Heather Mills outside court today. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
Last week was all about Ashley Dupre, the young lady who was a friend to former (as from today) New York governor Eliot Spitzer for a mere $1000 an hour. (She also, incidentally, used to be friends with Charlie Sheen for a miserly 15,000 euros a night, but I'd like to meet a young woman called Ashley who hasn't been friends with our Charlie.)
Anyway, while this might have ruined Eliot's St Patrick's Day celebrations, it all turned out for the good for Ashley, whose song, What We Want, became quite the hit on her MySpace page. And just as Eliot showed little reticence in trotting his blameless wife out to all of his miserable little press conferences admitting that, yes, he is a priapic old hypocrite, so Ashley showed a similar lack of interest in anonymity, taking it upon herself to call up the New York Times to say hi and putting up happy little messages of stoicism on said MySpace page.
Which brings us, naturally, to Heather Mills McCartney. Not, of course, that Heather is anything like a prostitute. In fact, if anyone was looking for a description got the erstwhile Mrs McCartney, she offered one herself outside the court, describing herself as "always a campaigning girl." And God knows campaigning for your ex-husband's millions is a campaign worth leading.
Anyway, it transpired this lunchtime that Ms Mills is to receive £24.3million in a divorce settlement from Paul, a man who is no doubt spending this afternoon reflecting on the truism that just because a woman looks like your dead wife, doesn't mean she will turn out to be like your dead wife. Now, £24.3million is a bit less than the £125 million Heather sought but is not, I think we can all agree, small change for a couple years of marriage.
Heather has complained, loudly and publicly, about the way she has been vilified since she first started hanging about with Saint Paul. This is no doubt true. She has also complained that she has been unfairly characterised as a gold digger. Heather could help herself in this regard by not digging for his gold quite so shamelessly. Nobody needs £24.3 million, let alone £125 million. Heather justifies this by saying that she needs such money for their daughter and her own protection. In regards to the former, it's unlikely that Paul was ever just going to abandon her; in regards to the latter, Heather wouldn't need protection if she stopped acting in a way that made the public less than fond of her.
If a wife gave up her career for her husband, bore his children, raised them, looked after him and his home for 25 years so he could pursue his own career only for him to abandon her when she's 50 so he can run off with his 22 year old secretary (or Ashley) then, yes, she should be given a healthy portion of her husband's money and he should look after her financially in the manner he would have if he hadn't decided to channel his midlife crisis into behaving like a priapic (word of the day) cliché.
When a woman marries a wealthy older man who made a tonne of money before she was born, hangs around for a few years and then flees then, no, she does not deserve his money, and nor, you would think, would any right thinking 21st century woman want to go after it. Taking money for sleeping with a man sets feminism back by about 25 years. At least Ashley's was openly (well, as openly as she can) acknowledging what the state of play was; Heather's behaviour from start to end has been a gender embarrassment.
In any case, should Heather feel the financial pinch of falling a little short of her desired £125million, maybe she could give Eliot Spitzer a call. I bet he's sleeping alone in the guestroom these days.
