Peaches Geldof and the Geldof family #3

[Make It Stop]

I think Helena and Kylie were MH’s type originally as he seemed to like nice, calm, intelligent, hard working, stable women. His non famous ex girlfriends were similar nature - mature, kind, calm etc, none of them would give MH the dramatic nagging, complaining type of shit and they all adored him in a puppy love type way, even after breaking up had no bad feelings towards him. The OG MH sounds fun, sweet and he did like art and poetry a lot I don’t think he was dim he was very shy.

The later years MH had become very depressed and although he did seek some help, I don’t think it was really working as he kept taking drugs. The documentaries and books said he tried therapy but the Bob situation made him angry. He was worried about INXS as when britpop started, his band was no longer trendy and he was competing against oasis. He wasn’t even being that nice to his band mates.

Paula should have just flown to Aus with TL and left the older girls in school. Bob had to get an emergency custody hearing at Christmas to stop her, so this IMO was always on Paula for making bad decisions and she should not have promised this to MH. Paula wanted to recreate this new big magical family with MH and I don’t blame BG for feeling like he was being written out, especially when he was the one providing the stability for his kids. Fifi didn’t even seem to want to go, judging by what she’s said so I have no clue why Paula was trying to drag her along. Paula made those girls life 10,000 harder by so many of the things she did, the divorce was horrible because she chose to make it so.

here is some of the info from that time which is v interesting. She was a spend thrift who threw a rock through the window of her own house

https://www.thefreelibrary.com/COUR...+It+was+the+worst+8+hours+of+my...-a061315867

she ended up having To build a terrible fence around this house which made MH more depressed cos it blocked out All the light. The press wouldn’t leave them alone here



View attachment 2046554

That fence although ugly doesn’t seem high enough to block out the natural light. Micheal sounds like a bit of a whinger.

 

[Rubydoo70]

My aunty worked in the law firm that handled patsy kensits divorce. She often popped to the toilet and came out with a very dusty nose apparently... make of that what you will.

To be fair I’d probably have ended up on the coke if I’d been married to Liam
I should have added I suppose it depended on which Hubby she was divorcing at the time.

 

[cee-bee]

I’ve looked around and most things say Paula was 18 when she met Bob. Paula herself says she was obsessed with him and followed him around until he finally gave in and got with her. I have to say though, Paula did do well in her own career and probably better than Bob himself ever did. He made money from investments but not through talent or charisma like Paula did actually working. I wonder if he resented her, he seemed to want her to be more like a stay home mum which must have been very boring for an outgoing Paula. Paula chasing around a commitment phobic Bob who was reluctant to marry her is quite a sad concept. In the 80’s and 90’s she was so beautiful and had the world at her feet. I am not sure I buy into Bob taking advantage of Paula - she moved to London on her own when she was 16.

Is 18 and 26 really that gross, both are young adults?

Yes Paula started off as a music journalist and became obsessed with Bob as she was a boomtown rats fan. She followed him around and turned up to gigs until he relented and began a relationship with her, much like she did later with MH. She also passively aggressively pursued for marriage (with both, I think) . The age gap is definitely weird and Paula was most certainly looking for a male “father figure” to compensate for the lack in her own life and provide the stability she never had.

paula got a lot of her gigs through Bob. She’d done a bit of low level journalism and posed for penthouse, but after she started dating Bob in 1976, it was Bob who introduced her to that music scene and to a lot of celeb colleagues. He introduced her to the likes of Bono, Bowie, midge ure. These connections made her a good candidate for presenting The Tube In 1982. I don’t think Paula was a particularly good presenter. I found her very grating and the show was popular and worked because it had such a good concept.

it’s worth remembering that Bob himselfwas incredibly well connected and he’s pretty industrious in TV production. It’s a combination of both those things that enabled him to be able to launch live aid, influence a ton of huge stars to participate and then engineer the TV broadcast 1984.

