She called herself the most vilified woman that’s ever, ever been, which is untrue on two fronts – she isn’t and nobody ever said she was – but Heather Mills is certainly a lady who inspires more hate than love.

Of course that’s very one dimensional and what comedienne turned pop-therapist Pamela Connolly wanted to do on Channel 4’s Shrink Rap last week was show us the real Heather, warts and all – and boy are there some warts.

This was car crash television, which I accept is an unfortunate phrase to use in relation to a woman who lost a leg in an accident – but she truly is some piece of work.

Aided and abetted by Pamela – once the blond babe on Not the Nine O’Clock News before she became all serious – Heather spoke of the childhood from hell, the clinginess and desire to please which took her from one traumatic relationship to another.

That desire to please took her into modelling and even a sex guide video which she claimed as wrongly painted as soft porn; in fairness, most of the people who watched it probably made the same mistake. In almost any other case, you’d be feeling a new swell of sympathy for a woman who has been through so much and come out the other end – but not Heather.

It’s not just because she broke the golden rule – she dumped all over a Beatle, a living legend, the nicest man on earth – it’s that smug, superior expression that she has fixed to her face, so that even if she’s talking about her father walloping her mother with a chair, she seems like she’s talking about the plot of a bad movie, rather than her childhood.

And yet you have to have some admiration for a woman who has come through the loss of a leg, a very public marriage break-up and a vilification that would suggest she killed someone as opposed to split up from them.

She admits to Billy Connolly’s missus that she’s supremely confidence but that was rather like announcing that night will follow day – it was written all over her face.

She talked of a chaotic childhood after her mother left when she was nine, abandoning her and her siblings to an unpredictable and obsessive father who she clearly loathed.

The closest she gets to tears is when she describes her mother’s death at the age of only 47, after they were briefly reunited.
Exploring how this childhood has influenced Heather’s subsequent life, she talks about her sexuality and the power it has given her over men, her career as a glamour model and her ill-fated marriage to Macca.

“As much as those who didn’t know us want to dismiss it, those who were really around us know we were very, very in love. I was pursued for quite a few months. It was very flattering. How could you say no?” she asks.

She could of course have said no to some of the money which she insisted on as part of her highly public settlement – not least because she insisted she placed no value on the folding stuff in the first place.
She’s put it all into charitable trusts or bought property for her daughter. But mainly she’s just given it all away because she gets more joy from giving than receiving.

Tell that to Macca, mate.

This was sycophantic television at its best, but then again that’s probably what you get when you go to a shrink – someone who makes you feel good about yourself and who justifies your weaknesses as strengths in disguise.

This was mutual love between two women whose main claim to fame is that one was, and one still is, married to a famous man.

It would have been much better craic if they had Billy Connolly interviewing Paul McCartney.

For more, read page 18 of this week's Connacht Sentinel.