Money couldn’t buy them love
![Paul and Heather Mills McCartney
(Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)](https://thumb.spokesman.com/F8GeJ0PpEstplcEA_mjbJY_OF34=/400x0/media.spokesman.com/photos/2006/05/18/18PEO_McCartney_05-18-2006_FA7J98M.jpg)
When he’s 64, Paul McCartney may be on a long and winding road – through the courts, in one of Britain’s most expensive divorce cases.
With Wednesday’s announcement that the former Beatle and his second wife, Heather Mills McCartney, have separated following four years of marriage, speculation immediately turned to the financial aspects.
The couple did not have a prenuptial agreement, Mills McCartney, 38, said in a Vanity Affair interview in 2002.
Her relatively young age and the fact that they have a child, combined with McCartney’s “staggering” wealth – estimated at $1.5 billion – have the potential to push the settlement into the stratosphere, said Patricia Hollings, a London divorce specialist.
“It’s been suggested that she married me for the money, and there is not an ounce of truth in this,” McCartney, who turns 64 next month, said in a posting on his Web site.
“She is a very generous person who spends most of her time trying to help others in greater need than herself.”
The couple issued a joint statement Wednesday insisting their split was friendly, but claiming that intrusions by the media made it difficult to sustain their relationship.
So will this one boomerang?
On a happier note, Nicole Kidman is engaged to country singer Keith Urban.
Kidman and Urban, both 38 and raised in Australia, were first seen together last year. She and Tom Cruise divorced in 2001 after 10 years.
Ray of hope
Singer Sheryl Crow gave her first public performance Tuesday after undergoing breast cancer surgery in February.
Playing at a session for TV advertisers, Crow stopped the song “Soak Up the Sun” and started again after flubbing the lyrics.
“I knew it last night,” she said. “I think the radiation went to my brain.”
Chef’s new small fry
Soul singer Isaac Hayes and his wife are the parents of a baby boy.
Nana Kwadjo Hayes was born April 10, Hayes’ spokesman said. In the Ghanaian language, Nana means “King,” and Kwadjo means “boy born on Monday.”
Hayes, best known for 1971’s “Theme From Shaft,” voiced the character Chef on TV’s “South Park” until recently quitting over the show’s satires of his faith, Scientology.
She had it backwards – not
Britney Spears and her 8-month old son, Sean Preston, are back in the news after photographs surfaced of her driving her convertible Mini Cooper with him sitting in a car seat facing forward – not backwards, as called for by federal safety guidelines.
Spears, pregnant with her second child, previously was spotted driving with her son in her lap during what she said was an attempt to flee from photographers.
“(S)he’s done more for child safety-seat awareness than anyone else in California,” a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.
The birthday bunch
Actor Robert Morse is 75. Actor Dwayne Hickman (“The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”) is 72. Country singer George Strait is 54. Actor Chow Yun-Fat (“The Replacement Killers”) is 51. Comedian Tina Fey (“Saturday Night Live”) is 36. Musician Jack Johnson is 31.