McCartney Divorce Battle Even Uglier
What's already in the public domain is scintillating and intense enough, but the mudslinging promises to get even worse in Paul McCartney's divorce battle.
Over the weekend, a report surfaced that there were tapes of McCartney admitting he abused his now-estranged wife, Heather Mills McCartney.
It was just the latest salvo in the battle for public sympathy, reports CBS News correspondent Rich Roth.
"All you need is divorce," Roth says, "to set the British press scrambling, now with claims and counter-claims that the former Beatle was a heartless, wife-beating drunk during his four year marriage — or that he wasn't, and that Mills has audio tapes to prove it — or she doesn't."
To one of McCartney's former public relations people, Geoff Baker, none of what's going on is much of a surprise.
"The public is not stupid," Baker observes. "They can see what's going on; they can see this is some kind of absurd ritualistic tar and feathering."
And, Roth says, it's covering both sides, with friends of Heather saying she'll claim he also abused his first wife, Linda, and friends of Paul saying he wasn't the perpetrator of violence in his marriage to Mills, but the victim.
Yet, in British courts, bad behavior in a marriage is almost never an issue deciding what most divorces are all about: what happens to the money.
Says family law lawyer Vanessa Lloyd-Platt, "Is conduct relevant in this country? No it's not, so anything she says about how she believes he has behaved toward her is completely irrelevant to the finances."
But, Roth points out, not at all irrelevant, according to the pulse-takers of public mood, to how the battle's perceived.
"It seems have turned people much more toward him," says Capital Radio disc jockey Johnny Vaughan, "because they simply don't believe McCartney's capable of this, so it's almost like the more strong the allegations, the more everyone just thinks how bad she is."
Though, Roth notes, it will no doubt get more complex.
This is like Shakespeare, says classical disc jockey Simon Bates: a drama filled with fame and vengeance.
"It's probably the best show biz story, I guess, well, since Richard Burton got married for the third time. But It's also a story that has a real depth to it, because it's about personal misery, one of the biggest superstars in the world. The only thing that would get better is if the queen decided to divorce the Duke of Edinburgh."
"With months before Paul and Heather decide, or a judge orders, how much of his fortune she'll get, public opinion is the only court in session," Roth concludes, "and the only issue on trial is image. But for a celebrity, that's priceless."