has launched a furious attack on "a certain corner" of
the tabloid press, claiming a hate campaign against her pushed her "close
to suicide".
Speaking on GMTV, the estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney compared her
treatment by the media to that suffered by
Kate McCann and Diana, Princess of
Wales.
Ms Mills, 39, who became highly emotional, broke down several times during the
20-minute interview. She denied being offered any money in her divorce
settlement with Sir Paul and said she was £1.5m in debt to her lawyers.
"I've had worse press than a paedophile or a murderer and I've done
nothing but charity for 20 years," she said. "They've called me a whore,
a gold digger, a fantasist, a liar, the most unbelievably hurtful things, and
I've stayed quiet for my daughter."
Ms Mills approached GMTV herself, asking to appear on its show after a article in The Sun on Tuesday which alleged that a
fireworks display at Ms Mills's daughter's fourth
birthday party inadvertently killed a neighbour's dog.
Brandishing a folder of negative press cuttings about her, she said she had
endured "18 months of abuse... and 4,400 articles". "I don't
want my daughter when she is 12 going on the internet and reading this totally
one-sided story."
She said she had received numerous death threats as a result of wildly
inaccurate press speculation about her break-up from Sir Paul, which police
warned her had spawned an "underground movement" against her.
"Who created those death threats? The media," she said. "A
certain part of the tabloid media created such a hate campaign against me; it
put my life and my daughter's life at risk. That's why I considered killing
myself, because I thought if I was dead, at least my daughter would be safe.
And that is the truth, and I've got nothing to lose."
When asked by the GMTV presenter Fiona Phillips about the exorbitant sums some
parts of the press had claimed she secured in her divorce settlement, Ms Mills
responded furiously. "I have been offered nothing, OK, nothing... How do
you know if I even want any money? I'm £1.5m in debt in lawyers' fees, and
that's as much as I can say or I go to jail, for telling the truth."
Ms Mills repeatedly dismissed reports that she was locked in negotiations with
Sir Paul over whether she could talk to the media. "It's rubbish! I could
sell my story right now. I'm trying to protect Paul and our daughter."
She said she was launching an online petition to force the European Parliament
into stricter regulation of a "specific portion" of the media.
"My plan is to change the law in the European Parliament and I will do
it," she said. "I need to get everybody to petition that they don't
want to be lied to any more by the press. They want their children to grow up
in a society where press is just and fair and the size of the lie they print is
the size of the apology they have to print."
Comparing her treatment by the press to that of Kate McCann and Diana, Princess
of Wales, she said: "Look what they're doing to the McCanns. The woman and
the poor father have lost their daughter. What are we doing as a nation? What
are we doing persecuting a woman that is devastated behind closed doors and
trying to hold it together, as I have for 18 months. What did the paparazzi do
to Diana? They chased her and they killed her."
Ms Mills, who lost her left leg after being hit by a police motorbike in 1993,
castigated the broadcaster Jonathan Ross for joking "She's such an effing liar, we're going to find out she's got two legs
instead of one" |
