How Heather Mills propositioned her toyboy on a train: ALISON BOSHOFF reveals the eye-popping story behind Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife, 53, and her 36-year-old Home Counties 'fiancé'
No one could accuse Heather Mills of a lack of nerve. The former glamour model, amputee, ex-wife of Sir Paul McCartney and charity campaigner clearly has buckets of bravery — and some to spare.
She famously tipped a jug of water over the formidable 'Steel Magnolia' lawyer Fiona Shackleton while wrangling over her divorce from the former Beatle in the High Court in 2008.
She lost her prosthetic leg while scuffling with security in New York over the use of fur in fashion in 2005.
And more recently, she has thrown herself down snowy mountains to achieve a disabled world skiing record in 2015. Her coach Christoph Pruller observed: 'She has no fear.'
This is just as well as, following her brief, calamitous marriage to McCartney, she is preparing to take another bold plunge into matrimony.
Just before Christmas, she exchanged rings with boyfriend Mike Dickman.
Heather Mills, 53, exchanged rings with boyfriend Mike Dickman, 36, just before Christmas. He is head of marketing for GFinity, a company which specialises in competitive gaming, and which last year reported an operating loss of more than £5m, and has been working on tie-ups with blue-chip firms such as Cadbury and Samsung. (Pictured together in November 2019)
He is 36 to her 53, and they have been dating only since the spring of 2019, yet she calls him 'the love of my life'.
A gold 'promise band' is clearly visible in pictures posted to his Instagram this week, and friends have been offering their congratulations to the happy couple, who are in Dubai, where Ms Mills is promoting her vegan food range.
For her birthday earlier this week, he hired a boat launch, festooned with balloons. She wrote: 'What better way to spend my birthday than with the love of my life.'
You might imagine that Mills, who received more than £23 million in cash and assets in her divorce in 2008, would be wary of remarrying.
Particularly to a far younger man who, we can reveal, is described as a 'ladies man who felt he would never marry' by a long-term friend and business partner and one whose financial success — as we shall see — does not mirror her own.
However, it seems Heather Mills's romantic story has another chapter to run, one in which she finds love with a rather posh young man who counts members of the Made In Chelsea crowd as his closest friends.
The pair have been dating only since the spring of 2019, yet Mills calls him 'the love of my life'. Mike was living in Fulham, West London, when his paths crossed with Heather on a train from Kent to the capital. A source says he was stunned by her none-too-subtle come-on, delivered when they were sitting opposite each other
Some mystery surrounds the question of whether this exchange of rings is an official engagement — one source says it's more a case of being 'engaged to be engaged.'
For those keeping count, this is Heather's sixth engagement.
She once said every man she had ever made love with had asked her to marry them within the week.
Before Paul McCartney, now 78, she was engaged to documentary-maker Chris Terrill, media executive Marcus Stapleton and bond dealer Raffaele Mincione.
Her first marriage, aged 21, was to businessman Alfie Karmal, her 'first proper boyfriend', but the union lasted only two years.
Karmal later told an interviewer: 'She told me so many fibs that if she'd said it was raining, I would have checked.'
Poor Chris Terrill was planning their wedding to her when she dumped him and flew to the U.S. to pursue a romance with Sir Paul McCartney, whom she had met at an awards ceremony.
Some mystery surrounds the question of whether this exchange of rings is an official engagement — one source says it's more a case of being 'engaged to be engaged.' For those keeping count, this is Heather's sixth engagement
So who is her latest fiancé? Mike Dickman is the eldest son of a respectable retired insurance executive, who is a leading light at the local golf club.
Mike Dickman has had a most comfortable start in life by contrast to Heather, who told in her autobiography of leaving home as a teenager and sleeping rough, and of her ordeal at the hands of a violent, abusive father.
Mike's parents, Michael and Margaret, live in one of the nicest roads in Sevenoaks, which is itself a byword for a certain kind of moneyed middle-class lifestyle.
Educated at Sevenoaks School, where day fees are £24,000 a year, Mike was in the first team for football, cricket and golf.
He went on to study classics at Durham University — by chance only 15 miles away from Newcastle, where his fiancée was raised.
Having achieved a 2:1 degree, he moved down to London where he worked for Ernst & Young.
He is now head of marketing for GFinity, a company which specialises in competitive gaming, and which last year reported an operating loss of more than £5 million, and has been working on tie-ups with blue-chip firms such as Cadbury and Samsung.
Mike was living in Fulham, West London, when his paths crossed with Ms Mills on a train from Kent to the capital.
A source says he was stunned by her none-too-subtle come-on, delivered when they were sitting opposite each other.
It was April 2019 and Dickman had enjoyed a boozy lunch with his parents and brother, Max.
Returning home, he took a seat across the table from Mills and her daughter, Beatrice, now 17.
Heather split from Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney in 2006, after four years of marriage and the birth of daughter Beatrice. (Mills is pictured with him in 2003)
As they arrived in London, Mills passed Dickman her business card and told him, out of her daughter's earshot: 'I think you're hot — email me.'
For sure, Heather Mills has always had sexual confidence.
Only four years ago, she said: 'I'm very sexy. If I see a hot man, I know I can have him. I might not want him, but I can have him.'
