Can anyone explain to me why Paul McCartney isn’t in the divorce courts asking for money from his estranged wife Heather Mills?

All I can see on display is the new British tradition that insists women should be able to trouser vast sacks of moolah from former husbands, apparently regardless of what their contribution to the marriage might have been. By my reckoning, Heather owes Paul £2.2m – a figure I worked out on the back of a beer mat last night down the pub, in the company of several misogynists.

What moral reasons we mused could there be for Paul, or any man in a similar position, paying his ex a single penny? Heather’s principal contribution to the marriage seems to have consisted of her allowing the former Beatle access to her undoubtedly fragrant body and wonderfully fertile imagination. If you think this benediction, which some of us would be willing to forgo, is worth even the 10m quid that Paul is reportedly offering, then to my mind you are espousing a very strange moral system.

Almost all Paul’s estimated £800m wealth was made before Heather appeared on the scene; it accrued at a time when his view of womankind was of the sweet and naive “I wanna hold your hand” variety, rather than his current, more nuanced, “I wanna rip your throat out” position. But such is love, I suppose. My point is simply that Heather contributed little or nothing to her husband’s material wealth, other than to spend it. What precisely did she sacrifice other than the sacrifice implicit in producing a daughter? Her stock as a Blue Square Conference league model and all-purpose done-little celeb – other than a bit of work here and there on prosthetics – has been massively enhanced by her marriage. And, as a consequence, so too has her earning power.

We are interested in her solely because of her previously close association with a respected national institution; merely the appendage of the name McCartney has enabled her to become an almost daily fixture in our lives, as ubiquitous as any of those other mannequins with a delusional high opinion of themselves – Posh, Jordan and so on.

Mills was a model, a job that tends to be confined to the under-30s. Even by the time of her wedding to Paul she was – as they say, rather cruelly – “on the turn”. Without Paul, it is doubtful she would have been given the time of day on even the lowliest chat show.

Before her marriage to a very famous person she existed as one of those strange and crepuscular creatures yapping away at the edge of our collective eyesight, desperate to make an impression.

Should she be rewarded with 10m quid or even more because she snared a former Beatle, has had their child and think she’s under threat from the paparazzi? Should her income enable her to live in the manner to which she was accustomed while with McCartney, or the manner to which she was accustomed four years previously? I have never understood the vagaries of our legal system but I and my misogynist mates reckon she requires a modest sum to help to look after their child, and that’s it. I reckon about £8,000 a year should do the trick.

Heather is an easy target – but this fact should not deter us from lobbing a hand grenade in her direction every so often. The point at issue, though, is much broader: the law suggests that she has a “natural” right to a slice of her exhusband’s fortune; even Paul has resigned himself to this. And yet what moral justification is there for such a claim? I dare say Mr Justice Bennett, with his long and noble legal training, will put us right on this.

Women who smoke during the first five months of pregnancy do not harm their babies at all – and if they smoke during the latter stages of pregnancy the effect upon their unborn child is “negligible”, provided they eat decent food.

This stuff comes from a recent survey – not from the Capstan Full Strength Research Unit, but the London School of Economics.

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