Bob Geldof also produced the big breakfast, which is how she got her gig there.

paula made the most of a lot of opportunities that came her way, but it’s undoubtedly Bob who have her access to those opportunities and facilitated a lot of them. Cast and crew are hardly going to turn around and tell the producer they won’t cast his wife in a presenting slot.

I think Bob actually brought a lot to Paula’s life, a degree of stability plus he facilitated her career. Though I’ve no doubt their relationship had a lot of issues (including cheating on both sides) it does seem like things spiralled out of control for Paula after they broke up. Financially she was worse off, her career was drying up, she’d lost that stability and support that comes from a reliable long term partner and she descended into drug abuse.

I can sympathise because she got with Bob very young and although stable and safe relationships serve a purpose, there needs to be an element of romance and sexual chemistry there I think to make it fit the distance.

Through her family (and dad) Peaches was also thrown many opportunities her way in a similar vein as her mother, she just didn’t seem to appreciate or leverage them much, and absolutely squandered her life which is incredible sad.
---

I met my children’s father when I was 19 and he was 26 and I didn’t feel like he was a grooming predator!

that’s great for you, but the vast majority of 26 yr olds who date teens… do it for a reason and it’s never good.

 

[HotesTilaire]

When Paula left Bob for Michael it was all over the press and back in the mid 90s before a million channels and streaming services you couldn’t really avoid it. It was fascinating in a car crash kind of way. I remember how shocked I was when Michael died. It’s weird I wasn’t a fan of his but I can remember exactly where I was when I heard. I guess it’s because it was so unexpected. When Paula died I wasn’t surprised and in all honesty didn’t feel much sympathy for her at the time as I just saw her as someone who was shockingly selfish who had prioritised a man and drugs in front of caring for her kids. I thought Peaches was a precocious brat but I was really sad when she died in such a similar way to her Mum as I thought of how young she was when her Mum died and how damaging it must have been.

I think exploring toxic relationship dynamics fascinates a lot of people, often because they are trying to make sense of their own experiences.

I am not sure that I agree that Michael was a dark character. It seems that people always spoke very highly of him and that his brain damage really changed who he was. The talk of the dark sex stuff came from Paula and I think she was constantly trying to prove to everyone how amazing and unique their love and sex life was. I take all that stuff with a bucket full of salt.

I liked the theory someone posted about Paula putting the sex stuff out there to send a message to other women and ex’s. Interesting view Point, like she’s marking her territory.
There’s hot men I’d fancy a chance with but not if Ihad to have seafood up my chuff or sedate myself! Surely that would also put women who didn’t yet know him, right off.

 

[cee-bee]

I’m not sure Tiger would have been placed by a court at 4 after being with her dead mother and previously had her father die, with a family (Bob and Jeanne) who were hands off and distant. She was fought over and they would have had to assess things very carefully. They are notoriously private but everything I saw of him posted by the girls was loving and close and they stayed with him regularly at his countryside home. So just because someone doesn’t court media to prove they are present, doesn’t necessarily mean they are not,

this is true, but a court factors in other things beyond how “loving” and affectionate a carer is.

for one, staying with Bob meant tiger would be raised with her sisters, thus ensuring some continuity. She would stay in the U.K. in familiar surroundings. Further, some of tiger Lily’s blood relatives on the Hurchence side (namely her paternal grandparents), felt she was better off staying with her sisters in the U.K. and supported Bob, which would’ve been pretty compelling.

the other option was to release her to family in Australia, a half sister of Michael Hutchence, which meant having a child leave the U.K. jurisdiction (risky) to be with people she wasn’t as familiar with, in an unfamiliar environment. There was also concerns that Michael’s half sister was seeking custody in the hope of gaining access to any of Tiger’s potential inheritance.

Bob was the lesser of two evils, I always thought. Maybe he is a loving and present father though. Ultimately you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

 

[GeminiMoon]

Courtney Love posted about this documentary- she said many were reluctant to get on board, which might explain why the talking heads were quite random.

