Dear, dear she must have done something really dreadful to upset all those good-living people in the fashion, music and journalism industries.

I am sorry to say that in our house the news that Heather Mills McCartney had once posed for pornographic pictures, and that some of them were reproduced in a newspaper last Sunday, elicited the question; "With or without the leg?" We are rather low.

But Heather Mills McCartney is rather high, these days. Whatever her sins, she is hardly the first woman . . . or man . . . to have made a marriage within the British aristocracy having survived a racy past. Au contraire, as we used to say at the Sunday Tribune. Having once been poor, young and very pretty is sure to rebound on a girl sooner or later. It's just that we find it hard to forgive a woman who has clawed her way up the social ladder with such spectacular success.

I seem to remember that Madonna posed for pornographic pictures even when she had become rich, as well as before, which shows a certain steadiness of purpose.

And many celebrities are said to have a past so shady that the tabloids cannot legally describe them, and even the broadsheets cannot have a little drool.

The type of risque photograph Heather Mills McCartney once posed for . . . and she was a topless model as well, which as we all know is completely different . . . has assumed the role once fulfilled by the compromising letter.

Somehow the respectable woman's life (all right, so maybe Heather was never that respectable, but frankly who cares? ) is ruined as soon as the villain bursts on stage with the faded love notes in his hand. I mean, did these people not watch The phrase young and foolish seems to have fallen out of fashion. Now we want our young to have always been young and savvy, young with a public relations officer, young and on Big Brother. I do not argue for pornography . . .

which is slavery, after all . . . but really it is surprising, and rather sinister, that all those pretty girls vanish forever once their porn careers are over. But then journalism isn't big on reunions either.

Now that so much of the pornographic world has leaked into mainstream culture; its fashion and make-up styles, its industrial relations practices, it will be interesting to see what damage the release of these old German pictures will do to Heather Mills McCartney. Goodness knows, she was a hate figure before.

She filled the hate figure position vacated by Camilla Parker Bowles on her marriage to You Know Who. Maybe it has something to do with people stupid enough to have three names.

The past is a dangerous place. On Thursday the Daily Mail's 'Connections' quiz printed head and shoulders shots of Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, Jackie Onassis, Anne Heche, Anna Chancellor and Robert De Niro. What, asked the Daily Mail, did these six superstars have in common. The answer, apparently, is that they all had gay fathers. This raises the question, just how good does our celebrity knowledge have to be? I have only read one biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (there we go again).

The book was by Sarah Bradford and called America's Queen. Jolly good it was too. Not counting the bibliography and index it was 593 pages long. Not once do I remember Bradford mentioning the possibility that Jack Bouvier was gay.

Perhaps he was. It would partially explain the phenomenally good taste demonstrated by both his daughters all their lives.

Of course, lots of people in the world have gay fathers, and still the world manages to turn. But how does theDaily Mail know that dead celebrities had gay fathers, all those years ago? Were they interviewing the dead celebrities' gay fathers and classmates at the high school prom? The information we get on celebrities now is reminiscent of that excellent film, Back To The Future. Put your hands over your eyes for what the McCartney camp digs up on Heather next.