This programme contains strong language and reference to suicide.
Take two. Anita, Ed? What? Banging off the leg.
What...?
In your own time. Shot one, take two.
Today, it's a very...
No, do that again. LAUGHING: Pfft! I was laughing!
Paula Yates was probably, next to Princess Diana,
the most famous female in England.
When she walked in a room she was like a firecracker.
Woo-woo-woo-woo! Take that!
And she was great and irreverent.
Have you reached your peak now or are you getting bigger?
LAUGHTER
Trailblazer and the absolute epitome of charismatic.
I'm in Grand Master Flash's dressing room
which is why I'm talking a bit funny
because it's making me, actually, quite nervous, ooh!
Surely feminism was... The point is that you get a choice,
you don't have to have it all and do it all. You can choose.
She was a kind of chameleon and a sort of maverick
and a kind of self-invented person.
REPORTER: Paula Yates is probably better known
for her private life than for her TV career.
Every twist and turn of her problems was front page news.
I think there was a sense that she was the original wild child,
she linked up with a rock star,
linked up with another rock star,
that rock star has this tragic death, and this...
..the person at the centre of it had it coming to her
and was the cause of it all.
NEWSREADER: The rock star Michael Hutchence was found hanging
from a door in a Sydney hotel room.
When I spoke to her, the opposite was true.
I remember walking in to the room
and the room was just completely still
and Paula was sitting at this table.
You always seem to be under siege...
MULTIPLE CAMERAS CLICKING
Presented for the first time by a page-three girl today, meow.
INTERVIEWER: What's going through your head thinking about her now?
Does it feel like a long time ago or...?
It's strangely emotional.
As soon as I sit down in this chair
I just wanted to cry,
it's the weirdest feeling,
just feel quite...
Very emotional, yeah.
Er, I wrote a song about her. Um...
And I've never said it's about her at all to anybody.
It's a song called Cursed,
and there's a lyric in it that goes,
"Told everybody I'd slept with you, thought you'd like it,
"knew you wouldn't deny it."
It's not true, so if anybody goes and checks that song out.
But it's true that she wouldn't have denied it.
She wouldn't have denied it no, no.
HE LAUGHS
That's enough about that, Bob's watching, erm...
What was the nature of your relationship?
The nature of our relationship,
what was the nature of our relationship?
I suppose...
..she would be a...
..confidante.
In order to be a good lover... Mm.
..do you think there's any particular things that people should do?
Well, use lubrication.
Use lub... LAUGHTER
A...
..older sister.
Do you find girls a great inspiration?
I mean, are lots of your songs written about girls?
Of course.
She was incredibly smart,
incredibly engaging.
I've gone all red.
You're in enough trouble as it is.
Why? Do you think I'm gonna...? LAUGHTER
And somebody that was just fascinating to be around.
Don't keep pulling me! I'm not, you know...
I'm not like, you know, an object. I'm sorry.
You know, I'm a person!
TERRY WOGAN: According to a recent survey in Teenage magazine,
more girls would like to look like my final guest tonight
than the Princess of Wales.
Her face appeared on more front covers
than any other models last year, she's a journalist, author,
businesswoman and she's still in her 20s.
Ladies and gentlemen, Paula Yates.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
I'm dreadfully conventional.
I mean, I read romantic novels
which I buy and I hide under a pile of serious novels
cos I'm embarrassed to buy them.
I collect pictures of Prince Andrew and his chopper.
LAUGHTER
And I'm frightfully keen on Doris Day films.
Well, the ones with Rock Hudson, cos then I pretend it's you and me.
LAUGHTER
When I first met Paula, which is like the late '70s,
I was a music journalist doing reviews for Record Mirror,
and Paula Yates was a...
..was a columnist, so the first time I went in there,
she was sitting in the corner, banging away,
trying to get this column done,
but I subsequently found out that she was always slightly late
with her copy, so I guess she was sort of behind on
a deadline or something.
Was she quite intimidating?