 

[Observ@h]

In my view Paula was a groupie in a similar vein to Patsy Kensit and Sadie Frost - the MO is to get with a famous and wealthy man and make sure you have a baby, then they are connected to you for life. To be fair she was with Bob for a long time and he probably wasn’t the easiest person to live with, they built a family together. But I think when she tried the same with Michael it was too much for him, being a father was perhaps too emotionally destabilising and he couldn’t move on when he wanted to as easily as he’d been able to before. He didn’t seem to fall out with any exes but leaving the mother of your child would be a different thing all together. Pure speculation on my part.

I am in my 50s and Paula was before my time, or perhaps I was a bit unsophisticated and didn’t see her in her early days. I remember her flat voice, people always said how intelligent she was but it didn’t come across on The Tube. I wonder why they are bringing her up again now….She may have been very manipulative and sexualised but also perhaps as a product of her times, to get ahead in that world it was all she had that she could use. Perhaps she was strongly drawn to motherhood even though she wasn’t mature or unselfish enough, because her own childhood was so awful.

I think Sir Bob has some strong connection with Channel 4, his production company made The Big Breakfast or something, Paula certainly didn’t go for an open audition to get her interviewer role. Although what a previous poster said is also true, C4 have a track record in profiling women that we see differently out of their time.

 

[Serene Serena]

I remember reading about how she jumped on a plane to Paris wearing a ball gown, in her pursuit of Bob Geldof and I wondered how she managed to fund that kind of lifestyle at the age she was. I guess she had a healthy allowance from her parents? At her age, I could barely afford the coach fare into London!

 

[FrannyGallops]

In her defence her mum and dad were dreadful, she didn’t have a stable loving upbringing, her mum left her with her dad who was mentally unstable. A lot of her attention seeking behaviour came from that. And then to find out he wasn’t actually her biological dad! To be fair her mum was a terrible woman who should never have had a child. Paula I think tried to give her kids the childhood she didn’t have but was too damaged to do it. Bob was very controlling, I think eventually she just had enough.

I agree with all of this. And she idolised Jess Yates only to find out he wasn’t her real dad as you say.

Paula might have been a better parent and less egocentric if she had undergone intensive therapy with regard to childhood trauma, before having children of her own. She didn't recognise how damaged she was though, I don't think anyone did.

Agree with this also, but I also have to say that childhood trauma like the kind Paula experienced wasn’t widely recognised as such back then. You were just kind of expected to get on with on it. I don’t think the kind of therapy she needed even existed back then in the form it does today.

 

[Serene Serena]

Yes I think she did see it as something romantic in a 'no one understands my pain/genius/needs 'way. Thomas must have been in despair that she was obsessed with him when she was an addict who said she was getting clean and had a husband and 2 tiny children. Especially when she spent her time pretending to be an earth mother on TV. It must have been very difficult to live with.

I used to know a woman who was obsessed with Percy Bysse Shelley, the poet, who died aged 29 of drowning. She was convinced she would have been his muse and would have saved his life. Very strange, unhealthy behaviour. For her, it was a form of escapism - she was a carer for her elderly parents and it got her through the day.

 

[LoopyLou47]

Yes. Peaches also put out there that she was a hippy earth mother who loved attachment parenting when she was addicted to heroin and her babies spent time away from her regularly. Both were putting the persona out there they wanted to be but that doesn't mean it was really what they were doing.

Yes I think it's what they wanted to be seen as rather than what they were actually like. It was all fake. You can't ' attachment parent' safely if you are on drugs, or sleep with your baby in bed, as they both said they did.

