Before Peaches and Pixie, There Was PAULA! (Paula Yates the Autobiography - Paula Yates)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Paula Yates the Autobiography - Paula Yates
Date:	06/11/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Interesting, funny, witty, informative, entertaining

Disadvantages: Poignant and sad, knowing what was to come

Paula Yates is a fascinating person to me. When she was alive, I enjoyed watching her on The Big Breakfast and cringed at the amateurish but exciting antics on The Tube. I liked seeing what outfit she would appear in next and how white her hair would be dyed.

But most of all, I loved hearing about her family life and - unlike many others - I loved her children being given such unusual names. I read her books on motherhood when my own children were young and found them funny, witty and inspirational.

When she died in 2000, I felt it was such a shame, a real tragedy, especially for her four daughters. These days, her middle two children - Peaches and Pixie Geldof - are carving their own media careers and continuing to hit the headlines as Paula did.

When I found this book - The Autobiography by Paula Yates - on Ebay, I was really pleased to get the chance to read her words and find out more about her life. It can be difficult to find the book these days, but it does pop up on Ebay from time to time and is currently on Amazon Marketplace too. You should also be able to order it from the library.

It is a decent-sized hardback of around 230 pages with a striking front cover and two sections of photos inside. The book is divided into eighteen chapters.

I found Paula's writing style slightly hard to get into initially. She is prone to exaggeration - albeit for comic effect - and not everything she writes is completely factual, but once you get used to her style, it becomes a really good read and does contain a lot of interesting information.

Her long relationship with Bob Geldof is covered in detail and affectionately; she doesn't come across as bitter, even though they had split up by the time she wrote this. Her relationship with Michael Hutchence is briefly covered, but as this was written in 1995, they hadn't been together long.

While I was reading this book, it felt a bit strange at times, because I knew what happened afterwards. As she writes about her father Jess Yates, I know that it would later be revealed that her real father was TV entertainer Hughie Green. As she writes about her kids, I could see the present Peaches and Pixie as they are now. As she writes about her relationship with Michael, I knew the end, that they both die, Michael in 1997 and Paula three years later.

This gave it an almost eerie quality at time. Of course, when you read any autobiography written some years ago, the reader knows what has happened since, but I felt it was especially poignant reading Paula's words and incredibly sad knowing what a short time she had left to live.

But the book itself is a great read, it is frank, clever, and fun and the kind of book you can happily read for hours, only pausing for sleep. I learnt a lot about Paula and particularly about her childhood and teenage years before she became famous - the time of her life I knew the least about.

It was also interesting to read about her experiences on The Tube and The Big Breakfast, including anecdotes about many of the famous people she met at the time. There is a whole chapter about Take That, which is a good read too, and a revealing part about Live Aid and Band Aid, which explains the impact of it all on the Geldof household - something I hadn't thought of before reading this book.

I would definitely recommend this book. I just wish there was a decent biography about her, as I would love to know more, but the only other books out about Paula seem to be scandal-ridden exposés and I'm not interested in those.

For the time being though, I enjoyed Paula's words and am sure her four daughters are proud of her and all she achieved in her 41 years.

Summary: An interesting insight into Paula Yates and her life