She was quite unapproachable, fiercely intelligent.
She was someone who really knew what she wanted
and she knew how to get what she wanted as well,
so there was a certain kind of authority about her that, I think,
was attractive, certainly I noticed her the moment I walked in.
I mean, she was quite a, kind of, exotic figure
with the peroxide hair, and she knew everybody.
I mean, really, really well connected which, you know, for us,
I was sort of 18, 19, you know,
we were sort of in awe of that.
CHANNEL 4 FANFARE
ANNOUNCER: Good afternoon.
It's a pleasure to be able to say to you,
welcome to Channel 4.
Britain's first new network for 18 years went on
the air as scheduled at a quarter to five.
One day on Channel 4,
a pop show broadcasting from Newcastle arrives.
You know, bands are coming on and they're playing live
and it's bumpy and it's weird
and then Paula Yates appears and she looks incredible.
Well, here it is,
the studio where it's all going to be happening.
For the next five months you're going to be able
to see live music, interviews...
It was a pivotal part of my life.
I must have been seven or eight years old.
You know, you looked on television,
I didn't want to be a Blue Peter presenter.
They're such lovely colours you see, aren't they?
Green, just like a bishops mitre. Mm.
I didn't want to be Anne Diamond,
I didn't want to be the girls on Miss World.
For me, Paula Yates was an icon,
she was everything, all plates spinning at once,
everything a modern woman could be.
Now, you can tell that this is live television
because I am sitting on my foot
because I wasn't allowed to go to the loo before the show started.
However, there are so many girls on tonight's show
that even the crew came out of the pub early
and the whole place has the overpoweringly erotic smell of Brut.
She flirts and she's sexy and, er...
It wasn't just, kind of, harmless,
coy, kind of, Princess Diana flirting,
this was proper, sexual, Marilyn Monroe,
but mixed with, kind of, an NME cool slant.
Now, tell me, Sting, what we really want to know is,
how come you get your gear off so often?
Virtually every picture you've got your shirt off.
So, come on, how come? Well, I don't know, it's...
That was part of the magic of her,
that every time she appeared on television
interviewing some gorgeous, sexy man,
you could almost feel her playing footsie under the ta...
SHE LAUGHS Under the table!
Our next group I'm not allowed to introduce
because you might have thought that the lead singer had given me one.
Whereas, in fact, the lead singer,
the lead singer, in fact, did give me one...
..of these records which are their brand-new record.
ROCK MUSIC PLAYS
The Boomtown Rats had come along
and they had this singer with real attitude, which was Geldof,
this kind of real, you know, kind of, Jack-the-lad,
kind of like an Irish Jagger,
but a bit cooler than Mike Jagger was back then.
And so when Paula came along and hooked up with him,
Bob Geldof was a big thing and Paula Yates, being his girlfriend,
she was a big thing as well.
MUSIC: I Don't Like Mondays by The Boomtown Rats
I'm supposed to be a pin-up star, erm,
who has a pretty girlfriend.
For the daily pop papers,
I'm supposed to be Bob Geldof, rock star,
and supposed to be like Rod and Britt or Mick and Bianca,
and it's not even Mick and Marianne.
# Tell me why
# I don't like Mondays... #
Let's meet the lady in your life, TV pop presenter, Paula Yates.
# I don't like Mondays
# I want to sho-oo-oo-oot... #
APPLAUSE
Paula, did romance blossom right away?
Well, it did for me, but it didn't really for him.
The first time I saw him,
he had these incredibly tight, red trousers sort of sprayed on
and a black jumper and a plastic fried egg,
and the Lord's Prayer tied to his jumper with a bit of string,
and I thought, "Gosh, there's a hunk."
LAUGHTER Well, Bob Geldof, hunk...
Paula Yates was probably my best friend.
We must have met in the '80s at some time
and we lived very near each other,
like literally, in the next street.
She was pregnant and I was pregnant at the same time,
and that kind of was more of a bond.
