MICHAEL CALLED in the first week of 1995.
‘Let’s have dinner at the Ivy. You’d better, because I had to resort to using Helena’s name to get a table,’ he laughed, mocking his relative obscurity in LA. Actually, I sensed, being a nonentity for a change was comforting to him.
The Ivy had drawn a regular roster of A-listers, surrounded by avid paparazzi hovering for their daily scoop, since it opened in 1983. I was hungry, and the Ivy’s fresh, Californian mélange of seafood, fruits, salads and divine desserts was almost as appealing as another chance to see my brother. The gaps between our catch-ups were longer these days, now he was spending so much time in Europe with Helena.
Mother and Ross were in town. They had joined us for Christmas, and they were waiting with Erin, Brent and me at the entrance to the Ivy when Faye Dunaway leapt out of her car. Shoving Ross aside, she called out to the maître d’, ‘Where is my order to go?’
Ross was not in the habit of recognising Hollywood royalty. ‘What a rude woman!’ he proclaimed loudly.
Michael found this extremely amusing when we told him over a satisfying dinner. The atmosphere at the Ivy was casual, the décor pretty: so Californian, really. Helena told us about the photoshoots she was in town to do and Michael seemed content to take a back seat for once. The previous year, in an interview with the South China Morning Post, he had referred to her as ‘the breadwinner of the family’.
After dinner we headed back to the very rock’n’roll Sunset Marquis bar in West Hollywood and settled around a corner table. Helena phoned Kate Moss and then suggested heading off to join her and Johnny Depp at the Viper Room. Michael, on the other hand, was happy to stay put this time. He suggested she take a cab; obviously the Viper was no place for a family get-together. Helena was not overjoyed. The atmosphere changed. Clearly this dilemma was uncomfortable for everyone and, knowing how stressed out Michael got about being a drawbridge between different tribes, I feigned fatigue. I reminded everyone we had a whole week to catch up anyway, and started the exodus.
Actually, it wasn’t at all onerous to go home ‘early’ that night. Something had just happened out of the blue at Christmas time that made the idea of an early night strangely exciting.
By that stage I was a single mother again—Richard and I had parted amicably a year before. Erin was then sixteen and halfway through her junior year at high school. Brent was working his way through college and I was helping as much as I could. I’d been renting for some time.
Mother and Ross arrived on 18 December—and within two days they purchased a luxury penthouse in my name! It was in a threestorey building on tree-lined Riverside Drive, bordering Burbank and Toluca Lake; walking distance from the back gate of Warner Brothers. This was a huge surprise and outrageously generous. We moved in in record time.
Michael had suggested he buy me a home himself in 1988, but I was proud and wanted to be self-reliant. I’d thanked him profusely but turned it down. Perhaps this was why Mother and Ross had more or less ambushed me. I knew how fortunate I was for their incredible gift though, and returned the hospitality other family members had shown us in my new place.
So it was that four nights after our dinner at the Ivy I had a house-warming party. Michael looked relaxed, savouring a Cuban cigar a friend of mine offered him as he sat overlooking the LA skyline, talking about spending more time in California looking for some new roles. I was happy; I loved the idea of having him close.
Michael’s birthday (22 January) was coming up and I was looking forward to a family lunch with him and Helena to celebrate, at the Four Seasons on Doheny, before they left town later that day. Knowing he was serious about acting, I found a copy of the original script for Citizen Kane at one of our little bookshops in Burbank, one that collected used scripts donated by studios, production houses, actors and crew. These often had extra dialogue and scribbled notes on the side, and if you were lucky, a famous name attached. No ‘Orson Wells’ scratched inside this time, but knowing how Michael treasured great film classics, I was sure this historic script would intrigue him anyway.
He arrived, rock-star style, an hour late, minus Helena, looking handsomely dishevelled. He stumbled over words trying to explain her absence before finally admitting that he hadn’t been to bed at all the night before.
