Terence Trent D’Arby reveals Sir Bob Geldof’s words when he confronted him over his affair with Paula Yates – as he speaks about their year-long relationship for the first time
- Sananda Maitreya used to be known as singer Terence Trent D’Arby in the 1980s
- Had year-long affair with Big Breakfast’s Paula Yates while married to Bob Geldof
- Read more: What Princess Diana told Paula Yates when they ran into each other
The singer formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby has revealed how he was confronted by Sir Bob Geldof for having an affair with Paula Yates during their doomed marriage.
The two-part documentary Paula, which was released on Channel 4 last night, gives new insight into the troubled life of the Big Breakfast presenter, who died of an accidental heroin overdose at her Notting Hill home in 2000.
The first episode delved into Yates’ marriage to Sir Bob Geldof, which ended in a bitter divorce in 1996, and saw Paula being vilified in the press for having an affair with the Sign Your Name singer.
The singer, who has now changed his name to Sananda Maitreya, opened up about his relationship with Paula for the time ever in the programme, admitting he thought the presenter was ‘some type of goddess’ they met in 1987.
He revealed that he was once confronted by Geldof at his hotel in New York City, with the Boomtown Rats frontman asking him if he was ‘k******* my wife.’
Scroll down for video
Having now changed his name to Sananda Maitreya , the singer formerly known as Terence Trent D’Arby opened up about his one-year-long affair with Paula Yates in a new documentary about the presenter that aired last night on Channel 4
Maitreya, 60, said he has been asked about Paula Yates numerous times in the past 30 years, and has always refused to comment, up until now.
‘It’s a relief to finally have this outlet to talk about and celebrate her life,’ the singer said.
‘The first time I met her was before I went on stage for my first appearance on The Tube,’ he said, referencing his appearance on the show in 1987, where he performed his single If You Let Me Stay.
He admitted he was immediately drawn to Paula’s good looks.
‘My first impressions of her were what you would expect from a 24, 25-year-old, you know: “Wow, she’s hot”.’ he said.
‘The business is full of beautiful women, but the ones who have made the impact that she had on the culture, the time, there’s something else there.
‘She was some type of goddess,’ he added.
In unearthed tapes heard on the programme, and recorded by OK! Magazine editor Martin Townsend shortly after Michael Hutchence’s death in 1997, Paula talked about her relationship with Sananda.
Townsend could be heard asking her if she had ‘a bit of a thing’ with the singer.
The Big Breakfast presenter, pictured in 1995, said in unearthed tapes that she was in love with Sananda during their affair which happened when she was still married to Sir Bob Geldof, left
Speaking on the show last night, the singer recalled first being drawn to Paula, and later lying to Bob Geldof about their affair when he was confronted by the singer and activist
‘I didn’t have a bit of a thing, I had an affair with Terence for a year of my life,’ the presenter was heard replying.
‘It was quite a long time, it was very serious. He loved me, I loved him,’ she added. ‘You’re the first person I told.’
Sananda recalled how he was confronted by Paula’s husband Bob, whom she was still married to at the time of their affair.
‘So I’m in a hotel, in New York, and I get this call from the front desk, telling me there’s a gentleman downstairs who would very much like to meet with me,’ the singer recounted.
‘The gentleman says his name is Bob Geldof. F***,’ Sananda added, recreating this reaction at the time.
‘It was something along the lines of, “What’s this about you and my wife, then. Are you k******* my wife?”.
‘So of course, I did what any other self-respecting 25-year-old man would do and I f******* lied to him,’ he added.
Yates (pictured in 1991) was one of the most famous women in the UK at the height of her popularity but behind the scenes, her life was turbulent
Yates met Michael Hutchence while she was hosting the Big Breakfast on Channel 4, and her friend joked the pair coupled up ‘five minutes’ later
News of the affair broke in February 1988, with the now defunct News of the World publishing an article under the title: ‘Bob’s Paula caught with Black star.’
Sananda reflected in the programme that the title had been ‘manipulating that for public retribution’.