And then when the kids were little,
when we used to take them to the One O'Clock Club at Battersea,
and hang out and that's kind of how we became friends.
Because, of course, they made it for me just after I'd had my baby
and, of course, the minute I'd had her I wanted everything
to be skin tight and have to be wedged into it with a shoe horn.
She was kind of like a cross between Marilyn Monroe
and Mary Poppins, you know?
That's how I think of her, really.
She was an incredibly good mother,
incredibly kind,
very loyal to her friends, extraordinarily well-read.
I mean, extraordinary, you know, you could ask her,
whatever the conversation was, Paula not just had an opinion,
but definitely had knowledge on whatever you were talking about.
Um, but she kind of came across as this ditzy blonde,
but she definitely wasn't.
She needed somebody who had her back
and who understood her and was a friend.
So, yeah, we had a lot of fun,
just kind of do normal things you do with your friends.
And then things changed, yeah.
Detectives say they're baffled about the circumstances
of the death of rock star Michael Hutchence.
His partner, the TV presenter Paula Yates, is in London
and is expected to fly out to Australia this evening.
I was the editor of OK! Magazine,
which is this national celebrity magazine.
When Michael Hutchence died,
I saw a front page of The Sun
and it was all about Paula's grief and this, that and the other
and, suddenly, a light bulb lit up in my head
and I thought, "First interview with her would be really good."
I found out that Paula had this sort of right-hand woman
called Belinda Brewin, called her and said,
"Look, I would be really interested in doing
"the first interview with Paula."
I hadn't seen her face-to-face for 20 years,
and here she was not looking terribly different as a person
but her body language and her kind of general demeanour was just...
..broken, really.
PAULA:
Michael was her love.
Well, she never got over it - I don't think people do,
they just learn to live with it.
Paula didn't really learn to live with it,
that was the problem.
It was a big, black cloud every single day and to, to...
..to get away from that was very hard.
TOWNSEND: Well, what do you think?
I mean, people keep saying to me, you know...
PAULA:
THEY LAUGH
Shot three, take one.
What's wrong? No, no, nothing's wrong at all,
there's just a bit of stuff that won't be in shot that's over there.
Oh. In your own time, my love.
# It's Christmas-time... #
NEWSREADER: It all started just eight months ago
when a contingent of 40 British rock stars got together
at a studio in London to record Do They Know It's Christmas?
The sole purpose being to raise money for the starving Ethiopians.
When Bob Geldof thought of the idea for the Band Aid single,
he rather expected it would make about 70...
It's all right, just carry on. What is wrong with me?!
Just start again, you're fine. Well, it's cos I'm seeing people!
LAUGHTER OK, camera.
Start again, please. Do you think I...?
I suddenly... That's why I had my pause cos I was a bit worried,
do you think they all know I live with him?
Yeah, of course they know you live with him.
I don't really want to act like I'm being...
No, no, of course, you're not.
OK.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to London, to Wembley and Live Aid,
will you meet and greet, David Bowie?
MUSIC: Let's Dance
I can still remember
the whole day of watching Live Aid as if it was yesterday.
All the big pop names of the time in Wembley Stadium,
Live Aid was one of the most important
and far-reaching charity ventures that the world has ever seen.
NEWSREADER: By noon, 72,000 rock fans were packed into Wembley Stadium
as Live Aid began in brilliant sunshine.
The Princess, a keen pop fan, apparently needed little persuading
to join the huge audience.
They were this iconic couple,
they were both ground-breaking in their own rights.
I mean, I remember we were on the Fulham Road
and we went into - there's a jewellery shop there -
and we went in and Princess Diana was in there,
and Princess Diana said to Paula,
"I love it when you're on the front page of the papers
"because it means I've got the day off."
NEWSREADER: Bob Geldof, the rock star and inspiration
behind Band Aid, Live Aid and Sport Aid,
received a personal reward for his work this morning
when the Queen presented him with an honorary knighthood.