 

[cee-bee]

Bob cheated on Paula too though didn’t he? He just never left the marriage, unlike Paula.
Also, I don’t think it was just for Paula’s ego that she didn’t want everyone to think Michael died by suicide, she didn’t want Tiger Lily to think her dad didn’t love her enough to carry on living.

one of Paul’s friends said Paula would call her while living in Hastings a little desolate and asking her for reassurance that Michael loved her. Not TL, her. Paula. She was primarily concerned with her own ego, she needed confirmation that she was the girl that bagged the rockstar. By killing himself, Michael completely undermined that belief, that core need Paula needed. Paula wasn’t concerned about his pain or what led him to that, she was concerned if he loved her.

even in the 90s people recognised that suicide is complex and it’s never one single thing that triggers it. Even then people recognised that it wasn’t about not loving family and friends enough to “carry on”. I have no doubt michael adored his daughter, but it’s not about that. Suicidal people don’t think clearly and especially not when they have a drug problem, mental health issues and a brain injury.

paula never once in her life demonstrated that she put her children and their well-being first, so I don’t buy that she suddenly grew a deep concern for Tiger Lily. As a narcissist (sadly) her focus was always going to be primarily on herself and her own ego.

 

[PeteM]

I don’t think Paula was a good mum, she probably wanted to be one hence the books and fake family life. Some tea, my Godfather knew her slightly and couldn’t stand her. I have put this on another thread some time ago but couldn’t find it different name. This was in the 80s my godfather was good friends with John Galliano who was seeing Jasper Conran and they were in his company I think it was his studio and they heard a lot of noise and a child screeching mucking around then they heard a woman screaming and shouting swearing and a really hard slap the sort that echos around a room. He said he and John were doing all those OMG faces and sniggering about it being young - then Paula Yates came into view with one of her girls. But he said it occurred to him much later in life that the little girl hadn’t cried despite that slap must have really hurt. Imagine hitting a child like that all the time painting a picture of domestic bliss.
he also said he’d heard that Paula didn’t like Peaches and never took to her and was always very hard on her she sacked a nanny that Peaches loved and slept with.

Siobhan Fahey was another one fond of slapping her child like that.

 

[FrannyGallops]

Off topic but someone who reminds me of her is Noel Gallagher's daughter! She was in a programme when she was quite young that my daughter used to watch and then became a model when I don't even think she's attractive but it's clearly because of her famous parents. I know the parents of these kids are in the public eye but you would think after experiencing what they do and the paps etc that they wouldn't want it for their own kids and keep them out of the limelight and protect them more?

It’s OT but I think a a lot of celeb kids aren’t parented appropriately and are left to their own devices a lot of the time. I think the ones that usually go into modelling don’t have a shred of talent elsewhere, though. It’s basically the only showbiz industry they can trade off their name without having to work at it (although that Kardashian is currently getting dragged on Tiktok for not even excelling at just being photographed) and they don’t even have to hit the requirements for unknown models (i.e unusually photogenic and being very tall).

We could do with a thread just about nepo babies I don’t want to take this anymore OT.

 

[Jusa]

yikes. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

my view is it’s weird for grow men to date teens, especially nowadays. Culturally, there have been differences in the past. I don’t think it was Bob grooming Paula but there was a definite power imbalance there. I don’t think people’s personal experiences of shacking up with older men as a teen, has much to do with this thread tbh and just derails.

In reality, you aren’t going to convince most people who think it’s weird, that it’s fine just because it was fine in your case and according to you.

at worst it comes across as insecurity and defending life choices.

It was fine in my case as well, I was 16 with a 23 year old boyfriend, and we were together for 5 years. I wasn't groomed by him, or made to do anything I didn't want to do.

You're also not going to convince people that it's weird, just because you think it is; in some cases it may be, and in some cases it isn't, so please don't try and generalise.

I was born in the same era as Paula, and it wasn't abnormal, it was pretty common, so don't judge

 

[Oh bra wind free]

Bob's sister, Cleo with their father (now both passed). As you can see, Pixie has her eyes.

 

[plinky2]

They went through IVF very early on in their relationship, from almost the start.

