Paula Yates

About Paula Yates

Paula Elizabeth Yates (24 April 1959 – 17 September 2000) was a Welsh television presenter and writer. Yates is best known for her work on two television programmes, The Tube and The Big Breakfast. She was subjected to intense media attention and scrutiny, owing to her popularity and her relationships with musicians Bob Geldof and Michael Hutchence.

In 1979, Yates began her career as a music journalist with a column called "Natural Blonde" in the Record Mirror, shortly after posing for Penthouse magazine. She first came to prominence in the 1980s, as co-presenter (with Jools Holland) of the Channel 4 pop music programme The Tube, having been a minor co-host of BBC TV chat shows with presenter Terry Wogan. She also appeared alongside her friend Jennifer Saunders in 1987 for a spoof documentary on pop group Bananarama.

In 1982, she released a version of the Nancy Sinatra hit song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" from the Music of Quality and Distinction Volume One album by B.E.F. (British Electric Foundation).

Yates became known for her "on the bed" interviews on the show The Big Breakfast, produced by her husband, Bob Geldof. She casually asked the questions she felt people really wanted the answers to: "Is it true you had an affair with Prince?" (to Kylie Minogue) — and persuaded Sting to take his trousers off live on air.

Yates met Geldof in the early days of the Boomtown Rats. They began a romantic relationship in 1976 when she flew to Paris to surprise him while the band was playing there. Their first daughter, Fifi, was born in 1983. After ten years together, Yates and Geldof married on 31 August 1986 in Las Vegas, with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran acting as best man. The couple then had two more daughters, Peaches Geldof on 13 March 1989, and Pixie on 17 September 1990.

Whilst married to Geldof, Yates had a year-long affair with American singer Terence Trent D'Arby and she had a six-year long affair with actor Rupert Everett.

In 1985, Yates met INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence while interviewing him for Channel 4's rock magazine programme The Tube. During this appearance on The Tube, Yates was reportedly asked to leave Hutchence alone by the road manager of INXS when she walked up to him and said, "I'm going to have that boy [Hutchence]". Yates was unmoved by the manager's request and began to show up at INXS gigs everywhere for the next few years, even taking her young daughter Fifi along. Yates maintained irregular contact with Hutchence during the intervening nine years and their affair had been under way for some months before their Big Breakfast interview in October 1994.

Geldof and Yates divorced in May 1996. On 22 July 1996, Yates gave birth to a daughter by Hutchence, Tiger Lily.

On 22 November 1997, Hutchence was found dead in a hotel room in Sydney. The official verdict into his death said that he killed himself by hanging. Yates wrote in her police statement that Hutchence was "frightened and couldn't stand a minute more without his baby". During their phone conversations on the morning of his suicide, he had said, "I don't know how I'll live without Tiger". Yates also wrote that Geldof had threatened them repeatedly, saying: "Don't forget, I am above the law." Yates became distraught, refusing to accept the coroner's verdict of suicide and insisting that it was a case of auto-erotic asphyxiation. She eventually sought psychiatric treatment.

In December 1997, a few weeks after Hutchence's death and while Yates was fighting for custody of her daughter with Hutchence, Yates suffered another blow when a DNA test result confirmed tabloid media reports that Jess Yates, who had died in April 1993, was not her biological father. A paternity test proved that the talent show host Hughie Green, who had died six months before Hutchence, was her biological father.

In June 1998, Geldof won full custody of the couple's three daughters after Yates attempted suicide. She met Kingsley O'Keke during her stay in treatment, but the pair broke up after a six-week romance. O'Keke later sold his story to a tabloid newspaper.

On 17 September 2000, on Pixie's 10th birthday, Yates died at her home in Notting Hill at the age of 41 of a heroin overdose. The coroner ruled that it was not a suicide, but a result of "foolish and incautious" behaviour. Yates was discovered in the presence of her then-four-year-old daughter, Tiger Lily.

On 7 April 2014, Yates's second-oldest daughter, Peaches Geldof, also died of a heroin overdose, aged 25.

Spouse

Bob Geldof(August 31, 1986 - May 1996) (divorced, 3 children)