Basically, these diaries came along in The Sun, The Standard,
The Mirror, which were daily showbiz diaries,
and it was the first, if you like, daily monitoring
of national, British showbiz.
And we were, basically, just filling the news,
trying to fill the newspapers every day
with showbiz gossip and pop gossip.
And that was the massive change
that Paula and Bob were in the middle of.
The Geldofs, cos they would be people that journalists like myself
would be keeping an eye on,
if they had a row or there was, you know, a bust up,
they'd be photographed,
there'd be people trying to get words with them,
it was a lot of chasing around. HE CHUCKLES
Getting into cabs and, you know,
getting pictures quickly developed for the next morning,
and all that stuff.
It was a great time to be a journalist, actually.
Blonde and blondes,
and you've wanted to be a blonde since how old?
Since I was six,
but my mother, sensibly enough, wouldn't let me.
Sorry, I was just... Have a quick...
And what she did instead is she had this blonde wig.
And I used to wear it all the time,
finally a halt was put to the wig borrowing
because I arrived at one of her dinner parties wearing the wig,
came down the stairs, Winceyette pyjamas, wig,
and her diaphragm on the top of my head.
LAUGHTER So that was that, the wig was snatched away.
That was the end of that episode. That was the end of that.
So, when did you actually become blonde yourself?
I became blonde when I was 12.
Real blonde, the blonde that we...? Like this, yeah.
She came in very much in her style that was, you know,
'50s dress and peroxide hair and she was great and irreverent,
and I can remember all those days of, like, you know,
David Bowie coming in
and Paula Yates trying to pay with a plastic bag full of change
and things like that.
I saw her a lot, three times a week, four times a week,
it was every shoot that she did and she did a lot.
Nobody else did her hair.
INTERVIEWER: Really, the whole way through?
No, not at all, not at all and I can't say that for everybody,
I mean... Did you become friends?
Yeah, we did. I think, you know, you can't work for that long,
know that much and not become a friend.
Yeah, she'd be quite frivolous, I mean...
I mean, I can remember I got a call from Bob
at like seven in the morning, it was more or less on the lines of,
"For fuck's sake, can you get here
"because she's not having this baby until she's had her hair done?"
But that was her way of doing it and, of course, she did,
when she came out and presented herself to the world,
she, on, you know, each of the occasions of a birth,
it was in full Paula regalia, you know,
hair done and I'm ready for the cameras. So, that was her.
I suppose she just knew her market.
Today is the day, of course, my perfume comes out. Yes.
Would you like sniff me?
It's, um... Are you uncontrollable?
LAUGHTER
Terry, be honest. It's strong,
I'll say that. It is potent, isn't it?
It is potent, it's a good word, yes, powerful.
I'm utterly thrilled with it
because of the effect it has on men. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
Paula is doing what is now, through today's eyes, incredibly natural,
you have a perfume and you have a lingerie brand,
they're just spin-off things, you know,
you make money, you bank, you bank money.
That's coming out and then followed by my underwear.
Followed by the underwear? I know.
So, Paula Yates smells in her underwear.
BELINDA: You know, before Kim Kardashian there was Paula.
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
INTERVIEWER: Did you get a sense that she was happy?
I really don't want to get into the Bob and Paula stuff,
really, I don't.
At the time, there were allegations about both of them in the press.
Well, Paula Yates didn't just date and marry a rock star,
she lived her life like a rock star, almost like a male rock star,
and the rumours would always be that she was, basically,
shagging every single one of these men.
I don't know if she did.
I hope she did.
Because these were some of the most gorgeous and sexy, virile men
in their prime of the '80s.
Every once in a while, The Tube does something to make everyone happy,
and this is it, so you have to put down your baked beans,
you have to stand up in your living room,
you have to take off your vest because you're going to get so hot,
because it's just the best singer you're going to see all year.
That's it, there we go, perfect.
