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In the course of just one day, she was interviewed on two television stations and took part in a pair of well-advertised photo calls outside Parliament and in London's Oxford St - but Heather Mills insisted yesterday she was no self-publicist.
Mills McCartney, a campaigner for animal rights, said she only ever appeared on television in connection with a cause - in this case it involved a film of her taking part in a vegetarian activist's raid on a pig farm.
She was happy to answer questions about her divorce from Sir Paul McCartney, the issue of whether she had ever worn fur and claims she once impersonated a journalist with the same name.
Simultaneously, she was being implicitly criticised by police in her home town of Brighton over a "disproportionate" number of emergency calls.
Mills McCartney, who is already tipped to become the first contestant to be voted off the American talent show Dancing with the Stars, before it has even begun, told GMTV yesterday she had no interest in self-publicity. "Think about it. When do I ever go on TV, how many times in the last year? Once. I'm chased down the street day in, day out. I'm not a publicity-seeker.
"Try and think of one time in the last 14 years I've gone on TV to promote anything other than a cause."
Asked why she is so unpopular, she replied: "The reason people have such extreme feelings about me is because I speak out and I speak the truth and they don't like it.
"I'm not Mrs Switzerland - I'm not going to sit there and just allow this to happen," she said, referring to her campaign against "farrowing" cages used to house sows when they are giving birth and suckling.
Mills McCartney, who has been the focus of tabloid attention since her marriage and separation from Sir Paul, said she also has a new cause - changing Britain's privacy laws.
Following her marriage breakdown, she was the subject of allegations she once worked as a high class call girl and made pornographic films, while her claims to have once slept rough and that her former fiance was a gay MI6 agent have also been challenged.
She said: "Of course I have felt devastated and I have been horrified by certain people and what they have written. I now believe that this has happened to me so that I can change the privacy laws, just like I changed stuff in the European Parliament.
"I'm suing three newspapers at the moment. When I win, instead of making a two-line apology, they should be made to say, 'We apologise, we lied about what we wrote.' Then we will get proper journalism."
Mills McCartney has been accused of attempting to impersonate another Heather Mills, formerly a journalist with the Independent and the Observer, now working for Private Eye.
Mills McCartney, who lost a leg after being struck by a motorcyclist in 1993, tried to turn this claim on its head, countering: "There's this woman going round apparently called Heather Mills saying 'Heather's pretending to be me' and I'm like, excuse me?
"She's trying to say I was pretending I was her because I said I did journalism. I wrote for the New Statesman and I wrote as a columnist. I produced current affairs at the BBC. I'm not making anything up ... "
She also dismissed a recently published picture of her wearing a fur coat in the 1980s.
"Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney - everyone has worn fur coats in the past," she declared.
On BBC News 24, she spoke of her feelings for Sir Paul, whom she has been facing across a courtroom in their divorce battle over her share of his fortune and custody of their 3-year-old daughter Beatrice.
"I will never get over it. I will always love Paul. He is the father of my child but I just have to move on and deal with it and there is nothing I can do. I have never spoken badly about my husband. I never will - he is the father of my child."
But Mills McCartney said she was the victim of "huge powers" trying to destroy her. "I don't have that powerful system that he has. There are huge powers that create these things for reasons of their own.
"I have a daughter to protect and I don't want to speak badly about any of the parties involved."
Her television appearances followed newspaper coverage yesterday of a film she has made with the campaigning vegetarian group Viva, in which she accompanied activists on a clandestine night visit to a farm which was using farrowing crates.
Later, Mills McCartney went to the Houses of Parliament, where she delivered a giant Mother's Day card to Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, for delivery to Tony Blair, bearing the words: "No Happy Mother's Day for Britain's Pigs - Ban the Farrowing Crate".
Shortly afterwards, she delivered another card, with the words, "This is not just TORTURE - this is M&S TORTURE," to Marks and Spencer's in Oxford St. M&S has said it is phasing out the use of farrowing cages in its pork products.
While she was taking part in the photocalls, Chief Superintendent Kevin Moore, of Brighton and Hove Police, said police were spending a disproportionate amount of time dealing with emergency calls from Mills McCartney, who has a house in Hove.
There had been one 24-hour period in which she made four emergency calls, although police had found no grounds for further action. It has been suggested in the past that Mills McCartney has been the subject of death threats.
Although Moore stressed he did not believe she was "wasting police time", he said it was regrettable it took officers away from other duties.
"We are duty-bound to respond, but clearly people who make lots of calls to the police run the risk of being treated as the little boy who cried wolf. Officers who have attended previously to find there have been no grounds might not take any claims seriously, and that's the danger we face."
But he added: "I hope my officers treat each call as seriously as they would do for anyone else contacting the police."
A spokesman for Mills McCartney said: "She is a single mum who has been very nervous about all the things that have happened. She has been followed late at night by people she does not know. The danger is that she will not call police in future and something serious will happen. What is she supposed to do?"
- Independent
