gave the impression she had all the time in the world.
Crucially, the counselling wasn't self-referential. She focused on the caller's story, not her own struggles with her disability. She offered hope, at a time when Diana had only just visited Angola to publicise the horrors of landmines.
That's all forgotten. Despite being described as devastated by , many unfairly believe the worst of Heather. Indeed, even her agent has apparently told her that nothing she can do will make the public like her more.
Her name is mud, further sullied by Kate Moss the latest figure to join the anti-Heather camp who is said to be willing to testify in support of Sir Paul in the legal battle for his 825 million fortune.
Any attempts that Heather may make to play the victim card and to make her voice heard above that of her controlling, but idolised husband, will be in vain.
A friend who attended a children's charity function hosted by the couple claims how Paul demanded dinner, even though the event was soon to begin.
Afterwards, they were asked to talk to the children. Paul apparently refused. Heather was left to apologise and pick up the pieces.
Whatever the truth, these are the sort of stories that could be aired in court.
Others may speak up for her, say she's loyal and generous. Peter Hall, Australia's leading ethical investor, based here and in Sydney, shared our London office for two years.
"She was much more a giver than a taker," he recalls, "she was a good, courageous person." From Sydney, he decries her defilement, saying: "At times Britain seems very close to first century Rome."
The former model's gladiatorial treatment is not lost on her close friend, the author and counsellor Ben Noakes, who co-wrote her self-help book, Life Balance.
He is staggered at how her attributes have been overlooked.
"The portrayal of Heather is very one-sided," he says. "I've known Heather for about 10 years, since she presented a series of short films I produced for the BBC.
She rallied round and helped me when I over-expanded my television production company a few years ago and lost everything. And I mean she really helped me not just by being a loyal friend, but also by giving me practical support. She offered to pay all my bills until I was back on my feet again, and when I decided I wanted to change careers from television to writing, she helped me secure a publishing contract by offering to collaborate with me on my book.
"Other than Paul, I don't think anyone else was even aware of how much she was doing for me at that time: she just quietly got on with it. Her motivation was to help a friend, pure and simple. There aren't many people like that.
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The McCartneys' sorry saga, it would seem, is just the case of two highly ambitious and driven people who should never have married.
As a close friend of hers told me last week, "There are two sides to every story and the truth here is somewhere in the middle."
But will anyone be listening?
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