Terence Trent D'Arby has got a voice
that you just want to just kill for,
and here he is in his first TV performance
with his debut single, If You Let Me Stay.
# Honey, don't leave me now
# With my head on my shoulders wrong. #
My name is Sananda Maitreya,
I was previously known in another life as, as another thing.
# If you let me stay
# I'll say what I should've said. #
First, let me just say that the subsequent 35 years,
I have been asked about Paula Yates on numerous occasions
and I've always refused to talk about her,
but it's a relief to finally have this outlet to...
..to talk about and celebrate her life.
Do you remember meeting Paula?
Yes, I do remember meeting the madam.
The first time I met her was before I went on stage for
my first appearance on The Tube.
What were your first impressions?
Er, my first impressions of her were
what you would expect from a 24, 25-year-old,
you know, "Wow, she's, she's hot!" You know what I mean?
You know, the business is full of beautiful women,
but the ones who have made the impact that she...
..she had on the culture at the time.
There's something else there.
He originally came up to do six songs and... Two songs!
And did six and I can hardly speak, I'm so excited.
MUSIC: (She's Gonna) Do You In by The Boomtown Rats
So, I'm in a hotel in New York,
and I get this call from the front desk...
..telling me that there's a gentleman downstairs
who would very much like to meet with me.
"The gentleman says his name is Bob Geldof."
Like, "Fu-u-u-ck!"
And it was something along the lines of,
"So, what's this about you and my wife, then?
"Are you knobbing my wife?"
So, of course, I did what any other self respecting, you know,
25-year-old man would do and I fucking lied to him.
What do you think about the comparisons that have been made
about you, with Prince and, and people like Michael Jackson?
Um, I think with Prince, to be fair, a lot of it has to do with the fact
that we're both of similar complexion.
There's a headline... I don't want to see it. You can read it.
I'll read to you, it's front page,
it's News Of The World, just says...
..and it's really shocking to see it from this perspective.
Yes.
Was race an element of that...
..criticism that you faced, of that story?
We're an Anglo-based culture, how can it not?
How can it not?
The whole News Of The World,
"Paula caught with black star," and manipulating that for...
..for public...retribution, I was going to pay for that,
I did, she was going to pay for that, she did.
I do believe that connected with that whole Bob and Paula thing,
there were the knives out, ready to carve me into Thanksgiving turkey,
and that's subsequently what I experienced.
Yeah, I don't think in terms of rating,
I just think in terms of getting my links right.
I'll just be, you know, extremely relieved
if it all goes smoothly, you know, to begin with.
REPORTER: The new £10 million, five-mornings-a-week
Channel 4 Big Breakfast will have
a combination of studio activities and live broadcast events
with ITN News bulletins popping up too.
The format, in so far as there is one, is very much along
the lines of television youth programmes,
a sort of slam-bang-gotcha style of presentation.
One of the things that I think is great with this is,
it's so pacey, everything just...rollicks along.
MULTIPLE CAMERAS CLICKING
Hello, so shocking to see you not outside our house.
I know. It's really weird.
At today's launch, Bob Geldof,
the big name behind the new show wasn't around,
but his wife, Paula Yates, a presenter on the Big Breakfast was.
It is terrible in the morning, are you good in the mornings?
I'm really sickeningly good.
Like, you know, those vomity people that wake up
and sing selections from Rogers and Hammerstein very loudly
up and down the stairs.
Is it true you had an affair with Prince?
No, Prince has...has been an idol of mine... Did you sleep with him? No.
Oh, come on! No!
I don't believe that anyone else carried out their interviews
on a double bed,
I mean, that was very much her sense of humour, she loved that.
That's more meaningful.
She always used to say to me,
"I'll never interview anybody less famous than myself,"
and she asked the kind of questions,
naughty kind of questions, flirty kind of questions.
You promised me you wouldn't wear that dress again.
No, but you said you wouldn't wear yours.
The Big Breakfast bed was somehow this kind of sexy detonator.
You wouldn't be wolf mother with a howl like that!
