Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of suicide and substance abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
British TV presenter Paula Yates and INXS singer Michael Hutchence first met during an interview for The Tube in 1985. Yates was a presenter on the Channel 4 show alongside Jools Holland and was a married mother of three. However, she was unhappy with her husband, Bob Geldof, and had multiple affairs throughout her decades-long marriage. One such drug-fueled affair was with Huctehence.
A Channel 4 documentary titled Paula chronicles Yates’ successful yet controversial life, marriage to Bob Geldof, and her affair with Michael Hutchence. The two-part series comprises never-before-seen interviews and revisits her tragic demise from a drug overdose two years after Hutchence’s suicide. Yates and Hutchence also had a daughter in 1996, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof.
What happened between Paula Yates & Michael Hutchence?
According to The Evening Standard, Paula Yates had a troubled childhood in a broken home and later wrote about it in an autobiography. Yates’ professional career began as a columnist for The Record Mirror. She subsequently garnered prominence as a TV show host in the 80s, including Channel 4’s The Tube alongside Jools Holland. Around the time, she also released a cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’,” appeared in a documentary, and published two books on motherhood.
Yates’ then married Irish singer Bob Geldof in 1986, a decade after their first meeting. Following this, she embarked on her most prominent TV gig, The Big Breakfast, where her husband Geldof was a producer. However, their marriage was tumultuous, and Yates, who was “desperately, desperately, unhappy,” wanted “to leave,” claimed her former PR Gerry Agar Fennell. However, Fennell alleged that “she couldn’t just leave on her own merit.”
Paula Yates had multiple affairs during her 20-year marriage with Bob Geldof, including the controversial one with Michael Hutchence. Yates and Hutchence first met in 1985 during his interview on The Tube and started showing up at INXS gigs. Reportedly, while their affair remained out of the public eye, Yates left Geldof in February 1995. Their divorce only got finalized around the time she was pregnant with Hutchence’s daughter.
Yates and Hutchence’s affair, however, caused the former to spiral into drugs, and she tried to fit into her partner’s lifestyle. She got involved in drugs and booze and, at some point, “got more trapped into heroin than he [Hutchence] did,” claimed Fennell.
Hutchence later got into an accident following which he started relying on Prozac and extreme sexual practices addiction. His friend Ever Richard Lowenstein claimed he saw signs of “depression, erratic behaviour or violent temper” in him. Lowenstein believed the accident caused a “slow decline” in Hutchence’s life.
Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates’ daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof, was born in 1996. Three months later, the nanny found drugs in their household, and on November 22, 1997, Michel Hutchence died by suicide. His death occurred in Syndey’s Ritz Carlton, and a subsequent autopsy revealed he had cocaine, alcohol, and Prozac in his blood.
Contrary to the coroner’s claims of suicide, Yates and Hutchence’s family believed he died of auto-erotic asphyxiation. This happens due to a lack of oxygen in the brain when a heightened sexual experience goes wrong.
Following Michael Hutchence’s death, Paula Yates suffered from depression and went to a psychiatric facility. She also lost custody of her daughters to her former husband, Bob Geldof, and also completed a stint in rehab. Yates eventually returned to her home in Chelsea and developed agoraphobia and OCD. She tragically died in September 2000.
Paula Yates’ cause of death was a heroin overdose. Years later, in 2014, one of her daughters, Peaches, died under similar circumstances.
