Paula Yates died of a drug overdose in 2000. Months earlier, she'd been sent her own obituary.

Paula Yates was a British journalist and TV host, best known for her relationship with Michael Hutchence and her death from a drug overdose aged just 41.

But a new two-part documentary called Paula, currently airing on Channel Four in the UK, is reminding viewers of Yates' rollercoaster life beyond the salacious headlines - her unique style, smarts and flirty on-screen persona, and her deeply troubling treatment by certain parts of the media.

Yates' celebrity status and tumultuous personal life, meant that she was often interchangeable with British royalty for tabloid fodder in the '80s and '90s. So much so that Princess Diana reportedly once told Yates, “I love it when you are on the front page of the paper, it means I’ve got the day off.”

Growing up in an unconventional 'showbiz' family in North Wales, amidst stints on the islands of Mallorca and Malta, Yates describes her upbringing in her 1995 autobiography as "living in squalor". Her mother, Elaine Smith, was an erotic fiction writer, former beauty queen and actress who lead Yates to believe that her father was Jess Yates, the host of a religious TV show. 

Yates left the quiet life of her teenage years in North Wales behind and joined the punk scene of late '70s London, becoming an instant 'it girl' with her elfish good looks and white blonde hair. She began working as a music journalist with a column in the Record Mirror called 'Natural Blonde' and posed nude for penthouse magazine.

While she loved music, she also loved being a groupie and in 1977, at just 18 years old, Yates flew to Paris to watch Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof perform.

"I can’t imagine me going out with anyone who couldn’t fill a stadium,” Yates said in an interview with journalist Martin Townsend, aired in Paula.

Paula Yates with Bob Geldof in 1985. Image: Getty.

In 1983, the frequently photographed couple had their first daughter together, Fifi Trixibelle. They married in Las Vegas in 1986, with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran as best man, and in 1989 they continued their trend for quirky names with second daughter Peaches Honeyblossom, followed by Little Pixie, born in 1990.

While Geldof and Yates remained together as the darlings of London's music scene for almost two decades, behind the scenes, all was not well with their relationship.

Rumours swirled about Geldof having affairs and it seems the pair may have had different expectations about the role that passion played in their marriage. 

“To live your life in a state of passion would be tedious because everything is distorted,” Geldof once said in an interview. “Sexual passion burns out.”

Yates began co-hosting the late night music show The Tube on Channel Four with Jools Holland in 1982 and her signature cheeky and off-the-cuff style disarmed both the musicians and the viewers at home. 

She first met and interviewed INXS frontman Michael Hutchence in 1985, referring to him as "the sexiest man on earth".

"My Michael Hutchence interview was one of the pinnacles of my career on The Tube," Yates said in a piece to camera before it cut to the INXS performance.

"Mainly because I interviewed Michael's crotch. And at the end of it he asked me back to his hotel room, and I said, 'I'm sorry Michael, I've got a baby!'"

At the time, according to Anthony Bozza in INXS Story to Story: The Official Autobiography, Yates walked up to the road manager of INXS and told him, "I'm going to have that boy."

The road manager told Yates to leave Hutchence alone, but she was undeterred.

"He was so breathtakingly beautiful it made me feel quite feeble," Yates later said of their first meeting. 

It was nearly a decade before they met again and confirmed that their attraction was mutual.

In between juggling motherhood with her three beloved daughters and writing two books about raising toddlers, Yates began another high-profile presenting gig, this time as a celebrity interviewer on UK breakfast show, The Big Breakfast.

Set in a real house in London, Paula interviewed her guests in an upstairs bedroom on an actual bed. Her flirty line of questioning, with everyone from Bon Jovi to Kylie Minogue, once again made her a household name as up to two million viewers tuned in each day.

In October 1994, Yates interviewed the "sexiest man on earth" all over again and the on-screen chemistry between the pair, as they lay entwined on the Big Breakfast bed, talking about Hutchence's love life, was impossible to deny. At the time, Hutchence was dating supermodel Helena Christensen.

Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence with Paula's children. Image: Getty.

Just four months later, Yates and Hutchence left their respective partners to be together and the tabloid interest in them peaked, resulting in Hutchence taking a swing at a photographer while the couple were surrounded by press at a restaurant.

In May 1996, Yates finalised her divorce from Geldof and on July 22 of the same year, Yates and Hutchence welcomed their only daughter together - Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence.

Just a few months after Tiger Lily was born, a nanny discovered a tube of lollies that contained opium and heroin under the couple's bed. The couple claimed that the tube had been planted, but the next month, Geldof gained custody of Fifi, Peaches and Pixie as Hutchence returned to Australia.

The forced separation from Yates and his daughter significantly affected Hutchence's downward spiral. 

