HEATHER Mills McCartney claimed she was close to suicide, compared herself to Princess Diana and the McCanns, and accused Sir Paul McCartney of stalling on their divorce settlement in dramatic TV interviews yesterday.

The estranged wife of Sir Paul, 65, pledged to campaign to change the press laws, and said she had received death threats and wondered whether she might be “revered” like Linda McCartney if the “death threats came true”.

Mills McCartney, 39, choked back tears and put her head in her hands while attacking the media for giving the same treatment as Diana, Princess of Wales.

The former model told ITV shows GMTV and This Morning she was campaigning to change media legislation and she had launched a petition to the European Parliament on the issue.

Mills McCartney, who is locked in a divorce battle with Sir Paul, accused a “certain corner” of spinning stories about her.

And she appeared to blame the former Beatle for the fact that her divorce has not yet been settled.

She told This Morning: “If it was down to me, it (the divorce) would happen immediately. But it’s not down to me, so I think you should ask Paul.”

Clutching a scrapbook con- taining what she said were newspaper apologies and evidence of aggressive paparazzi photo- graphers, she said: “They make up such lies. They’ve called me a whore, a gold-digger, a fantasist, a liar, the most unbelievably hurtful things, and I’ve stayed quiet for my daughter.

“But my daughter... we’ve had death threats, I’ve been close to suicide. I’m so upset about this . . . I’ve had worse press than a paedophile or a murderer and I’ve done nothing but charity for 20 years.”

Mills McCartney told This Morning: “He and Linda didn’t split up, she went through the same and then she was revered when she died. Maybe if the death threats came true and I was dead the same thing might happen to me.”

She claimed to have the backing of the Prime Minister for her campaign against tabloid newspapers, saying: “I spoke to Gordon Brown this morning and he thinks it’s a great idea.”

She added: “This is not just about me. It’s happened to me to push me to get the message out.”

A spokesman for the Prime Minister said he had agreed to look at the “points she was rais- ing . . . as he would with any such request.” Sir Paul’s spokesman declined to comment.