‘I was celebrating my 35th by dancing naked on a friend’s coffee table,’ he explained, drawing himself to his full height. ‘You come into the world naked … why not celebrate your birthday the same way?’
Mother and Ross weren’t too sure about this proclamation but Erin and Brent enjoyed it. Michael spotted his old friend Michael Hamlyn in the restaurant and waved. Hamlyn was at the bar with Terence Stamp, lead actor in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which Hamlyn had co-produced. He was consoling Terence for narrowly missing out on the Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical award at the Golden Globes two nights earlier, for his unforgettable take on the poised, witty, tragicomic transsexual Bernadette.
Hamlyn had originally offered Michael the role of estranged husband and father turned drag queen Anthony ‘Tick’ Belrose/Mitzi Del Bra, which eventually went to Hugo Weaving, in Stephan Elliott’s fabulous film. But after numerous meetings and negotiations, Michael had been advised by INXS’s office to turn it down as it would have interfered with their plans. The hit movie’s eventual co-stars Stamp, Weaving and Guy Pearce experienced great career boosts after Priscilla, while still being recognised as serious actors.
Michael very much regretted having to turn down the part. He knew that such a risk-taking, stylish film would probably have been the kind of turning point in his acting career that might now escape him. It was another instance where he felt that INXS’s management had not looked out for him and it smarted. In fact, he was never offered such a good part again. That day he gloomily told me how his longing to surpass his tentative early acting achievements seemed pointless. He felt held to a higher expectation of creative self-denial than the other band members. Rock’n’roll did not marry well with making movies, he sighed, compounding his other frustrations with the band.
But this was his birthday, and Michael wasn’t going to be stuck on a downer. We were there to celebrate as a family, just happy to be spending these last hours together before he and Helena left for Nice, and that’s what we did.
About two weeks later, when Michael was alone at the villa and unable to sleep, he called me. I made a cup of tea and settled in because he wanted to talk about someone new. Paula Yates was a journalist and a British television personality. A terrific mother, he said—and a real wit. He spoke about her daughters and mentioned she’d authored several books on raising children. Suddenly I recalled Rosanna talking about a ‘Paula’ who showed up on tour sometimes. They had known each other ‘for years’. I guessed that Michael had been seeing her covertly for some time.
Publicly, Michael and Helena presented themselves as their usual loving and superbly photogenic selves. But Paula made her own plans and moved out of her marital home with Bob Geldof, taking their three daughters Fifi, Peaches and Pixie and their nanny, Anita. For around three months she and Michael saw each other secretly on and off. Then she proposed a quiet, supposedly secret weekend away. In her book Paula, Michael & Bob: Everything you know is wrong (2003), Paula’s former publicist Gerry Agar wrote that, from her press contacts, she learned that ‘Paula had engineered the initial “discovery” of their relationship to separate Michael from Helena’.
Michael had no idea he’d been set up when he and Paula entered the dining room of the Chilston Park Hotel in Kent, which was heavily sprinkled with members of the tabloid press. When a journalist friend of Paula’s came over to the table, she and Michael immediately returned upstairs to their room, attracting even more attention. Attempting to leave early the following morning, while the inn was surrounded by press, he had an altercation with a photographer who filed assault charges.
Michael, who had been juggling his feelings for both women, had the choice made for him. For all his faults, he just adored women. He was a romantic, but monogamy was not one of his strong points. Mother once asked him why he didn’t settle down and get married and he replied, ‘Because there are too many wonderful women.’ His vision of Bob Geldof was of a controlling ex-husband and father. He had watched our parents’ simmering war for years and the memories of the fallout never left him. (To be fair, he had only heard the story of the Geldof marital breakdown from Paula’s side.)
Soon after the Kent hotel fiasco, Michael began explaining to friends and family how, after his great work fighting famine through Live Aid’s worldwide rock music broadcasts, Geldof exerted enormous influence with the press. Let’s face it; Live Aid catapulted Geldof to international fame, way beyond his fronting Irish rockers The Boomtown Rats.