Yates desperately wanted to join him but Geldof wouldn't allow her to travel overseas with his three girls and she worried about what this decision would do to Hutchence.

“Bob decided against letting the girls go to Australia and so we had to go back into court, and then I couldn’t get to Australia unless I left my girls behind,” Yates told OK!.

“Michael hated to be away from us. Absolutely. Found it almost unbearable," she said.

“I think it was a crushing disappointment when I rang him and told him. And it’s funny because I left the court, and I turned to my barrister and I said, ‘This will kill Michael.'”

On November 22, 1997, Hutchence ended his own life in a hotel room in Sydney. The rock star was only 37 years old and his daughter, Tiger Lily, was just 16 months.

After learning of Hutchence's death, Yates and Tiger Lily got straight on a plane to be with him.

"I spent a long time with him. I just kept trying to look after him. [Tiger] talked to him. It was the most private time I'll ever have with Michael, ever. I would have taken him home with me. But it's all so strange because your automatic reaction is to want to make it better and you can't make it better; you can't do anything. The powerlessness is just unimaginable," she said in an interview with the Australian Women's Weekly in 1998.

Yates refused to believe Hutchence had taken his own life, saying instead that his death was accidental.

“I won’t have my child grow up thinking that her father left her,” she said.

“He would not have left our baby, he loved her too much.”

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Instead, Yates labelled Geldof "a killer" after it came out that Hutchence had died after calling to plead with him over the ongoing custody battle.

Of the intense grief after his death, Yates said, "When Michael died, I was tipped over the edge. I was beyond grief. I went completely mad.

"Now I'm starting, relatively, to think straight again. I live one day at a time, one hour at a time. What makes it all worthwhile is my children."

While she always loved her four girls, Yates continued to deal with devastating grief and mental health issues, eventually resulting in her admission to a psychiatric facility.

Her rapid decline and reported relationship with a drug addict led to more custody battles, this time for Tiger Lily with Hutchence’s father, Kell.

It was also around this time that Yates discovered that the man she had referred to as her father was not her biological dad. The identity of her real father, revealed by a DNA test, was talent show host Hughie Green, who had sadly died only months before she had the chance to talk with him.

While the layers of trauma continued to pile on an already unwell Yates, the ferocious tabloid stalking, media shaming and nasty headlines about her life continued. 

Footage in part one of Paula shows Yates as a guest on a British TV panel show in 1996. It makes for uncomfortable watching in 2023, as the four male commentators repeatedly mock her work and her 'plastic breasts' while she pleads with them to stop.

"The subject of whether or not Yates had undergone breast enlargement surgery was broached over and over, to the point of both her and the audience’s discomfort," Charley Ross writes in Grazia about the old footage.

"Even though she was clearly not happy about this and she asked her interviewers to stop, suggestions were then made that her autobiography was 'rubbish', along with other undermining comments about her work."

Paula Yates. Image: Getty.

In one of the most tragic revelations to come out of Paula, Yates reveals first-hand how she felt the "world was waiting for her to die" and that a journalist even accidentally sent the star her own obituary.

"Everyone is waiting for you to die," Yates reflected on the chilling error, adding that, "they even had the perfect headline: 'Suicide Blonde.'''

Andrea Wonfor, a colleague who knew Yates from her days on The Tube said in an 2000 interview with The Guardian that she was a "fragile creature".  

"There was a culmination of the madness that overtook her with Michael's death and the change of her father. She probably never grew up and maybe that was to do with her difficult childhood; she needed an arm around her a lot."

Yates was found dead in her London home on September 17, 2000 - the same day her daughter Pixie turned 10.

The coroner, Paul Knapman, confirmed at the inquest into her death that Yates had died of "non-dependent use of drugs" and that Yates had not taken her life; rather, her death resulted from her being "an unsophisticated taker of heroin".

After Yates' untimely death, Tiger Lily lived with Geldof and her three big sisters, out of the media spotlight, before moving back to Western Australia to be closer to Hutchence's family.

In 2014, tragedy struck the family once more when Peaches Geldof died of a heroin overdose whilst at home. She was just 25 years old.

The day before Geldof died in chillingly similar circumstances to her mother, she posted a photo to her Instagram of herself as a young child with Yates, captioned simply, "Me and mum."

An incredibly tragic end for both mother and daughter.

If you need help in a crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. For further information about depression contact beyondblue on 1300224636 or talk to your GP, local health professional or someone you trust.

For more on this topic:

• "He was a broken man." Inside Kylie Minogue's intense relationship with Michael Hutchence.
• Michael Hutchence was coward-punched a few years before his death. He was never the same.
• 'Only three things could've happened that day.' Inside the mysterious death of Michael Hutchence.

Laura Jackel is Mamamia's Family Writer. For links to her articles and to see photos of her outfits and kids, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

Feature Image: Getty.