‘I was gonna pay for that – I did – she was gonna pay for that – she did,’ he said.
In the 1997 tapes recorded by Townsend, Paula could also be heard giving her thoughts on the media coverage of the affair.
‘But I look at Terence now and I think “poor f*****”, because he got put through all this c***. He had terrible trouble for it. It virtually destroyed his career,’ the presenter could be heard saying.
Paula Yates (pictured in 1996 with her partner Michael Hutchence and their daughter, Heavenly Haraani Tiger Lily) revealed in previously unheard tapes that she was inclined to drop her ‘stupid girly tricks’ after meeting the lead singer of INXS, after which time the ‘need to flirt evaporated’. The tapes, recorded shortly after Hutchence’s death in 1997, are played in a new Channel 4 documentary Paula which airs on Monday and Tuesday on Channel 4
Reflecting on how the coverage of the affair impacted him, Sanada said: ‘I do believe that connected with that whole Bob and Paula thing, they were the knives ready to carve me into Thanksgiving turkey and that’s what I subsequently experienced.’
In spite of the fallout, Bob and Paula remained married until she began an affair with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence in 1995 and left her husband for him.
The documentary retraces Paula’s rise to fame as well as the later years of her life, following the death of her partner, Michael Hutchence.
The presenter could be heard saying that the public were ‘waiting for [her] to die’ in the previously unheard tapes recorded shortly after the death of her partner that were unearthed for the programme.
Tragedy of the peroxide Tinkerbell: ALISON BOSHOFF recalls how TV siren Paula Yates seduced rock stars and entranced a generation
Later in the interview she revealed in heartbreaking detail the ‘physical pain’ of losing Michael and recalled how she tucked in his body with a duvet when she went to see him in the mortuary, while commenting on how the press and the public were expecting her not to make it through her grief.
Clips of Townsend and Yates speaking, which were played in the two-part documentary, feature a particularly upsetting moment when she says: ‘It’s kind if a weird feeling that everyone’s waiting for you to die,’ she says.
She later tells Townsend that, when she saw Hutchence’s body in the mortuary, she asked the staff to bring her a duvet for his ‘ice’ cold body and ‘tucked him in’.
Another chilling moment comes when she recalls being in London and telling Hutchence, who was in Sydney that she and their infant daughter were delaying their return to Australia amid a court battle with her ex-husband Bob Geldof.
She recalls turning to her barrister and saying: ‘This will kill him.’ Shortly afterwards, Hutchence was found dead.
During the tapes, she also speaks in detail of her relationship with Hutchence, lead singer of INXS.
She says: ‘I’d probably changed a lot when I was with Michael because once I was with him, the need to flirt – which had been the cornerstone of my personality, certainly the thing I was most famous for – evaporated. Why would I? I was with Michael.’
The presenter also addressed going back to work after having four children, Pixie, Peaches and Fifi Trixibelle with Bob Geldof and Heavenly Haraani Tiger Lily with Hutchence. She revealed how she considered her changed personality.
‘I didn’t have all those stupid girly tricks to fall back on anymore because they’d kind of gone,’ she reveals.
‘I was pushing 40, four children, very very happy. I was kind of curious what it would be like working again without all that stuff.’
The documentary charts Yates’ TV career which began on Channel 4’s The Tube in 1982 when the station first launched, and landed her a top presenting spot on Big Breakfast, where she interviewed famous guests on a bed.
It features interviews with Townsend, who had known Paula since her music magazine days, as well as some of her closest friends and commentators.
Belinda Brewin, who describes Paula as her ‘best friend’ from the early 1980s, reveals what life was like for one of the UK’s most famous women behind the scenes when she was at the height of her popularity, versus when things began to unravel.
She says: ‘Michael [Hutchence] was her love… well she never got over [his death].
‘I don’t think people do, they just learn to live with it. Paula didn’t really learn to live with it, that was the problem. It was a big black cloud every single day.’
She also reveals she was the person who broke the news to Yates that he had died.
