Paula Yates

Jess Yates and Elaine Smith were married from 1958 to 1975.

Jess Yates was 19 years older than his wife, and their marriage was unconventional.

Yates described her childhood as lonely and isolated; her mother, she claimed, was absent for much of her upbringing.

She attended a village primary school, Penrhos College, and Ysgol Aberconwy.

The Yates family ran the Deganwy Castle Hotel for a time, before moving to a house near Conwy.

Paula Elizabeth Yates (24 April 1959 – 17 September 2000) was a British television presenter and writer.

Yates is best known for her work on two television programmes, The Tube and The Big Breakfast.

She was subjected to intense media attention and scrutiny, owing to her popularity and her relationships with musicians Bob Geldof and Michael Hutchence.

Born on 24 April 1959 in Colwyn Bay, Wales, to English parents, Yates was brought up in a show business family.

Her mother was Elaine Smith, a former showgirl, actress, and writer of erotic novels from Blackpool, who used the stage name Heller Toren.

After the break-up of her parents' marriage in 1975, Yates lived mostly with her mother despite having a closer relationship with her father, and also had periods in Malta and Mallorca where she was a pupil at Bellver International College, before returning to Britain.

They began a romantic relationship in 1976 when she flew to Paris to surprise him while the band was playing there.

In 1979, Yates began her career as a music journalist with a column called "Natural Blonde" in the Record Mirror, shortly after posing for Penthouse magazine.

She first came to prominence in the 1980s, as co-presenter (with Jools Holland) of the Channel 4 pop music programme The Tube, having been a minor co-host of BBC TV chat shows with presenter Terry Wogan.

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).

After the birth of her daughters, Yates wrote two books on motherhood.

She continued with her rock journalism, in addition to being presenter of the cutting-edge music show The Tube.

Yates became known for her "on the bed" interviews on the show The Big Breakfast, produced by her husband, Bob Geldof.

She casually asked the questions she felt people really wanted the answers to: "Is it true you had an affair with Prince?"

(to Kylie Minogue) — and persuaded Sting to take his trousers off live on air.

Their first daughter, Fifi, was born in 1983.

In 1985, Yates met INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence while interviewing him for Channel 4's rock magazine programme The Tube.

During this appearance on The Tube, Yates was reportedly asked to leave Hutchence alone by the road manager of INXS when she walked up to him and said, "I'm going to have that boy [Hutchence]".

Yates was unmoved by the manager's request and began to show up at INXS gigs everywhere for the next few years, even taking her young daughter Fifi along.

After ten years together, Yates and Geldof married on 31 August 1986 in Las Vegas, with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran acting as best man.

She also appeared alongside her friend Jennifer Saunders in 1987 for a spoof documentary on pop group Bananarama.

The couple then had two more daughters, Peaches on 13 March 1989, and Pixie on 17 September 1990.

Whilst married to Geldof, Yates had a year-long affair with American singer Terence Trent D'Arby.

She had a six-year long affair with actor Rupert Everett.

Yates maintained irregular contact with Hutchence during the intervening nine years and their affair had been under way for some months before their Big Breakfast interview in October 1994.

Geldof and Yates divorced in May 1996.

On 22 July 1996, Yates gave birth to a daughter, Tiger Lily.

Up until 1997, Yates believed her biological father to be Jess Yates, who hosted the ITV religious programme Stars on Sunday.

A DNA test in that year revealed that her biological father was game show host Hughie Green.

On 22 November 1997, Hutchence was found dead in a hotel room in Sydney.

The official verdict into his death said that he committed suicide by hanging.

Yates wrote in her police statement that Hutchence was "frightened and couldn't stand a minute more without his baby".

During their phone conversations on the morning of his suicide, he had said, "I don't know how I'll live without Tiger".

At the time of her death in 2000, Yates was working on a book titled Sex and Death, writing about her life from the moment she visited Hutchence's body in the morgue.

Yates met Geldof in the early days of the Boomtown Rats.