Tragic Tara was a wonderful woman
IWAS paying for a purchase in a London department store. The 50-something lady wrapping my goods looked stricken. “Vanessa, it’s so sad,” she said, “I can’t believe we’ve lost Tara.” Of course I knew why she was in mourning. The tragically untimely death of TPT at just 45 had been front-page news that morning.
Others might have questioned her expression of collective grief. They might have balked at the notion that “we”, all of us, had “lost” Tara. Perhaps they would have considered Tara’s passing strictly a matter for her friends and family, not the great bulk of society. What, they might have wondered, did this middle-aged shop assistant have in common with a privately educated, cocaine-addicted, former It Girl? How could it possibly be that she took Tara’s mortality so personally? Could the emotion be genuine?
I wasted no time doubting the woman’s sorrow. I had basked in TPT’s company many times both professionally and privately. I knew she had a unique ability to form instant and lasting connections with everyone who came within her orbit. She was high octane, fragilely beautiful, fearless and vulnerable at the same time, extravagantly entertaining and she had the most magnificent manners.
Whether you were cleaning the toilets she frequented in a nightclub or a film star visiting from LA you would find yourself gravitating towards Tara often despite, not because, of the tales you might have read about her. I experienced the downside of her battle with addiction when she appeared live on my BBC Vanessa show, obviously in a state of acute narcotic intoxication at 11 o’clock in the morning. Naturally I felt irritated. Any presenter wants his or her guests to be lucid, in top form, able to provide the audience with their choicest and most crisply delivered anecdotes.
Tara was all at sea, floundering, silly and yet so utterly sweet and adorable. Irritation melted into affection. I simply hoped her rich and powerful friends and family would make sure she received the help she evidently needed.
Over the years she made what seemed to be a fabulous recovery. I heard her play the piano and sing exquisitely in the bar at London’s Metropolitan Hotel. There was an GIRLS’ public school Benenden is introducing an experimental “phone fast”. Headmistress Samantha Price is determined to wean her pupils off their phones, convinced unlimited exposure to social media is playing havoc with their mental health. All phones will be confiscated for several days and social media sites will be air of Edith Piaf about her. The singers who had crowded to hear her were visibly moved. Once I lent her my hairbrush and watched fascinated as she preened and titivated, transforming herself into the photogenic creature who never failed to enchant the paparazzi. I thrilled to her jokes and gossip, her great good blocked on the school internet. We all know intuitively Price is doing the right thing. Parents who have banned phones for the brief period of a single weekend have noticed, after the initial protests, how quickly their children regain a sense of joie de vivre. When there’s no screen to bedazzle you it doesn’t take long to feel like humour and the way in which she appeared to adorn and enhance any gathering just by showing up.
In life, as in show business, nothing adds up. The most talented don’t always win plaudits. The best singer isn’t always the band’s most prominent success. Some people are just born stars. They have oodles
PHONE WAR IS ONE WORTH WINNING
playing a game of football, baking a cake or having a chat with a pal.
In a matter of hours children who have been withdrawn begin to socialise, those who have hardly left their bedrooms emerge and the atmosphere in the house is radically different. Let’s hope more head teachers and parents dare to emulate Ms Price for all our sakes. of X Factor. Whether we want to or not we cannot tear our eyes away from them.
They somehow pierce a place in our soul which defies all logic. That’s why when the lady in the shop expressed her profound sadness at losing Tara Palmer Tomkinson I knew exactly what she meant.