The death of witty, pretty Peaches Geldof touched the hearts of the nation. For the girlfriends of Paula Yates, it opened up an old wound.
When I moved from Sydney to England in the late ’80s, I asked friends and colleagues for a survival guide to life in London. At the top of everybody’s list – ahead of high tea at The Savoy, and a trot around the Tower of London – was “meet Paula Yates.” Accolades poured in. Effervescent. Intelligent. Charming. Funny. Flirtatious. Mischievous. Charismatic.
When I finally met Paula a few months later, she turned out to be the most divinely down-to-earth diva. But best of all, she was a woman’s woman. Many females as famous and glamorous as Paula need to be sent to the vets to get their claws done. But Paula cherished her female friends.
In fact, it was Paula who insisted I meet Michael Hutchence’s ex, Kylie Minogue. In the mid ’90s, she gathered us around her kitchen table for shepherd’s pie. In the company of such rock star royalty, I was trying my best to act suave. But then Paula noticed that my hair was moving. Nits – an occupational hazard of motherhood. Paula knew exactly what to do about this dilemma. She bolted off to the bathroom and returned with a vile smelling bottle of the most toxic concoction. She then set about covering my scalp with the thick, foul-smelling goop. The only way a nit could survive on my head after that was in a flame-retardant wetsuit. I was no longer contagious, but I don’t think “chic” quite covered it. Paula found my Al Capone hairstyle hilarious. It was this earthy, frank, funny approach to life, which made her charm more disarming than a UN peacekeeping force.
Paula’s private life was at odds with her public perception. Her reputation was for sowing wild oats, but in real life she was a totally domesticated, teetotal Earth mother. She preferred to entertain at home, so she didn’t have to miss a moment with her darling daughters, Fifi Trixiebelle, Pixie and Peaches. The more the press soiled her reputation, the more she cleaned and cooked. I have a pathological aversion to housework, but Paula was most at ease in a pair of marigolds, lavishing love on her children. It was Paula’s own chaotic childhood that made her so determined to be a hands on, doting mum. (Paula, the daughter of a show girl and a TV evangelist named Jess Yates, discovered via a tabloid that her biological father was really Quiz show presenter, Hughie Green.)
Pre the Beckhams and the Osbournes, the Geldofs were Britain’s famous celebrity family. Which explains why, when Paula left Bob, the press cast her into social Siberia. At the height of the media condemnation, to lift Paula’s flagging spirits, I asked for a list friends she would like me to invite for a dinner in her honour. Her show biz pals accepted, but then slowly dropped out on the grounds that it would upset Bob. Michael flew back from Ireland expecting to have dinner with select members of the celebrity world, only to find that the cream of London society had curdled. We had a lively, happy dinner, but the human menu consisted of my cousin, my kids, a couple of neighbours and the babysitter and her boyfriend.
Yet, throughout the tabloid turmoil, Paula and Michael’s devotion to each other kept them buoyant. I visited soon after Tiger Lily was born in July 1996. A shaft of hazy light flickered through the curtains onto the bed where Michael and Paula lay, bracketing their beautiful little baby. Dreams flickered across Tiger’s face, soft as sunlight. Hair feathered onto her perfect forehead. Paula was luminous with love. Michael was so far above cloud nine he had to look down to see it.
But a toxic custody battle with Bob soon eroded their joy. Paula’s self-esteem sunk limbo low. After Michael’s accidental death in a Sydney hotel in Sydney, grief consumed her. Emotionally and psychologically shattered, the vibrant and vivacious woman I knew spiralled down into darkness.
After her accidental death from a heroin overdose in 2000, Tiger, aged four, was found by a good friend of mine, beside her mother’s body. In a tragically eerie echo, Peaches died with her one year old baby by her side. As I write this, there’s no official cause of death. But at the age of 25, she had lived more largely than most of us will in a lifetime. Despite a close knit family life, cocooned with her three beloved sisters, Peaches had a wild-child streak.
Through her teens I had the opportunity to watch her blossom into a savvy, sassy, beautiful young woman because my daughter Georgie attended the same high school. All the pupils were in awed orbit around Ms Geldof. Blonde, headstrong, charismatic – Peaches was the clone of her mother and clearly following in Paula’s high-heeled footsteps. By 14 she was writing for Elle magazine. By 15 she was hosting a TV show. Aged 16 she was making documentaries. Peaches once commented on the many parallels between mother and daughter. “I feel Mum living through me all the time because we are just so similar.” But Peaches’ fame meant that every tiny teenage misdemeanor was picked over by the press with forensic detail. Stories of eating disorders and drug addiction soon followed, culminating in a boyfriend’s betrayal (he posted her nude photos online) and a blink-and-you-miss-it six-month Las Vegas marriage to an American muso.
But after marrying musician Tom Cohen, giving birth to Astala, now 2, and Phaedra, now 1, it seemed as though Peaches had finally found her way in the wicked world. She told a friend that she hadn’t fully made peace with her childhood but “with my mum I have come to terms with everything. She had a really difficult time.”
In an interview for Mother and Baby magazine, Peaches talked again about her “really unstable upbringing” but explained – “since I’ve had the boys I don’t think of the world as a negative place anymore.” In a column for the same magazine she wrote how she was now ‘happier than ever’ because of her ‘perfect life’. “When I had two wailing, smiling, joyful little blobs of waddling pink flesh they became my entire existence and saved me… I just have so much love. And, through my love for them, I’ve been reborn into a better, more understanding person.”
Grief is the price we pay for love. And the untimely death of this gentle, intelligent young woman has left Bob and family heartbroken, bereft and “beyond pain”. It’s also why we’re all grieving for Peaches, friends and strangers alike. Because, like her mother before her, just when she had found her fairytale ending, it turned into a Greek tragedy.
