Haunted Peaches ‘feared she would die like Paula’
PEACHES GELDOF was haunted by the belief that her fate was ‘preordained’ and that she would suffer a similar death to her mother Paula Yates – because people always told her it would be so.
She made the admission, in what is believed to have been her final interview, days before she died in circumstances almost identical to the heroin overdose which killed Miss Yates at the age of 41.
In conversations with American writer William Todd Schultz, Miss Geldof talked about her struggles with fame, drugs and how she was perceived by the public.
She said she felt like a character, telling Schultz: ‘It’s like I’m someone in a book. Your life, they keep telling you, is preordained, “I’m going to die like my mother ... she’s going to end up like her mother”.’
Miss Geldof, 25, died in April at her home in Wrotham, Kent, after taking heroin. She had been in sole charge of her baby son Phaedra and was discovered by her husband Thomas Cohen, 23, who had been looking after their eldest child Astala, two.
The journalist and TV personality – the second child of Bob Geldof and Miss Yates – confessed to Schultz that she was drawn to the ‘sad deaths of virtuosos’ such as Hollywood actor Philip Seymour Hoffman and American singer Elliott Smith, who were both drug addicts.
Following her mother’s death in September 2000, Miss Geldof began drinking alcohol and experimenting with drugs, and she told Schultz that she understood the pain of users.
‘Heroin is such a bleak drug,’ she said. ‘It always makes me so sad to hear about people like Hoffman who were real masters and also family men who were just wasted by the constant, gnawing obsession with it. All heroin users have the same core internal pain. It’s a fascinating concept – drug of choice.’ In the arti- cle, published in Spectator Life magazine, Schultz describes how he and Miss Geldof exchanged texts and Twitter messages before speaking on the phone for two hours in late March, the month before she died.
Her early fame had made her a fixture on the party circuit and in gossip magazines. At 19 she had married Max Drum-
‘Heroin is such a bleak drug’
mey, a musician, during a long weekend in Las Vegas. The union lasted six months. By 2009, living in Hollywood, she claimed to be a Scientologist.
In 2010 underwear brand Ultimo dropped her as its ‘face’ amid allegations of drug-taking. The following year she was reportedly caught shoplifting makeup from Boots.
Miss Geldof told Schultz: ‘I grew up in the worst kind of whirlwind where every mistake I made was not only watched by my parents but the whole of the public. It was scary.’
She said her image was turned into that of an ‘earth mother’ following the birth of her first son.
‘It was an overnight transformation,’ she said. ‘It [had been] so profoundly hateful. Then, out of nowhere it was, “Dang. We can’t hate you any more. Here she is in her golden hair”, etc. Now for the first time ever, there was gushing adulation.’
The day before she died Miss Geldof tweeted a family photo taken in 1992 showing her aged three with her mother.
Those closest to Miss Geldof claim she never recovered from losing her mother when she was only 11. On the day, she and her elder sibling Fifi Trixibelle, who was 17, were celebrating their younger sister, Pixie’s, tenth birthday.
After Miss Geldof’s death police found heroin in her body and drug paraphernalia at her home. An inquest was opened and adjourned in May. It is due to recommence on Monday.