I could do a bigger howl if I got revved up.
LAUGHTER Hello!
She became absolutely sort of key and crucial to it,
and emblematic of it in a way
because Paula Yates was the on-the-bed person,
On The Bed With Paula,
and there she would be interviewing the great big stars of the time.
Come on, give me some marriage tips, big boy. All right.
And she would give these incredibly sparky, spirited interviews.
It's not quite the same though, is it,
saying you're doing well in Belgium?
It's like saying I was doing very well in Cleethorpes, isn't it?
Right, right. I mean, Belgium's quite dull, isn't it?
And she did it by seducing every single person on the bed,
didn't matter who it was, whoever it was, she would flirt shamelessly,
and she was irresistible.
Is it true you've got three nipples? Yes, it is.
Is it true you have three nipples?
No, I don't, I don't have this unusual asset.
It would be wrong to think that the On The Bed interviews
were all kind of jokey and light-hearted and frothy
and superficial cos actually they weren't.
Do you get upset cos some of the criticism
does insinuate that you're sort of
two vol-au-vents short of the full buffet?
Somehow or other being on the bed meant that people would talk in
a very open way about all sorts of things
and Paula was expert, actually,
at really getting to the root of an interview
and getting to the really interesting stuff.
It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman,
everybody can do drag, you know?
But what attracted you to it in the first place?
I mean, when was that moment where you suddenly thought...
.."Hey, I'm going to put on girls knickers"?
LAUGHTER
Of course, this was all before nine o'clock in the morning,
and therefore it was a kind of, um, revolutionary television,
kind of masquerading as light entertainment,
but really having, sometimes, a very serious kernel.
Does it make you cross that it's not easier for gay men
to get a baby when they'd probably make very good dads?
I think it's just the way things are, really. It will change.
How quickly? Probably...
..within ten years.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember meeting her?
Er, I'm guessing it was the Big Breakfast?
I must be the absolute most envied woman in the entire country
because Jason's kissing... You're married to Bob Geldof?
Yeah, because I'm married to Bob and because Jason's kissing my arm.
You're going to ask me what I was thinking then,
I was thinking, "Don't fancy Jason," like, everybody fancied Jason,
they still fancy Jason.
It's that chin.
I was, like... Did you fancy her?
Oh, yeah, course I did, yeah.
Nothing ever happened.
Yeah, no, nothing ever happened.
Yeah, I wanted her to fancy me.
Bob was just telling... Are you going to come and see us?
No, you can't suck my big toe!
Are you going to come and see us? No, cos it's all dirty. Yes, I am.
You know, she was easy to get on with
and I don't find that many people easy to get on with
because, you know, I'm quite socially awkward myself,
so when you find people that you do feel comfortable with,
they make an impact.
And when it's somebody as exotic and intoxicating
and as smart as Paula,
it leaves a lasting impact.
But I suppose, when you think about it,
there's only really one interview that everybody remembers
and that was her interview with Michael Hutchence.
This is a guest that has everything that a rock star needs to have -
danger, talent, curly hair and Australian subtlety.
And, for the first time,
this is a guest that I want to have my leg over.
And it is...
..it's the fantastically talented Michael Hutchence.
Hi.
Were you always very forward? Am I forward?
Well, a bit. And you're talking.
THE CREW LAUGH
BELINDA BREWIN: It was quite an outrage.
I mean, I remember her legs were kind of entwined with his,
and he was a bit...
..well, not taken aback but you could see he was blushing and...
But you could see a connection.
I mean, there was definitely a connection.
I mean, the funny thing was, she, for years,
had a picture of Michael on the fridge and it said "Love Dog" and...
..Bob came down and I think he wrote "cunt" across his picture.
And do you think you're going to get married?
HE LAUGHS
Erm... What?
Do you think that you'll get married? No! No, no... Why not?
I'm happily unmarried. Are you? Mm-hm.
Why don't you fancy getting married, though?