Sensitive, moody Michael, fearless about experimentation with life itself, but passionate about his private life being kept that way, meets outrageous Paula, with her seemingly unslakable thirst for making headlines. No surprise that the shaken cocktail of these two could be volatile.
Paula Yates was a complicated woman: bright, sharp-witted, seductive and sometimes perverse. She wrote that she’d hated being a child and couldn’t wait to grow up. She was raised by English show-business parents in Colwyn Bay, Wales. Her mother, Hélène Thornton-Bosment, born Elaine Smith, worked as a Bluebell Girls high-kicking, feathered dancer as a teen, and later as a film actress and romance novelist under the name of Heller Toren.
DNA tests would eventually confirm that Hélène conceived Paula, her only child, to Opportunity Knocks television host Hughie Green, weeks after marrying the man her daughter thought was her father, the much older religious television presenter Jess ‘the Bishop’ Yates.
Jess himself had bipolar disorder and was often dosed up on laudanum, Paula wrote. Hélène travelled to pursue movie roles, frequently leaving Paula, as a young girl, in the care of her erratic father, according to her. Paula also claimed she became anorexic at eight, which was also around the same time that Jess Yates left the family for a much younger showgirl. Paula would only discover who her real biological father was after Michael’s death. Needless to say, the double impact was devastating.
Her mother, Hélène, has claimed she never knowingly had sex with Jess Yates’s then friend (later sworn enemy) Hughie at that time, but said Jess liked to spike her drinks—so it is possible Hughie fathered Paula when Hélène was drugged, without her knowing it (in other words, via rape). It sounds like a traumatic family history, no matter how you look at it, much affected by alcohol, drugs, abandonment and psychological problems.
In her 2006 book Big Girls Don’t Cry, Hélène says she now regrets not seeking medical help for what she later believed was Paula’s mental illness.
‘Paula’s problem was Paula’, Hélène told an interviewer from Wales Online, ‘lack of true identity and solid reality and that’s a very difficult thing in life. If Paula hurt a lot of people it’s partly my fault for not having realised that even small children can need a psychiatrist.
‘It was clear then she had behavioural problems,’ Hélène continued. ‘I should have put her into therapy, and I feel very disappointed with myself that I didn’t. I can only plead catastrophic ignorance.’
In a June 1998 interview with the London Sunday Times, Dr Oliver James, a clinical psychologist who worked with Paula Yates on a television series, spoke about her.
‘[Paula] is liable to feel that she does not exist unless she is at the centre of a crisis, which she likes the tabloids to chronicle because they make her feel significant,’ said James. He believed she suffered from borderline personality disorder.
Despite his restless ways, by his mid-thirties perhaps Michael was considering that he might finally be ready to grasp the nettle of fatherhood. Someone who was as enthusiastic about motherhood as Paula appeared to be a good match. Her three bright children were a bonus of a kind no other partner had brought. It seems he fell for all four of them: Paula, Fifi, Peaches and Pixie.
And of course when Tiger Lily arrived, she would change everything.
In many ways, though, Paula was the worst possible partner Michael could have chosen right then. She was a creature of the media, living off it with her columns, television presenting and interviewing roles. Yet the ‘straying’ mother (in the media’s eyes) virtually had a combination of explosives packed around her, whether she liked it or not.
Her abandonment of the widely respected Bob Geldof, father of their three young girls, who was also her employer at the time, was immediately condemned. He had been awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II (being Irish, this was the only type of knighthood he qualified for) as a powerful anti-poverty campaigner. Paula was firmly ejected from her identity as a fun, quirky, flirty mum and recast as a shallow Jezebel. She was fired and furthermore entangled in long, costly legal struggles with her ex over custody of the girls.
Paula’s life then had to be in lock-step with that of the girls’ father, regarding her residence, which had to be London. This trapped Michael in Britain at the mercy of a pernicious and sustained Fleet Street attack. Meanwhile, he was cast as the homewrecker, the upstart colonial stud who would shatter the finest family to put another notch on his belt.
