WHILE Paul McCartney seems to enjoy helping himself to a new single American lady on a regular basis, his very estranged wife Heather Mills keeps on shooting her mouth off.

Her latest rant - which was restrained, by her standards - came last week in Dublin, where she was made an honorary patron of the august Philosophical Society at Trinity College. Past patrons include Al Pacino, Helen Mirren and Archbishop Desmond Tutu . . . you can judge for yourself how the super-erratic Ms. Mills fits with such prominent company.

Anyway, according to media reports she spoke for some 90 minutes, and received several rounds of applause. She didn't speak directly of the implosion of her marriage to Sir Paul, but she had plenty to say about the coverage she receives in the media, which in the U.K. treats her "worse than a pedophile or a murderer," she says.

She was none too pleased with the shutterbugs who attended her speech at Trinity, at one point shooing them away when they kept snapping.

"Have you still not got your photographs yet? Can we stop now?" she demanded. The photogs slinked away, much to the delight of the audience.

How does she deal with such awful pests? "The only way I manage to cope is by having a sense of humor," she said. We doubt Sir Paul thinks she's such a barrel of laughs!

Heather also railed against rich folk, and said she befriended them only as a way to further her crusade to make the world a better place.

"Sadly, you have to mix at a certain level of people to raise the level of funds you need to bring about the greater good," she said.

"These people who have lots of money, they're either snobby or they're stingy. If you have lots of money, you have to be stingy - because why would you want that amount of money?" (Hmmm . . . isn't she holding out for a megabucks payout from McCartney? But we digress.)

Mills' latest trip to Ireland was certainly in stark contrast to her last time in the Emerald Isle. It was in June of 2002 that she wed McCartney at the posh Castle Leslie in Glaslough, Co. Monaghan, with the world's media right there to record the event. She didn't seem to mind posing for an endless round of paparazzi photos then.