I... Because everyone wants us to get married.
I don't. I know, except for you.
It's a terrible, terrible idea. Terrible idea.
How quickly after that interview did they get together?
Five minutes.
SHE LAUGHS No, um...
In the green room. SHE LAUGHS
I... No, don't put that in for fuck's sake.
TOWNSEND: Maybe the initial shock that her and Bob were no longer,
and that she was having this affair
with this very colourful Michael Hutchence,
sort of very handsome,
very kind of desired kind of figure,
that would've been a good story for a while,
but I think then the media sort of took Bob's side
because he was Saint Bob and Paula was the scarlet woman.
INTERVIEWER: Did she get it worse than most?
Absolutely, beyond doubt,
all of the things that made Paula
so lovable when she was in her 20s,
the fact that she was gobby and anarchic and sexual.
All of those things by the time she had got into her late 30s,
they were no longer attractive to lots and lots
and lots of men in media - and women too - but it was mainly men.
And, er...
I think that the way that she was, you know,
pilloried and picked on was incredibly heart-breaking.
PHOTOGRAPHERS CALLING OUT
I wouldn't have changed anything I had done,
but I would certainly have changed
a lot of things other people have done.
Such as? What like? Erm...
Just the general coverage, you know,
I think that's been quite difficult to deal with.
PAUL MERTON:Is it breast implants? LAUGHTER
Oh, well, that's very gentlemanly!
LAUGHTER
That's really nice,
you could have said it was, like, Gazza, me...
GRACE DENT: It's that constant kicking up the arse, you know,
and that's what made me really angry
about how she was treated on Have I Got News For You
because she got a drubbing that a politician wouldn't,
who, you know, led the country into absolute ruin,
and what had she actually done?
What, what...? What was it that Paula Yates did that upset you?
What was it?
It's a big secret, though, isn't it, your breast implants?
LAUGHTER
Erm, I mean, you certainly kept it quiet.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, I was straight on the phone to somebody
with a greasy shirt in Wapping saying,
"Please discuss my breasts with the nation."
"And can you buy the rights of my book?"
LAUGHTER
I think it's always been very difficult to be a woman
with multiple layers to you.
I mean, if you were a sort of Dolly Dealer, you know,
you're pretty and bosomy, and where all you had to do
was giggle or something like that and be, you know,
cute and whatever, that was one thing.
If you were a sort of clever blue-stocking,
and you weren't supposed to be pretty or attractive,
you were just supposed to be clever,
that was another thing, although people didn't much like that
cos they didn't much like clever women.
But to be lots of different things was just confusing
and pissed everybody off. You know, what are you for?
Am I meant to want to masturbate about you?
Am I meant to want to have dinner with you?
Am I supposed to marry you? What am I meant to do?
And I think, particularly, vocal woman,
didn't really matter what you were saying,
it was much more that you were saying it.
So Paula Yates was extremely vocal
and that alienated a vast swathe.
I mean, it's terrible bloody media intrusion,
look, there's cameras here, Paula.
LAUGHTER
Ian...? She was invited on this show.
Please stop being unkind.
Don't be unkind.
What was it that really upset people?
Was it cos she was shameless?
She refused to go cap in hand to these people
and rebrand herself as being holier than thou.
And, er, she was absolutely pilloried at every, every turn.
MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYS
PAULA:
INTERVIEWER: Were they having a good time?
BELINDA BREWIN: Yes, they had a great time.
Yeah, they had a really good time.
I mean, you know, they went to Bali on holiday,
they went to Paris, they went to Rome.
Michael had his place in the South of France,
so they would go there and, yeah, it was,
it was fantastic and it was great to see them
and they were so happy,
and they were really, really in love, you know?
I know Paula to be incredibly playful
and get sucked in to things of the moment, you know,
and so I can only assume that she just got kind of sucked into
the whole, the power of Michael.
I can certainly remember when he was going out with Kylie,
and there were a number of clients that went,
"Oh, God, how's that gonna turn...?"