Broadminded as Helena was, she was not going to stand for this humiliation. Their four-year relationship was in tatters and his reputation was in ruins.
The photographs that made the newspapers showed Michael standing over a fallen photographer as Paula dashed to a waiting car. Of course what most people did not know was that while one tag-teaming photographer baited Michael, another stood by waiting to snap his reaction. With his acquired brain injury, Michael’s impulse control was left wanting. He was fairly easy to bait.
From now on the paparazzi would always be lying in wait, ready to hit the bear and make it dance. Thus began Michael’s slow-growing contempt for the British press.
Paula hired Gerry Agar, a publicist both she and Bob had known and considered a friend for many years. Boosting Paula’s image must have been a daunting task at that time. Michael took to calling her ‘Gerry-berry’. Gerry said that Paula planted stories in the tabloids suggesting that she and Michael were about to be married partly as a strategy to keep him.
When Paula sold a story to a magazine or tabloid entity she generally knew when it would be published. Knowing that marriage was something that Michael was quick to deny and also hiding the fact that selling stories was how she now made a living, Paula went to great lengths to make sure Michael did not see the stories she planted, according to Gerry, especially if she was quoted. On one occasion when Nanny Anita was about to take the children for a walk, Michael offered to tag along. This caused some alarm for Paula, who pulled Anita aside and warned her not to allow Michael anywhere near a newsstand.
Paula came across as a successful, independent author living off her royalties. In fact she was massively overdrawn at the bank after losing her television work. It’s understandable that she would want to keep up the facade. Michael probably took her at face value.
It was a difficult balance for Gerry and Anita, though, especially when Paula had Michael’s ear and was so quick on her feet. Gerry soon found herself covering many bases and unwittingly covering for Paula too.
I empathised with Michael. In the past the press had always been on his side and now he found himself at the centre of a painful, confusing scandal. I wonder if Kylie’s forewarnings played in his mind at this time. His physician increased his dosage of Prozac, which he had been taking since 1994.
In May 1995 Michael sent Mother and Ross a brief fax letting them know he had to face court in August for assaulting that journalist. ‘Ah Well!’ he commented.
The house Michael had bought on Smith Terrace, Chelsea, was being extensively renovated, so when Mother and Ross arrived in London in June to meet Paula for the first time, they stayed with Michael in his Belgravia apartment. Paula arrived wearing pink Chanel and a sweet smile. She carried an armful of flowers, a shy young mother sharing anecdotes about her three girls. Mother and Ross were totally captivated and disarmed. They spent the day shopping at Harrods, Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana, where Mother purchased a beautiful pale blue suit. She never suspected that day that two and a half years later she would wear it to her elder son’s funeral.
Mid-afternoon they met up with Anita and the Geldof girls for afternoon tea. Twelve-year-old Fifi was friendly and intelligent and looked most like Bob. Peaches was six at the time, naughtily pushing boundaries and her nanny’s patience on that first meeting. Four-year-old Pixie was so endearing. She told Mother how she had attempted to colour her hair red the night before, in honour of their first meeting, and in fact Mother remarked on the patches of red and blonde. Peaches said that they had been warned to be on their best behaviour. Mother and Ross thought all three were gorgeous, observing Michael’s playful interaction with them as they showed their affection for him.
Throughout their ten-day visit they spent more time with the Geldof girls and Paula, who struck them as quick-witted, bright and attentive. Michael was very relaxed and laughed a lot when she was around. She showed interest in both Mother and Ross and found ways to let them know. For instance, when she saw Mother reading Sarah Miles’ autobiography, she showed up the following day with the author’s latest book. When Ross mentioned that he was addicted to dark chocolate, she excused herself and was back in no time with a beautifully gift-wrapped box of rich dark chocolate. Paula truly won them over.