Dickman got in touch, after telling friends that the train encounter had been 'highly surreal' and adding: 'You won't believe it.'
By the end of the month, Heather was spotted at Lola's cupcakes at St Pancras station, canoodling with her new love interest.
An eyewitness said: 'They were eating cupcakes and kissing.'
A friend of Dickman's says: 'In the summer of 2019, Mike started telling people he was in a relationship with Heather. It seems they arranged to meet and found they really hit it off. He said: 'No one is more surprised than I am.' '
There is surprise, too, among Heather's friends that she would entertain another marriage.
She said recently she has 'no interest whatsoever' in getting hitched, adding: 'I believe in love but I only know one happy marriage among my friends. So it's not for me. Never again.'
Heather split from Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney in 2006, after four years of marriage and the birth of daughter Beatrice. Sir Paul is now married to U.S. businesswoman Nancy Shevell, 61.
Heather asked for £125 million in the divorce, but a High Court judge awarded her just a fifth of that sum — £24.3 million which she said she was 'very, very pleased with'. She was also awarded £35,000 per annum, for a nanny and school fees for Beatrice.
Mr Justice Bennett labelled Heather a 'less than impressive witness', who had exaggerated the extent of her wealth before she met the former Beatle.
After the split, Heather was accused of being a 'gold digger' who only married Sir Paul for his money — which she denied, saying in a 2010 interview: 'This is so far removed from who I really am.'
A pal of Mills agrees. 'She comes across very badly on television but she has mellowed with age and is very driven and very busy.'
Indeed, Mills set about her mission to promote veganism, animal rights, to clear landmines and to support amputees with vigour.
Mills lost a leg after she was hit by a police motorcyclist on a 999 call in 1993, and has said that discovering veganism contributed to her 'miraculous recovery'. She has sought to become the UK's 'vegan queen' — a path which, surely coincidentally, pits her against Sir Paul's late first wife, Linda, whose vegetarian food remains a best-seller
Her website claims she has an 'innate ability' to 'conquer anything that falls in her path'.
It also says she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize aged 28. This, however, is impossible to verify since nominations are kept secret for 50 years.
Mills lost a leg after she was hit by a police motorcyclist on a 999 call in 1993, and has said that discovering veganism contributed to her 'miraculous recovery'.
Mills has sought to become the UK's 'vegan queen' — a path which, surely coincidentally, pits her against Sir Paul's late first wife, Linda, whose vegetarian food remains a best-seller.
In 2009, Mills bought a vegan food company — since renamed Vbites — and in 2019 opened the UK's biggest vegan food factory in Peterlee, Co Durham.
She was accused of aggressive business practices, with some saying she demanded stakes of up to 49 per cent in the start-ups she considered backing, in return for investments of only £50,000 to £250,000.
Mills countered that the companies she has backed were all in debt and required help.
As well as her vegan range, she is developing meat substitutes based on algae, which she calls the 'future of food'.
As for her future with Mike Dickman, a love of sport is one area they have in common. He is an ultra marathon runner who last year completed one in South Africa in under 11 hours.
Heather asked for £125m in the divorce from Sir Paul, but a High Court judge awarded her just a fifth of that sum — £24.3m which she said she was 'very, very pleased with'. (Above, the Beatle with his lawyer Fiona Shackleton leaving the High Court in March 2008
He's never married and has no children. A friend said: 'He is a charismatic young man and has lots of friends.'
Of course, Heather, at 53, is 17 years his senior. His father, incidentally, is 19 years older than Heather. Dickman senior firmly declined to comment on the romance at his £1.7 million house this week. 'I do not want to say anything at all,' he said.
The friend added: 'Mike has had a few serious romances before Heather, but he was living a fun bachelor life. He was good friends with Made In Chelsea's Olivia Bentley and Georgia Toffolo, and knowing famous people and being in with a showbiz crowd gave him a kick. His big dream has always been to be a film producer.
'The trouble is he has never had the time or the money to pursue it. He always had lots of projects on the go, but wasn't able to get things up and running because of money.'
Mike Dickman was listed at Companies House as the director of two companies, both in films. One, Ruby Entertainment Ltd, was set up in 2014 and dissolved in 2015. The other, Barnsbury Pictures Ltd, was set up in 2014 and he resigned in 2019.
His co-director in both is the Dutch film-maker Ate de Jong, a co-producer of the film Enigma which starred Kate Winslet.
Dickman's sole film credit is as co-producer on Love Is Thicker Than Water, starring Johnny Flynn and Juliet Stevenson.
De Jong, co-producer on that project, said this week: 'I liked Mike very much; still do, though we speak far less these days.
'I am a bit surprised by the news as he was always a ladies man who felt he would never find a woman to marry. I'm happy for him, if it works out.'
Certainly, in Heather, Mike has found a woman with an almost divine sense of self-belief.
In a TV interview in 2015, she dismissed The Beatles' music as 'a few cool songs in the 60s and 70s', and said she was more famous than McCartney.
She said: 'All I get is kids coming up to me. Half of them don't know who he is. That's why he's got to do songs with Rihanna and Kanye West, so people remember who he is.'