‘She just said, ‘No, no, no’ and literally punched me and said, ‘Don’t say it, don’t say it’,’ Brewin recalled.
In the tapes of Yates speaking after Hutchence’s sudden death, she says she was ‘shocked’ by the physical pain of losing him.
‘It literally does feel like someone’s punched you or broken something you know? Your heart actually breaks… you can feel all the time this pain,’ she says.
As clips are played of Yates’s first meeting with the Australian singer on the Big Breakfast bed, with their legs intertwined, Brewin jokes the pair got together ‘five minutes’ later – before laughing and saying: ‘No, no.’
She also reveals Yates had had a crush on the INXS frontman for some time before meeting him.
She recalls: ‘She, for years had a picture of Michael on the fridge and it said Lovedog and Bob came down, and I think he wrote c*** across his picture.’
As the documentary follows Paula’s life after her split from Bob Geldof, people close to her, including Brewin, level criticism at the press for their coverage of the divorce and the bitter custody battle that ensued over their three daughters.
As Townsend recalls how the media sided with ‘Saint Bob’ during the split, clips are played from an appearance made on BBC panel show Have I Got News For You where Ian Hislop and Paul Merton make jokes about her having breast implants.
The audio also features Yates telling Townsend she was ‘under siege’ from the paparazzi following a ‘drugs bust’ on the London home she shared with Hutchence, and his death in 1997.
It is revealed that, as she flew out to Australia to identify Hutchence’s body, some journalists who had booked onto the same flight asked her for comment while she was on the plane. Belinda described how the scrutiny became even worse for Paula just weeks later when a DNA test revealed her father was not Jess Yates, but Hughie Green.
Many of the commentators including Vanessa Feltz and Grace Dent point to misogyny in the public attitude towards Yates as she approached the age of 40.
Dent tells the documentary: ‘All of the things that made Paula so loveable when she was in her 20s, the fact that she was gobby… all of those things, when she got into her late 30s, they were no longer attractive to lots and lots and lots of men.’
However, despite covering much of the pain in Yates’s private life, the documentary also focuses on happier times, with Yates recalling many of them in her own words.
In the tapes, she speaks to Townsend about giving birth to Tiger Lily.
She said: ‘I just look back on that night as the best night I ever ever had with Michael and laughing so much at Michael delivering the baby with the midwife.
‘I was so, sort of on my best behaviour because he hadn’t had a child before.’
Speaking separately about Yates, Townsend recalls the first time he met her when they were working for the same music magazine.
‘She was sitting there in the corner banging away… she was quite unapproachable,’ he recalls.
‘Fiercely intelligent. She was someone who knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get what she wanted as well.’
Belinda, too, makes a point of noting Yates’s intelligence, saying the presenter and journalist was ‘extraordinarily well read’.
She recalls: ‘[Yates was] a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Mary Poppins.’
She adds: ‘She kind of came across as this ditzy blonde but she definitely wasn’t.’
Robbie Williams also appears to give his recollection of Yates, after first meeting her on the Big Breakfast bed when he was being interviewed as a member of Take That.
He recalled feeling jealous that Yates might ‘fancy’ Jason Orange and thinking to himself: ‘Don’t fancy Jason’. He added he hoped she would be attracted to him instead.’
As the relationship between Yates and Hutchence is explored further, tapes of Paula are played in which she says: ‘We’d waited all our lives for each other and when we had each other it was everything we hoped it would be.’
Belinda added the couple were ‘so happy and really in love’.
The documentary recalls how, after a period of heavy drinking and depression, Yates was a few months into getting her life ‘back on track’ and had begun working again, with plans to release a novel inspired by her grief.
Describing her friend’s death as a ‘shock’ Brewin said: ‘She wanted to move on with her life, and probably when she died, it’s the best place I’d seen her ironically for a very long time.’
When asked what she would say if she saw her best friend again, Brewin jokes: ‘Fancy going out for lunch?’ before adding: ‘I’d just be very happy to see her face.’
Source: Read Full Article