As Heather Mills is eager to acknowledge, if you take away the millionaire-marrying, the self-promoting, the instructional German pornography and the saying 'paedophile' in a funny voice, all Heather Mills has done for 20 years is charity.
And that's not going to stop now, even though all those bulge-eyed, finger-swiping TV outbursts from a couple of weeks back have left Heather Mills with about as much credibility as a charity spokesperson as, say, Jade Goody or Krang from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Anyway, Heather Mills' latest bit of charity work is a set of billboards for militant vegetarian organisation Viva, which is claiming that climate change is such a problem because you eat sausages now and again. Oh, and another billboard where Heather Mills blames the meat industry for her leg amputation. We think – we haven't quite worked that one out yet.
The world is full of animal rights campaigners, from the three placard-waving men who try to make you feel guilty about going on a ferry from Dover because sometimes animals go on the boat too to the swathes of violent anti-animal testing campaigners to Sadie Frost, who keeps threatening to get her mimsy out if you don't stop eating meat right now.
And then there's Heather Mills – a woman whose recent charity work has included work for the Adopt-A-Landmine group, the Campaign For Pointing At Some Pigs and a new drive that seems to involve saying the world 'paedophile' in a high-pitched funny clown's voice on breakfast television every now and again.
But now Heather Mills has put her name to a new charity effort – Viva's Hot! campaign – which blames meat for everything from global warming to a loss of biodiversity to deforestation to acid rain to superbugs. Serious stuff indeed, but how has Viva ensured that people will ditch meat for vegetables and other assorted Pot Noodley meat substitutes? By getting Heather Mills to look all sweaty and slapping the picture on a billboard next to the slogan:
"Hey Meaty, you're making me so hot!"
Clever stuff, and Heather Mills seems intent to push the point home, telling the few people left who don't instinctively clamp their hands over their ears and shout "shutupshutupshutup" whenever they hear her voice that:
"I became a vegetarian for health reasons. Then I found out about the awful animal abuse in factory farms and dairy herds and became a vegan. The easiest and most effective way of cutting our contribution is to change our diet and go vegan. It is that simple."
Going vegan is also the easiest way to look a bit pasty and weak, as well as the easiest way to make sure that people are too scared to ever invite you round for dinner again, but that's beside the point because there's another Heather Mills Viva billboard around. And this one makes the livestock/ global warming point by saying:
"You haven't get a leg to stand on!"
Do you see? Because Heather Mills doesn't have a leg to stand on, either! That's so, um, disconcerting. Perhaps Heather Mills thinks that the best way to get people to throw away their bacon is to mock her own afflictions. And who knows – it might. For all we know Heather Mills cracking wise about her one leg might make for the most successful charity campaign ever. In fact, we sort of hope it does, because Heather Mills is brimming with other potential self-deprecating charity slogans if this one works.
Cross your fingers really hard and perhaps in the future you'll see Heather Mills advertising a Viva vegetable-growing drive with the catchphrase "I'm digging for spuds as well as gold!" or "Don't eat meat, eat a German bloke's wobbly red jelly knob. Or eat some cream! Off my tits!"
Yes. Both of those would work.
DD garcia says
Its pretty amazing that Viva is stupid enough to use Heather Mills as a spokesperson — I mean they are pretty ridiculous to begin with but she just seems to drive home the point. Vegans are whacky and need to some meat in order to start thinking straight. I especially love the “I’m digging for spuds as well as gold”, its perfect.