Paula Yates’ tragic final years after Michael Hutchence’s death

Paula Yates’ final years were blighted in misery as she endured a succession of heartbreaks before her untimely death, starting with the suicide of her beloved Michael Hutchence.

She first shot to fame as the bubbly blonde presenter of Channel 4 show the Tube where she caught the eye of Sir Bob Geldolf.

The pair became a showbiz power couple, later marrying and having three uniquely named children; Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom and Little Pixie.

But in 1995 the loving family was torn apart with Paula making headlines for leaving Bob for heartthrob INXS rocker Michael Hutchence.

The move came after viewers clocked their bubbling sexually chemistry on The Big Breakfast with a lusty Paula opening with a gag about Michael’s ‘tackle troubling trousers.’

The duo continued to flirt wildly with one another with Paula giggling uncontrollably as Michael gazed into her eyes, with their legs entwined on a bed throughout.

Their attraction was undeniable and bound to have been uncomfortable viewing for Paula’s husband Bob, who she decided to leave shortly after.

Paula later gave birth to daughter Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily by Michael, but just 14 months later the rock star was found hanged by his belt in a Sydney hotel room.

A devastated Paula refused to accept the coroner’s verdict that Michael’s death had been suicide.

“I won’t have my child grow up thinking that her father left her. He would not have left our baby, he loved her too much,” protested Paula, who insisted the death was an act of auto-eroticism gone wrong.

“I spent so long waiting for Michael and then he died. Now I have to spend so long waiting for him again,” she sobbed.

But Paula’s longing to be with her lover was over just three years later when she died from a fatal drug overdose.

And her final years were far from happy.

While she was still reeling from Michael’s death, Paula faced more turmoil when it was revealed her biological father was not the TV star Jess Yates as she had grown up believing, but the host of Opportunity Knocks Hughie Green.

The news was revealed in the press six months after Green died, denying Paula the chance to speak with him.

A year later Paula lost joint custody of her three daughters with Bob Geldof, when the Boomtown Rats singer applied for full access.

Bob looked after the girls during school term time with Paula allowed to see them during the holidays only.

She then faced another custody battle over her youngest daughter Tiger Lily, from her relationship with Hutchence.

The child’s paternal grandather Kell Hutchence launched proceedings in Australia to seek sole custody after he raised concerns about Paula’s lifestyle.

Amid the ongoing chaos in her personal life, Paula suffered a nervous breakdown and sought treatment at a specialised clinic.

During her stay she formed a romantic relationship with a fellow patient who sold his story to a tabloid newspaper after they broke up.

On 17 September 2000 on her daughter Pixie’s tenth birthday and three years after the death of her Michael Hutchence, Paula died at her home in Notting Hill after a heroine binge.

She had returned to west London following a short break in Hastings to clear her head.

One of the last people to see her alive was a former heron addict she befriended during a stint at the Priory.

Belinda Brewin later said she knew instantly that Paula had been taking drugs when she saw her.

“She was slightly staggering, her eyelids were drooping, she was slightly incoherent,” she told the inquest into her friend’s death.

“I said, ‘What the hell are you doing this for after all this time?’ She hadn’t taken drugs, illegal drugs, for nearly two years. She said it was the pressure of being back in London.”

Belinda then bathed Paula, who had vomited, before leaving her in a ‘coherent’ state along with then four-year-old daughter Tiger Lily.

Unbeknown to Belinda, Charlotte Korshak, a former heroin addict, was upstairs in Paula’s house throughout the visit.

Korshak told the inquest that Paula had taken heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and acid ‘from time to time’ but she left her house after Belinda with Paula in a ‘really good mood’.

Paula’s body was later found by her long term-friend Josephine Fairley Sams.

Josephine had become concerned when she called the house three times before Tiger Lily answered and told her that her mummy was asleep.

Concerned, Josephine rushed round to Paula’s house and had to ask Tiger Lily to let her in. As soon as she saw 41-year-old Paula, she knew instantly that her friend was dead.

She said: “She was naked, half in and half out of the bed and a very strange colour for a human being.”

At an inquest into her death revealed Paula died from a ‘foolish and incautious’ binge.

Coroner Paul Knapman said the amount she snorted would not have killed an addict but as an ‘unsophisticated taker of heroin’ Paula had no tolerance to the drug.