It’s all in Gerry Agar’s book. I know a lot of it should be taken with a massive pinch of salt, but I believe that bit. You can also read between the lines of the interview, both Paula’s questions and Michael’s answers an he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Very odd behaviour for two people if they hadn’t been intimate beforehand.
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Very true. Finding out your Dad who is the only parent 'looking after' you actually isn't your Dad, must take the world from under your feet. I hadn't really read about Paula's Mum 'Helen Toren' before, this article is really interesting. Apparently her Mum found out her dad wasn't her Dad either, though some suggest she just wanted someone more glamorous and made up a tale.
Picking through the wreckage of a life
It's like passing the scene of a car crash
IIRC his manager also confirmed it wasn’t their first meeting or first time hooking up and painted Paula out to be a bit of a groupie, pursuing him relentlessly after.
I mentioned in an earlier post, but at the time of Pixie’s conception, both Paula and Michael were in London. It’s very feasible he is her biological father and IMO very very likely. She has an uncanny resemblance to him.
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It was the tube, a bit before my time. It was in 1985 they first met.
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That is such a sad article.Very true. Finding out your Dad who is the only parent 'looking after' you actually isn't your Dad, must take the world from under your feet. I hadn't really read about Paula's Mum 'Helen Toren' before, this article is really interesting. Apparently her Mum found out her dad wasn't her Dad either, though some suggest she just wanted someone more glamorous and made up a tale.
Picking through the wreckage of a life
It's like passing the scene of a car crashwww.irishtimes.com
I actually really like her music. 'Twin Thing', her song about Peaches, is really sad.
She flirted with every guy but with Michael, it was ramped up to 100. The Tube interview isn't as steamy as the BB one but you could clearly see the chemistry. Watching this, I do think it's possible they got together long before BB.
I have to agree about there being a chance he is Pixie's real dad. When they were younger, Tiger and she were very similar in my opinion, and with how much Tiger resembles Michael, I honestly wouldn't bet against it.
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poor Paula, she was always a groupie in a sense. She was a big fan of boomtown rats which is apparently one of the reasons she was drawn to Bob and pursued him, then for a job she flirted/interviewed rock stars and spent a lot of her life in speculation about which rockstar she was sleeping with, until finally she chased after Michael, an ultimate rock star. Always chasing that male validation that never offered her anything of substance.
Sad that as intelligent as she was she was very damaged and had no real sense of self worth. It’s quite amazing that out of all her children only Peaches went properly off the rails. It’s all very sad. Let’s hope that the patterns of self-destructive behaviour have been broken for the next generation.
Poor kids, a mother that valued drugs, sex and chasing clearly wankered rock stars over them. Bono cut ties because of their drug use, around children, their house was raided and drugs found in smartie tubes, if this was anyone else no one would be so soft and rose tinted.
This woman actively put her kids at risk.
I think the Bono claims to have cut them off were loudly derided as bullshit, he just didn’t want to piss off Bob by agreeing to be Tigerlilys godfather. He was doing drugs with them by all accounts, plus if he was really concerned about the kids he’d have accepted wouldn’t he?
Well quoting celebrities seems fairly pointless although Bono seems annoyingly alive and very well with kids also doing very well and a happy marriage, and Paula and Micheal died from drugs very soon after, so you know, there’s not really much to discuss.
Regarding being godfather, well I’d imagine in those circles it’s all about pomp and showing off and no one really cares. I genuinely have no idea whether they did cut them off due to drug use or whether they didn’t want to upset Bob, lots of people are dead from drug addiction and lots being accused of the same, are not.
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(I mean myself btw quoting celebrities! There’s enough evidence without!)
I agree, but you can have compassion and sympathy for someone and recognise they were awful too.
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it’s like comparing apples and pears though. Just because Bono is alive and well doesn’t mean that he is morally superior; or didn’t do drugs etc.
for what it’s worth, Bono always had his wife Ally who was by most accounts, a very stabilising influence. I don’t mean that they were deeply and love and happily married, I mean that she literally took care of him through his teens after his mum died, she cooks and cleaned for him and made sure he went to school. She has been a constant and supportive figure in his life.
he’s spoken about their friendship as much as he does their romantic life. She is educated and pursues outside interests (charity work, activism) and as a whole, seems pretty well balanced. Is their romantic life perfect and faithful? No idea. But I think it’s fair to say Ally offered him the stability that many people/celebs don’t get to have. Certainly Michael and Paula didn’t have that in their lives.
Bono also didn’t have some of the obstacles that Michael and Paula faced; so him turning out OK isn’t really comparable to them dying and doesn’t indicate much. It’s certainly isn’t a case of “well Bono is alive and they aren’t so case closed”. There’s a lot of nuance to it.
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Oh gosh, I am empathic and have worked with people with drug addiction and alcohol. So hard to get the whole picture across.