You know, so he already had this reputation of being fairly wild.
I suppose there was an instant where I'm thinking,
"Is Paula going to succumb to that?"
PAULA:
TOWNSEND: Did he ever use drugs when you were together?
INTERVIEWER: What was the reaction to their new relationship?
The press?
Well, it just went crazy, didn't it?
And it went crazy.
The whole thing with the phone tapping and, you know,
all of that.
I mean, the phone tapping was almost laughable you could hear it.
Click-click, I mean, it's madness.
But illegal stuff.
One day my daughter came and said,
"Mum, there's a guy climbing in the bedroom window."
And I was like, "What?"
"He says he wants to talk to you," so he thought it was OK to climb in,
into my daughter's bedroom,
scared the living daylights out of her and then said,
"No, no, it's OK, I just want to speak to your mum," so that was OK.
The papers had to be filled every single day
and if they were, you know,
scandalous stories all the better,
all the more chance of getting on page one.
How do you feel being part of that?
I was doing my job, is what I felt and, you know,
my job was to report on a story that was of public interest.
I look back on it now, you know, I...
I don't regret anything cos I, I just don't.
You know, I did... I did what I did at the time for the right reasons,
but I think, erm...
..I could see how sometimes it would be too much for people and, erm...
..that's not a nice feeling, really.
MICHAEL HUTCHENCE: It was really easy, it was great.
She was fantastic. Brilliant.
What's it like being a new dad, Michael?
It's, erm, it's beautiful. I mean, it's fantastic.
I'm on cloud nine, you know, what can I say?
TINA HUTCHENCE: Michael looked so happy, he was so proud
of his little child.
Well, Michael was born just after my 12th birthday.
We had this relationship where
I was his sister,
but I was his mother too.
This is very soon after Tiger was born,
it's at Michael's villa.
Paula with mother and Ross,
they all just really loved this photograph and...
Mm.
Paula, Paula? Paula, this way, please. Paula.
The press surrounding that whole thing with Michael and Paula
in London was a big deal.
At some stage he said to me,
"You know, it's like people know where I'm going."
He said, "How do they know? When I get a car they know where I'm going,
"they're there before I am."
You know, I had my suspicions that...
..that Paula was making some calls,
even though I didn't really know her well,
but there was something about her background that made me think,
"Yes, they knew where he was going."
He said, "They're always waiting for me with their cameras,
"it's just really hard to live here."
TOWNSEND: I suspect there were people in the press she liked
and people she violently didn't like, as being Paula,
there'd be no halfway measures.
Pretty much everyone on tabloid newspaper was not someone she was
going to like very much.
CROWD CHEERING
REPORTER: Rock and roll's most talked about couple were attending
the glitzy opening of Sydney's IMAX theatre last night,
at the same time detectives were raiding their London home.
Acting on a warrant, police seized plastic bags
containing a substance believed to be opium.
I think the beginning of the end of that was,
obviously, the "drugs bust".
That, that caused...
..huge, obviously, upset, worry and then the press were like, you know,
"Now we've got them, now we've got them."
PAULA:
TOWNSEND: Yeah.
But you're saying that it never came into family life?
INTERVIEWER: So, it wasn't like a police raid?
BELINDA BREWIN: No! Not at all.
The police didn't bust them, did they, you know?
The nanny found them.
NEWSREADER: Paula Yates has arrived back in London to do battle
with her former husband Bob Geldof
over the custody of their children.
She cut short her Australian trip after a drug raid
on the London home she shares with her partner Michael Hutchence.
Well, I've just come back to fight for custody of my children.
I've had to leave Tiger behind in Australia with her dad.
In the end there were no charges,
but, you know, it's still there in the press, so that's still true.
Basically, the kids were going to go out with Paula,
Michael had arranged it all, he'd rented this house,
everything was going to be great,
he was very excited to have the girls come.
PAULA:
Subtitles by Red Bee Media