One night halfway through their visit Michael made reservations at San Lorenzo, his favourite Italian restaurant. He invited his friend Michael Hamlyn and his wife, Sara, and let Paula know he would come by for her at seven. But Paula insisted on meeting them at the restaurant. Michael’s driver had alerted him to photojournalists regularly following them around London but had managed to give them the slip. So far, nothing had been mentioned in the tabloids. Michael was very pleased to have this break, especially as it was family time. That was about to change.
After dinner they stepped outside the restaurant to a blinding flash of lights. Voices behind the cameras yelled questions as they chased them a block to their waiting car. I can’t imagine how frightening and disorienting this would have been for our mother and Ross. Mother said that for the rest of their stay, no matter how secretive they were, how often they changed cars or met up separately, the press was always there.
During the visit, Michael took them to see his house in Chelsea, explaining the renovations that had been done so far and his future plans for the property. He also told them about a house he’d bought on the Gold Coast, not far from where they lived. Colin Diamond had found it for him as he’d been too busy, but he was looking forward to seeing it on his next visit.
Far from being estranged from his mother, as so many uninformed journalists and authors have claimed over the years, Michael sent repeated invitations and requests to spend time with her throughout his life. On this trip she and Ross continued on to Roquefort-les-Pins, where they were joined at the villa by Chris Bailey and, finally, Michael himself. Music filled the house as Chris and Michael spent many hours in the music room. Together the two were hilarious; Mother described this as one of the happiest breaks they’d ever had.
Paula called often, and Michael laughed a lot during their conversations. Nevertheless, Mother worried about the conflicting press coming Michael’s way in direct response to this relationship. She asked Chris about it and he answered, ‘I wouldn’t worry, Patricia, as far as Michael’s concerned, this thing with Paula is nothing serious.’
After the seduction period cooled down, Michael shared with me how Paula told him how much her children adored him; that they had never responded so lovingly to a man before. Gradually his sense of responsibility towards Fifi, Peaches and Pixie grew.
While staying on the Gold Coast with Mother and Ross in August 1995, Michael expressed a desire to see his house at 15 La Spezia Court nearby, on the Gold Coast’s Isle of Capri, set among artificial canals. Diamond had described a house in disrepair but having potential. He said they couldn’t ask much in rental until it was fixed up. All of this surprised Mother; she had driven by the waterfront property that spanned three house blocks. It was big and seemed to be well cared for. Michael had paid $1 million, with a Bentley thrown into the deal for him as well.
After escaping some of the bitter English winter in Queensland, alas Michael returned to London just days before Rhett and Mandy’s little Zoe Angel was born. Michael was thrilled to be made an uncle.
In late November, there was news of an impending birth much closer to home. Paula told Michael she was pregnant with his child. He jumped on a flight to Los Angeles to think about it. Then he returned to London a few days later with gifts for everyone. He did not immediately share the news with the whole family.
In December 1995, Michael and Paula arrived on the Gold Coast for a visit with Mother and Ross. The Geldof girls would enjoy Christmas with Bob in London, and then their father would put them on a flight to spend ten days in the Australian sunshine.
Michael had always been really intrigued by Ross’s stories and medals from his life in the Royal Australian Air Force, so Ross arranged a flight in a Tiger Moth for the two of them. The following Christmas Michael gave Ross silver Tiger Moth cufflinks to show his appreciation.
Michael made the plans for Christmas dinner himself. He wanted it served in a private room at the Hyatt where they were staying in Sydney. Every detail was pivotal to him, as he planned to announce Paula’s pregnancy to the family. It was quite a surprise to all, especially as her divorce from Bob was not yet final.
Then Bob called Paula to tell her that Peaches was ill, so he was keeping all three girls in London beyond Christmas. Naturally she felt torn: Michael had rented a beautiful home in Palm Beach in preparation for the children’s visit, and now she would be in chilly London for New Year’s Eve without Michael. But a mother’s instinct is to be near her children, especially if one is ill.