McCartneys Together in Denial

Wed., Jun. 7, 2006 2:45 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

Paul McCartney and Heather Mills McCartney may be uncoupling, but they're still of one mind--or at least, their publicists are.

The Mrs.' rep shot down a report Wednesday that the estranged Beatle wife was awarded full custody of her and Paul McCartney's 2-year-old daughter, Beatrice.

Similarly, Team Paul McCartney branded the Extra scoop, dished up Tuesday, as "total rubbish," per People magazine.

Extra sourced its report to Michele Elyzabeth, who was identified as Mills-McCartney's publicist. "Michele is Heather's U.S.-based publicist and a friend of hers," the model and activist's U.K.-based publicist told People, "but I have absolutely no idea why she would have said this, as no decisions have been made about custody of Beatrice."

Last week, McCartney criticized an article in Britain's Hello magazine that also was said to have speculated on custody arrangements.

"I continue to be dismayed by inaccuracies in the media," McCartney wrote in a June 1 post on his official Website. "We both have agreed to work at all times with Beatrices [sic] best interest, but no decisions have been made yet."

McCartney and Mills-McCartney, who wed in 2002, announced they were separating on May 17. They termed the parting "amicable." The couple has one child.

Bad to nasty press is nothing new for McCartney and Mills-McCartney. Long before their split, Mills-McCartney's own Website built a "Facts & Fiction" page to address such topics as "Heather is a publicity seeker" and "Heather is a gold digger and married Paul for his money."

The last notion is so pervasive that the moneyed former Beatle, worth an estimated $1.5 billion, has been moved to dismiss it, most recently at the time of the separation. "There is not an ounce of truth in this," he wrote on his Website.

With Mills-McCartney now on the outs with McCartney, Lucy Mangan of the London Guardian wrote Wednesday that things likely will only get worse, headline-wise, for the commoner.

Exhibit A: The U.K. Sun's recent expos? on "Heather's Porn Pics," featuring photos of a partially nude, pre-McCartney Mills from, as the tab put it, a "German hard-core porn book in 1988."

Noting that "many of the images are too explicit to print in a family newspaper," the Sun settled for publishing about 20 of them on its Website. "Oil you need is love" began one caption.

Mills-McCartney responded to the coverage, per reports, with a letter to the Sun in which she defended the book, Die Freuden Der Liebe (aka, The Joys of the Love), as a "lover's guide to a caring relationship."

"The photo shoot was not pornographic or for the purposes of gratification of the viewer," the letter said, according to reports.

In response, the Sun found its own expert who essentially said the paper was right, and Mills-McCartney was wrong in their porn assessments. "You can't really argue that showing an erect manhood and other graphic acts is necessary when it comes to educating people about sex," Robert Page, of the instructional U.K. video series The Lovers' Guide, said in the newspaper.

In less disputable news, McCartney, who recorded "When I'm 64," when the then-Mop Top was in his 20s, will turn 64 on June 18. He's said to have no specific birthday plans.