Heather Mills: About that coat

Vigorous anti-fur campaigner Heather Mills has had some explaining to do following the publication of old photos of her wearing a mink coat - although it must be a nice change for her to have clothed pictures of her being young and indiscreet for a change.

It was in the past, she explains:

"The coat belonged to my mother, who had sadly died just a few days earlier and I wore it because it made me feel close to her," she said.

Now, that makes a certain amount of sense, and it would be a hard-faced, hard-hearted, hard-liner who might object to a bereaved person wearing a dead parent's coat, fur or not. But then, of course, Heather just goes too far:

"I am not ashamed I wore it… I was extremely young and was not aware of the issues surrounding the fur trade."

Heather's mother died in 1989. Heather was born in 1968.

A twenty-one year-old "too young" to be aware of the "issues surrounding the fur trade"? What - did you live for the first twenty years of your life in a distant part of France without phoneline or access to newspapers? How could you miss "issues surrounding the fur trade" growing up in the 1980s?

Meanwhile, Heather has been popping up on US Television to deny that the tabloid coverage is getting her down:

Speaking on ABC's Good Morning America show today about the media interest in her, she said that she does not believe "the public in general, whatever country it is, are that stupid to believe all the incontinent rubbish that comes out of tabloids' mouths".

"It's just so ridiculous that you've just got to laugh at it," she added.

So ridiculous, all you can do is laugh. Or, erm, instruct lawyers and threaten legal action.

It will be interesting to see Mills attempting to prove the News of the World and Sun coverage of her life reduces her standing in the eyes of the average person while, simultaneously telling US TV that the average person doesn't believe a word of it.