Heather Mills

Heather Anne Mills (born 12 January 1968) is an English former model, businesswoman and animal rights activist.

During Heather's stated period of homelessness, her school records indicated that she and Fiona were both enrolled at Usworth comprehensive in Tyne and Wear until April 1983, and at Hydeburn Comprehensive, in Balham, on 6 June that year, where they both stayed until 2 July 1984.

Heather remembered that a teacher at the Hydeburn once said, "there's no hope for her at all", and that she left school with no academic qualifications.

In the same year, her father had another daughter, Claire Mills, with a new partner.

Mills worked for a croissant shop, but was sacked, and vowed "never to work for anyone else again".

Alfie Karmal, the son of a Palestinian father and Greek mother, was ten years older than Mills when they met in 1986.

Karmal bought her new clothes and Cartier jewellery, and paid for cosmetic surgery to her breasts.

Karmal, who had moved into the computer industry, set up a model agency for her, ExSell Management, although it was unsuccessful.

In 1987, Mills went to live in Paris, telling Karmal that a cosmetics company had given her a modelling contract, but instead she became the mistress of millionaire Lebanese businessman George Kazan for two years and took part in a nude photo session for a stills-only German sex education manual called Die Freuden der Liebe (The Joys of Love).

After returning to London, Mills asked Karmal to marry her.

Mills first came to public attention in 1993 when she was a model and was involved in a traffic collision with a police motorcycle in London.

The accident resulted in the amputation of her left leg below the knee, but she continued to model using a prosthetic limb and later sold her story to the tabloid journal News of the World.

She wrote in her 1995 autobiography that the owner of a jewellery shop in Clapham gave her a job on Saturdays, but Jim Guy, the owner of Penrose Jewellers, later stated: "Everything she wrote about me was lies, I never gave her a job; she just hung around and made tea. She told me her father was dead. The only thing that was true was she nicked stuff from the shop," which Guy said was worth £20,000.

Heather admitted that she had stolen some gold chains and sold them to buy a moped, and when Guy reported the theft, she was put on probation.

She began a relationship with Paul McCartney in 2000.

They married in June 2002 and Mills gave birth to Beatrice Milly McCartney on 28 October 2003.

She visited Usworth Comprehensive in 2003, as guest of honour at a prize-giving event, and to support the school against plans for its closure.

Heather later wrote that, when she was eight years old, she and her next-door neighbour were kidnapped and sexually assaulted by a swimming pool attendant.

But her neighbour, Margaret Ambler, alleged that Heather's story was "nothing what she made it out to be", that Heather was never a victim, and the pool attendant did not commit suicide, as she had written.

Although having received a letter from Heather offering £10,000 to stop a court case, Ambler complained that the story had caused her deep discomfort by bringing the incident to national attention, so she sued for breach of privacy, accepting an out-of-court settlement of £5,000 in compensation and £54,000 legal costs.

Beatrice left home when Heather was nine years old, to live with Crossroads actor Charles Stapley, which left her, her older brother Shane, and her younger sister Fiona, in the care of their father John.

Heather once said that John threw Shane against a window for making a mess on the carpet with crayons; the window broke and Shane had to be taken to hospital, where John explained that the boy had fallen on some glass in the garden.

Fiona said: "Our family were always short of money and our father demanded that we find food and clothes so we turned to shoplifting, learnt to hide from the bailiffs and became experts at domestic duties. I'm not ashamed to say that we were forced to steal because when you are a young child, you'd rather do that than face a beating from your father."

John disputed his daughters' allegations that he was violent towards them, later releasing home movies of family holidays in Wales, showing Mills playing happily.

When Heather's father was jailed for 18 months after being convicted of fraud, she left home with her sister Fiona to live with their mother and her partner in Clapham, south London.

Shane went to Brighton to live with his paternal grandparents.

Heather later wrote that at the age of 15, she ran away to join a funfair, and lived in a cardboard box under Waterloo station for four months, although Stapley denied this by saying that she occasionally left home at weekends to travel with a young man who worked for a funfair in London.

They separated in 2006, and finalised their divorce in 2008.

After her marriage to McCartney, Mills became involved in animal rights advocacy and as of 2012 is a patron of Viva! (Vegetarians' International Voice for Animals) and the Vegetarian and Vegan Foundation.

She is also vice-president of the Limbless Association.

Mills was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, to John 'Mark' Francis Mills, a former British paratrooper, and his wife, Beatrice Mary (née Finlay) Mills, who was the daughter of a colonel in the British Army.

John was adopted at the age of seven and grew up in Brighton, where his adoptive parents had a grocery shop.

His adoptive father also worked as a mechanic for a Grand Prix racing team.

Beatrice was born in India during World War II, and was educated at English boarding schools.

John and Beatrice met at Newcastle University, and were married against the wishes of her father, who did not attend the wedding and only saw his daughter once more before he died.

Beatrice spoke several languages and played the piano, while Mark played banjo and guitar, liked photography (winning an Evening Standard award) and took part in numerous sports.

He was very fond of animals (working for the RSPCA for a time), and Heather remembered her family always having a dog and a cat, as well as once having a pet goose and a white nanny goat that was allowed to roam the house owned by Mark's parents in Libanus, near Brecon.

The Mills family spent their holidays in Libanus, and also lived there for a time.

When Heather was six years old, the family moved north to Alnwick, in Northumberland, but relocated shortly afterwards to a block of flats in Washington, Tyne and Wear, and then on to Cockshott Farm, in Rothbury, Northumberland.

Heather attended Usworth Grange Primary school, and then Usworth Comprehensive School in Washington.