Rock Stars in Their Underpants

Product Information

Yates’s interviews with pop stars on the bed in The Big Breakfast are the stuff of entertainment legend. Anarchic yet seductive, she snuggled up to a string of stars and coaxed their secrets from them. It’s hard to imagine anything like it featuring in the more sanitised breakfast television landscape today. Brewin says a celebrity like her wouldn’t exist today “because everyone’s so serious and vain”. When Yates took the heroin that killed her, it was the first time she had used illegal drugs in almost two years In a review for Paula, Lucy Mangan, writing for The Guardian, hailed the documentary as "a glorious celebration of the most witty, flirty woman to ever grace our TVs" and gave the show 4/5 stars. [42] [43] Carol Midgeley, writing for The Times, also gave the documentary 4/5 stars, opining that Yates was a "fizzling force of nature". [44] Gerard Gilbert, writing for the newspaper I, rated the documentary 3/5 stars, adding that he "was left with a tragic sense that Yates’s untimely death robbed us of an intriguing second act". [45]

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). [7]

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. [24]

She was devastated when Hutchence was found hanged by his belt in a hotel room in Sydney in November 1997. She refused to accept the inquest verdict of suicide, insisting that Hutchence must have died when a sexual game of autoerotic asphyxiation went wrong. Meanwhile, following the startling public revelation of Yates's true paternity in May 1997, DNA tests confirmed that Hughie Green was her real father, although she had been conceived within weeks of her mother's marriage to Jess. As one friend observed at the time: "In the space of a month, Paula has lost her future, and her past." Whilst married to Geldof, Yates had a year-long affair with American singer Terence Trent D'Arby. [13] [14] She had a six-year long affair with actor Rupert Everett. [15] [16] She also had an affair with Michael Hutchence of INXS, which finally led to the divorce between Paula and Bob. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth

Paula Yates, the enigmatic television presenter and writer, rose to prominence as a music journalist with a column called ‘Natural Blonde’ before going on to present Channel 4 music show The Tube alongside Jools Holland. This book of Polaroid photos from 1980 is splendid. It’s a bit short on words but if I’m honest I didn’t buy it for the words. That said, Paul Gambaccini, Peter Cook and Paula Yates write amusing introductions. Yates and Hutchence's daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily was born in August 1996. Yates was said to be gloriously happy with her new life, but her relationship with Geldof remained acrimonious and, following her arrest for alleged drug offences two months later, he won temporary custody of their three children. Yates said later that she felt like the victim of a witch hunt: "Bob is still perceived as St Bob, and me as his wayward wife."

Silverman, Rosa (13 March 2023). "Paula Yates: the untold story by the woman who knew her best". The Telegraph . Retrieved 14 March 2023.Satrkey, Arun (23 March 2022). "The star-crossed relationship of Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates". Far Out Magazine . Retrieved 14 March 2023. These things are not even easy to deal with in private, so having to go through something like that in the public eye would be more traumatic. Whether she was a stable person or not, I can't say. But I suspect she was not.'' In 1992, she moved from night to daytime television, and began presenting Channel 4's Big Breakfast show, made by Geldof's production company, Planet 24. It was her speciality to conduct celebrity interviews from a bed, and it was there that she met the Australian musician Michael Hutchence, then lead singer with the band INXS, whom she described as "God's gift to women". In a blaze of tabloid publicity, she left Geldof for Hutchence a year later, and in 1996, amidst an even bigger blaze of tabloid publicity, the couple were divorced.