I don’t mean Bono was a saint and didn’t do drugs, again, I wasn’t there and no one really knows unless they were there. I’m purely focussed on the children because they are the victims of this Sorry mess and with addiction etc as we all know you can’t change anyone they have to want to do it themselves (with support)
Maybe the odds were stacked against Paula, but she was an adult who made those decisions despite her children.
I feel like sometimes there’s this adulation of a woman and as she’s passed it’s kind of glossed over.
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I certainly don’t think Bono is morally superior, I merely meant whatever went on at that time, he has come through it with a surviving marriage and kids doing well and sadly for their children Paula and Micheal did not.
it’s a bit like slagging off Bob for various reasons, maybe back then there was some awful stuff going on, but again he’s remained stable for 20 odd years so some of the criticism seems outdated.
I don’t mean Bono was a saint and didn’t do drugs, again, I wasn’t there and no one really knows unless they were there. I’m purely focussed on the children because they are the victims of this Sorry mess and with addiction etc as we all know you can’t change anyone they have to want to do it themselves (with support)
Maybe the odds were stacked against Paula, but she was an adult who made those decisions despite her children.
I feel like sometimes there’s this adulation of a woman and as she’s passed it’s kind of glossed over.
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I certainly don’t think Bono is morally superior, I merely meant whatever went on at that time, he has come through it with a surviving marriage and kids doing well and sadly for their children Paula and Micheal did not.
it’s a bit like slagging off Bob for various reasons, maybe back then there was some awful stuff going on, but again he’s remained stable for 20 odd years so some of the criticism seems outdated.
None of us will ever know the truth.
A girl I was at school with, really clever, very pretty, went completely off the rails at 17, ended up with addiction and alcohol issues, spent some time in prison for drugs offences. She came from an apparently stable background, with doting parents and an older sibling. Alcohol and drug addiction is such a complex subject, there's no one size fits all. She is well and has been sober for 7 years now, but she is now addicted to Jesus and spends all her spare time going to this new age Christian church. She's happy though.
I wonder, had Paula survived, would she have found a better crutch than drugs and alcohol?
A girl I was at school with, really clever, very pretty, went completely off the rails at 17, ended up with addiction and alcohol issues, spent some time in prison for drugs offences. She came from an apparently stable background, with doting parents and an older sibling. Alcohol and drug addiction is such a complex subject, there's no one size fits all. She is well and has been sober for 7 years now, but she is now addicted to Jesus and spends all her spare time going to this new age Christian church. She's happy though.
I wonder, had Paula survived, would she have found a better crutch than drugs and alcohol?
I agree that Paula was a terrible mother but I still have compassion for her and how it ended and her upbringing. If she’d been a man, nothing of what she did would have been noteworthy. It would barely have made the press, let alone her still being derided for it decades later. How many male rockstars (for example) walk out on their kids for another woman, start another family without a backwards glance and take copious amounts of drugs yet are still hailed as legends? I can think of loads. Yet women like Paula and Courtney Love are slated for forever and a day because they’re not supposed to behave like that. Why do we always women to higher standard than we do men?
I think one thing that cannot be underestimated is how hard it is to break the cycle of trauma. Paula couldn't manage it with her kids, nor could Peaches, and that's no indictment of them on my part: it's very hard and takes constant work.
I would definitely say the same about a father or man doing the same. 100%. But working with kids and families affected by drug use and overdoses, I think that it’s possible to understand how hard her life was and still find the choices she made unacceptable. She chose to have those children. And again to be fair, Bob fought for all of them and bought them up in a stable home.
She had Tiger in her care the night she overdosed, just like Peaches then had Phaedra in her care the night she overdosed. I would have the same feelings about anyone doing that regardless of gender. How many nights did they do this before because there’s no way this happened the first time they did it.
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And you can’t treat trauma whilst you are still using drugs.
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Also I’ve personally never slated Courtney Love or seen much slating her. All I know is there were periods when her daughter was in the care of relatives, as her mum wasn’t in the best place to care for her. But that is an example of the child being put first? I have a lot of empathy for someone trying hard to do the right thing and the children being safe.
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And I’m not sure I follow the example given, as yes there are loads of ‘rock legends’ who are or have been heavy drug users and left women and gone on to father other children (I don’t think their parenting is ever viewed highly) but if a drug addicted rock legend had children and took them with them to the next car crash relationship with another heavy drug user I think they probably would be seen as being an unfit parent. But the description given is of a parent who had multiple affairs and was a drug addict, took their children knowingly into another relationship which was with a man with a drug problem and had another baby. The description of men moving on and leaving the children, whilst appalling, the children are safe.
what is shocking is that these families seem exempt from social services.
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If memory serves Peaches baby fathers Mum is a social worker too.
It’s the dad. Thomas’ dad is/was a social worker. Who drove Phaedra back at 5pm on the night it happened. They all moved in with them after it happened. His mum is an artist.
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