Friend wishes he would have kept Paula and Michael apart
Lili2
FAREWELL PAULA 1959-2000: I WAS WITH THEM WHEN THEY MET... I JUST WISH I'D
FORCED THEM APART
THE love between Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence set both on a path to
destruction. Video director NICK EGAN, above, was Michael's best friend and
today he reveals exclusively to the Sunday Mirror the truth about their doomed
lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.IHAVE no doubts that Paula and
Michael loved each other but there are some kinds of love which just aren't
healthy.
There is a love so passionate and obsessive, it is destructive. And the proof
of that is in what's happened to them both.
I was there the night they got together. I just wish now that I could have
forced the two of them apart.
At the the time Paula didn't drink or take drugs and I only found out later
about Michael's heroin habit. Their relationship was a strong one, yet Michael
couldn't resist other women - and had other lovers in the months before his
death.
It was spring 1995 when Michael and Paula - who I had known since 1977 when she
was with Bob Geldof - fell for each other. Michael had just done that famous
Big Breakfast interview on the bed with her. I was working with Duran Duran on
their video for White Lines.
A crowd of us went to the Hilton Hotel hotel and got wasted before moving on to
Simon Le Bon's house in South London. Michael was still with Helena
Christensen, the supermodel, who stayed behind at the Hilton.
We were all sitting together in Simon's living room when Michael said to me:
"Paula and I are going upstairs now." We knew there was something going on.
There was a kind of electricity between them.
The next day I asked him: "Michael what are you doing? What about Helena?" and
he replied: "We didn't have sex you know." They were both on ecstasy, in a
bedroom, and he expected me to believe they didn't have sex?
Paula was immediately hooked on Michael. She was mad about him. When Helena
found out Michael bought her a $20,000 antique necklace, to say: "I'm sorry." I
told him that was a confession - that the bigger the gift, the bigger the lie.
People used to think I was crazy to like Paula - there was certainly a side to
her that was ditzy and over-the-top flirtatious. But another side was
incredibly intelligent, caring and loving.
I spent a three-week holiday with Michael and Paula in the South of France just
before Tiger was born. I'd recently broken up with the mother of my son, Paula
had split up with Bob, and Michael had just finished with Helena.
Even on holiday, Paula always looked immaculate - she was the eternal sex bomb.
She was not a woman you ever saw in sweatpants.
The nurturing Paula was very tender to my son Roman, Michael's godchild. She
wanted to have a baby and every morning I would carry Roman, who was 15 months
old, into Michael and Paula's bedroom and the three of them would have
breakfast together.
That was a very important time for them both and it was the happiest I ever saw
them. In fact she later said that Roman had inspired Michael to have a child.
All three of Paula's children by Bob were there - Fifi, Pixie and Peaches - and
it was clear they had inherited her tenderness.
But back in London, Paula and Michael seemed permanently paranoid. They built a
huge wall at their place in Clapham because they felt they were in enemy
territory.
Compared to Paula, Michael's other girlfriends ruined his rock and roll image.
In the early days Kylie Minogue was too goody-two-shoes and Helena was in the
awful fashion crowd.
Michael was two people - he was like Paula in that respect. He was an
incredibly loving father, but he was also a wild rock and roller. On one of his
wildest most outrageous nights before he met Paula we were drinking in a late
night bar in King's Cross.
A woman who looked like Siouxsie from the Banshees on a bad night started
chatting to Michael. It was obvious she was a prostitute. He was fascinated by
women like her and took her back to his hotel. I said to him, "You have Helena
Christiansen at home - why risk it all for HER?"
Among a few things I didn't know about Michael was that he was on heroin. That
came from hanging out in Los Angeles - with the druggie celebrity set who
frequented the Viper Room, where River Phoenix died.
WHILE in LA he started dating an American woman called Erin. It was towards the
end of Michael's life and Paula had flown from London with their daughter Tiger
Lily.
But on Paula's first night in LA he didn't want to stay in the hotel with her -
even though she'd travelled all that way to be with him.
He told Paula he was going out with me, but he was in fact seeing Erin. I had
found out about Erin when I walked in to Michael's hotel room in San Francisco.
She was in his bed. It made it worse that he was on the phone to Paula at the
time. Erin was seeing Michael for a few months before he died. Her father was a
political aide and she seemed a very nice girl.
She wasn't the only one. He had already had a fling with a model called
Caroline Rorich, who I'd used in a Cornetto commercial. He got away with it
because we were in South Africa, then she sold her story and he panicked. He
didn't see her after that.
There was even another girl he had been seeing at the end. She was young and
seemed very naive, fragile and quiet, not Michael's normal type at all. But she
was also a heroin addict and rumoured to be a stripper.
After Michael's death she came to see me, I think she wanted endorsement from
Michael's trusted friend. It was clear they had known each other for a long
time and he had been fond of her.
Paula must have sensed something was going on. And it was messing her up. If I
had to put a bet on someone dying it was Paula in LA. She was on
anti-depressants and there was a point when security at the hotel where she was
staying had to break into her room because Tiger was crying and Paula had
passed out.
When I first knew Paula she didn't drink or take drugs. But when she got to LA
she would knock back three pina coladas in a row. She just wanted to get
loaded.
Michael would do an eclectic mix of drugs - and he drank. He was always very
experimental with sex and substances. Paula by this time was emotionally over
the top and unable to cope.
One day she went out to get bagels and she was so out of it that she came back
with 30. When Michael asked her why, she said: "I've got some for Nick and Ann
(my wife)." Michael told her we weren't there, we were at home.
It was a horrible period. Paula had an awful fight with Michael's mother
Patricia during a family dinner. Patricia saw the state of her and shouted:
"Pull yourself together." I sensed there was also a distaste from Michael's
sister Tina.
It was three weeks before he died and he just wasn't the same old Michael. He
was sad. He was vacant. It was all he could do to take the pressure of what was
going on. He was also beside himself over the way public opinion was against
Paula. Bob Geldof's power in the media was important and Paula couldn't get a
job when she was sacked from the Big Breakfast.
People saw Geldof as St Bob, and Michael and Paula as evil. Michael told me
that he was going marry Paula, but I know he was pondering it rather than
taking action. I think partly it was to help with custody of the children.
HIS one shred of hope was getting Paula and the children to Australia so Paula
could get a job and they could start a new life.
But Paula wouldn't leave England without her children. Ultimately the drugs and
the custody battles destroyed Michael and Paula. I can categorically say that
Michael loved Paula very much. He might have had other women, but he wanted to
take care of her. As well as being very loving Paula was an obsessive person,
she loved Michael - I mean unbelievably loved him.
In LA she was trying to have another baby, she carried her pregnancy kit
everywhere with her. She was taking fertility drugs - I think she would even
have liked to have quintuplets. It was all getting too much for Michael.
Paula was on a self-destruct course. There was the drink and this thing about
heroin. She seemed to have a death wish. Paula was a British Marilyn Monroe,
though much smarter. She was never taken seriously, always seen as the dizzy
blonde on the verge of collapse.
She liked her ecstasy, but she'd say to Michael: "We'll do that once a month.
We'll have fun, and then we'll leave it for a bit."
Maybe towards the end she might have done more than Michael to try and outdo
him. And then after he died, I'm sure she did it because she just couldn't live
without him.
-Nick Egan was talking to JANE JOHNSON