Paul Thomas: When I find myself in times of trouble ...

Oscar Wilde reckoned you'd have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell (in Charles Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop) without laughing.

I recalled these words when absorbing Heather Mills' claim that she had to crawl to the toilet when nature called in the wee small hours because her estranged husband Sir Paul McCartney, the former Beatle, wouldn't let her keep a potty under the marital bed.

(For those not fully acquainted with the background to their break-up, which has lifted the lid on a seething mutual hatred straight out of a Jacobean revenge tragedy, Ms Mills some time ago lost a leg in a road accident and wears a prosthetic device when not tucked up in bed or en route to the en suite.)

Some might think it heartless to laugh at the thought of a handicapped person reduced to this indignity but I'm with Oscar here.

It's all about context. There'd be nothing remotely funny if Mills was Mrs Joe Blow, a housewife or working mother having to cope with a missing limb on top of the usual family dramas and money worries.

But Mills' circumstances were at the opposite extreme. She was one of the most envied women in the world, a feisty but not noticeably talented, attractive but hardly glamorous opportunist who lucked into marriage with a fabulously rich and reasonably well-preserved (courtesy of 30 years of vegetarianism and what looks like a little plastic surgery and too much hair dye) living legend.

Yet according to leaked court documents and those loquacious but anonymous friends who drip-feed titbits to the tabloids, the grim reality of this fairy tale was humiliation and abuse culminating in her having to crawl on her belly like a reptile whenever she had to relieve herself after lights-out.

The other pertinent aspect is McCartney's public image. Ever since he bounded into the spotlight in the early 1960s, McCartney has basked in public and media approval. He was every mother's son, the boy next door with the choirboy looks and Midas touch.

Other rock stars succumbed to drug addiction or generally made spectacles of themselves; McCartney dabbled just enough to gain some street cred.

Others cranked up the volume or disappeared down musical cul-de-sacs in doomed attempts to retain their edge; McCartney just carried on making music the world sang along to.

Others careered from one gold-digging bimbo to another; McCartney was happily married to a strong-minded and talented woman. Unlike Mick Jagger, he continued recording and performing without giving the impression that the whole gig was about defying the built-in obsolescence that sustains popular music.

But after almost 50 years of being doted on by females of all ages, he's now being portrayed as every woman's second-worst nightmare: a wife-beater, a mean-spirited domestic tyrant.

I should confess that I was never a McCartney fan. He always came across as slightly unctuous, an impression powerfully reinforced by the syrupy sentimentality of his output. There's no denying that he had a talent bordering on genius for melody and an acute instinct for shifting popular tastes, but his most celebrated and lucrative work - the likes of Yesterday, Hey Jude and Let It Be - veered dangerously close to muzak.

His rivalry with John Lennon mirrored the division among Beatles fans: you were either a John person or a Paul person. John was abrasive, experimental, and opinionated; Paul was winsome, mainstream, bland.

In fact they had rather more in common than it suited them or the media to acknowledge. Lennon's mammoth hit Imagine is as soppy, both lyrically and musically, and as calculated as anything McCartney ever produced; and Paul's 29-year marriage to Linda Eastman closely resembled John's relationship with Yoko Ono.

Both adopted their wives' opinions and attitudes without first bothering to weed out the daft bits; both embarked on extended collaborations with their wives, untroubled by fans' strenuous opposition or the ladies' conspicuous lack of musical ability.

Now they have something else in common: the accusation of spouse abuse. In her account of life with Lennon, his first wife, Cynthia, detailed abusive behaviour up to and including physical violence.

Of course it may be that Mills' allegations are entirely baseless, just a tactic in a no-holds-barred money-grab. (What's a little character assassination when the stakes are this high: McCartney's net worth is in the $2.5 billion ballpark).

But even if that turns out to be the case, it seems unlikely that McCartney's butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth persona can survive this airing of dirty laundry.

The bell might also have tolled for another pop culture icon. In the clamour surrounding Madonna's adoption of a Malawian boy (you'd think he'd been packed off to an orphanage rather than rescued from one), it seems to have been overlooked that for virtually the first time in her career, the trendsetter has been reduced to being a follower of fashion.

Adopting little Africans is Angelina Jolie's baby, so to speak. After two decades of re-inventing herself to stay ahead of the curve, Madonna has ended up as just another wannabe.