I think MH believed being a father was going to help him and make him happy but he was late 30‘s, liked hard drugs and alcohol and parties a lot which Is not really compatible with a family lifestyle. Paula was very intense and I think He was out of his depth - committed to Paula but not really able to handle all of the intense emotions that came along with it.

INXS was not doing very well and he was no longer the young, cute Adonis he once was as he tried dyed his hair black and tried to become edgy.

the court cases with Bob playing out in public was horrible for a private MH. He hated living in the U.K. due to press intrusion and wanted to leave - but couldn’t cos of Paula

all in all he had valid reasons to find life overwhelming and the night he died he was exceptionally depressed, as everyone who spoke to him that night agreed

 

[cee-bee]

They went through IVF very early on in their relationship, from almost the start.

I think MH believed being a father was going to help him and make him happy but he was late 30‘s, liked hard drugs and alcohol and parties a lot which Is not really compatible with a family lifestyle. Paula was very intense and I think He was out of his depth - committed to Paula but not really able to handle all of the intense emotions that came along with it.

INXS was not doing very well and he was no longer the young, cute Adonis he once was as he tried dyed his hair black and tried to become edgy.

the court cases with Bob playing out in public was horrible for a private MH. He hated living in the U.K. due to press intrusion and wanted to leave - but couldn’t cos of Paula

all in all he had valid reasons to find life overwhelming and the night he died he was exceptionally depressed, as everyone who spoke to him that night agreed

I think this is very spot on. INXS weren’t doing quite as well anymore. Michael was the last of the group to have a child, and I think he felt a little bit lost as he was aging. Plus Paula’s social circle was pretty impressive - she moved in the same circles with Michael’s idols - Bono, David Bowie, Nick Cave. he was on the decline as a frontman and so was the band. He could never get access to these social circles otherwise.

I reckon his relationship with Helena started breaking down and then there was Paula - super keen, with a large brood already that he fell in love with, and she had a persona of an Earth mother/maternal goddess

I think he saw the girls and then tigerLily as a idealised family that offered an alternative life. But I think he was in love with the fantasy of family Life rather than the reality. I remember reading he’d cross the road to visit Nick caves house and bitch about how boring life was with Paula. The messy custody battle further hampered those dreams he had of an “escape” and I think being told the girls couldn’t come to aus made him feel like that ray of hope was no longer there, in his irrational drunk and drug induced mind.

if he’d met a woman who was a bit more mature and grounded, without the baggage of drug abuse and custody battles… hed have probably been content with that for a few years at least, and I don’t think he’d have died.

I think having a baby with Paula meant forever being tied to the U.K., to custody battles and it must’ve felt very hopeless to him. Had he maybe not had the head injury and subsequent mental health issues… and if he wasn’t so dependent on substances … he might’ve been able to withstand the custody drama until it was resolved. But it was all a very sad, tragic mix. It’s a tough decision to make but Paula could have come to Australia as planned with Tiger, and left the girls with Bob. Not idea and a hard decision for sure, but she knew the impact of not seeing Tiger would be hard on Michael - she said so herself - so why didn’t she fly out as planned? This sounds harsh and judgemental but I wonder if Paula saw Tiger as something of a leverage and a hold over Michael.

I remember hearing that one of the worst things for Michael when he lost his sense of taste and smell, was not being able to taste his girlfriend (Helena), which I think is so heartbreaking. I can’t imagine the gradual toll that would take on your mental health and that’s without the other factors.

 

[Jane Tee]

Does nobody remember the programmes PY did after MH death explaining why she thought it wasnt suicide and she detailed his sleazy degenerate sex life?

I remember thinking ' aren't you scared of catching disease off him and how could you even kiss him knowing that '

 

[Suzesnooze]

I also noted that Bob’s Mum died when she was 41, same age as Paula when she died. He was 6 when his mum died, so he obviously had experience of the loss of a parent at a young age to share with Tiger Lily and Peaches two sons