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(CBS News) Paul McCartney and his estranged wife, Heather Mills McCartney, had their first meeting in months, in the midst of their nasty divorce battle.

The temporary truce in their mutual mud-slinging, says CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar, came on the occasion of their daughter's birthday.

British tabloids showed them together -- sort of.

And, stresses MacVicar, make no mistake: They weren't accidental pictures, rather, "the latest public relations salvo in the most toxic divorce."

"What comes up, really," says gossip columnist Neil Sean, "is, when you look down and you realize that it's Sir Paul holding the child and Heather Mills walking rather steelily with her sister (on a walkway bridge above). That's what you really see."

Score one for Sir Paul, MacVicar says.

Last week, he took the blows, MacVicar says, with news that he had gone to court to prevent release of tapes recorded by his deceased wife, Linda -- 20 hours of tapes described as "dynamite" and said to detail her unhappiness with their marriage.

Supporters of Sir Paul, such as disc jockey Johnny Vaughn, are having none of it.

"I don't believe for a second," Vaughn says, "that this man who's been knocking around now since the early '60s, suddenly we can find out these extraordinary traits in his character like this."

With Mills vilified as a fantasist after the leak of purported divorce documents from her alleging McCartney was abusive and violent, the tapes, says MacVicar, suggest there might have been another side to the revered McCartney and his "golden marriage" to Linda.

Says Sean, the gossip columnist: "Anything in those tapes that signifies that maybe Sir Paul wasn't the doting father, wasn't the loving husband that we're led to believe … all that is, of course, what we're looking for."

In the great British tradition of tabloid shockers and bottomless checkbooks and spin doctors, this, says MacVicar, is a divorce saga set to run and run.

"Look," remarks disc jockey Simon Bates, "this is a Shakespearean tragedy. It's about man who deeply loved his first wife … and I used to see them together, and they were absolutely crazy about each other. And then she dies, and then somebody else comes on the scene."

McCartney's daughter, Stella, reportedly had some harsh words for Heather, accusing Mills of being manipulative from day one.

McCartney is back on stage, with the release of a DVD of his 2005 "Magical Mystery Tour," an event that supposedly placed additional strain on his marriage to Mills.

It's not enough, MacVicar observes, that McCartney, as a Beatle, wrote much of the music that defined a generation, or that he is still a god of rock 'n' roll.

In the DVD are celebrity endorsements, such as one from Bill Clinton, who has known marital woes himself, and says of McCartney: "He's an American icon. He means something to us, and we feel that we have at least a small claim on him."

Perhaps, says MacVicar, the best piece of advice comes in recent days from another old rocker, Rod Stewart, who told a reporter McCartney simply shouldn't read the newspapers. "Stay out of it!" Stewart urges.

The one sure thing, according to MacVicar: Short of a judge bringing lawyers, McCartney and Mills to heel, this destructive and ugly campaign by both camps will be entertaining tabloid readers for months.

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