Portrait of Tara, the reformed party girl
IT’S one thing to leave a party looking a little tired.
But Tara Palmer-Tomkinson seemed to have got it the wrong way round as she arrived at an awards ceremony in London.
The 40-year-old, wearing a long gothic black dress, looked slightly aggrieved to be there as she clutched her fur stole around her, and at one point appeared to change her mind about going in.
Sporting heavy eye make-up, which seemed slightly smudged, she stood with her head down and her arms crossed until a friend coaxed her into the ceremony, held by the magazine Attitude in Mayfair.
Miss Palmer-Tomkinson was joined at the awards by stars including Sir Ian McKellen and the BBC’s Clare Balding and Evan Davis. After she left, in the early hours of the morning, she was spotted buying several bags of sweets in a corner shop.
Her appearance at the event on Tuesday comes a month after she told the Mail that she had given up the party circuit in exchange for a quieter life.
Miss Palmer-Tomkinson, who once admitted to having a £400 a day cocaine habit, said: ‘I have to say I’ve been trying hard to be calm.
‘Over the past four or five months I’ve tried so hard because I just want to be.
‘It’s very important what people think of me because I’ve tried very hard to change and it’s been a very, very big battle’. Miss Palmer-Tomkinson, a goddaughter of Prince Charles and a friend of Princes William and Harry, has recently launched a career as a singer.
She released an album last month, called Flawed, which she spent five years making following her successful appearance on Comic Relief Does Fame Academy.
Her battle with drugs has been well-documented. In 1999, she spent time in a rehabilitation centre, the Meadows, in Arizona, after she made a disorientated appearance on the Frank Skinner show.
In 2006, she underwent reconstructive surgery on her nose after it reportedly collapsed because of her cocaine use. She required a further operation on it last year.