It must be a slow news day in the U.K., too, because Amanda Platell, controversial celebrity columnist for the Daily Mail, is looking to pick a fight with Bob Geldof. Bob’s 19-year-old daughter Peaches, whose mother, Paula Yates, died of a heroin overdose in 2000, reportedly overdosed on an unnamed drug a few days ago. Platell, who has written about “Saint Bob’s” lax parenting style in the past, says he’s to blame.
But the truth is that, for the past few years, it has become increasingly apparent that Peaches has been careering down the fast lane of boys, booze and, yes, perhaps even drugs towards an inevitable crash of some kind. It’s been like watching a film of Paula Yates’s own trajectory – from fashion icon to rock chick to victim of a life lived to dangerous excess – played at double-speed. Even Peaches’ fledgling media career seemed to be apeing her mother’s.
This is the girl, remember, who was recently secretly filmed handing cash to an alleged drugdealer-to-the-stars, saying: ‘I’ll need Valium after this!’
And where was her father while this all-too-predictable story was unfolding? Well, it goes without saying that he is a truly remarkable man whose tireless campaigning to alleviate poverty and suffering in the Third World deserves the greatest admiration.
It is also true that it cannot have been easy, as a single father with a new girlfriend, to raise three daughters as self-assured as Peaches, Fifi and Pixie, as well as taking on responsibility for Tiger Lily, Paula’s child by Michael Hutchence. But it is hard not to conclude that her father must take much of the blame for Peaches’ current predicament.
I am reminded of a haunting article that Sophie Parkin, a friend of the Geldofs, wrote for this paper three years ago, in which she made a public plea for Bob to take control of Peaches, then aged 16, whom Parkin could see was in desperate need of a stricter parental hand.
Describing how Bob had actively encouraged his daughter’s first forays into the world of celebrity, and allowed his daughter extraordinary freedoms to live her life as she chose, she wrote how Peaches was woefully ill-equipped to deal with the pressures of fame.
While I can’t completely disagree that when a 19-year-old overdoses, there must be some dysfunction going on at home, I also have to wonder where this reporter gets off judging Geldof. He’s been raising his three daughters along with the daughter his ex-wife had with another man. Furthermore, I doubt this journalist has ever had kids of her own- because if she did, she would realize how difficult it is to get a 19-year-old to listen to you. It’s not like you can ground her. She’s legally an adult. Peaches was very young when her mother died and there is probably an air of mystery there for her. Perhaps she feels closer to her mother by repeating her destructive behavior. Either way, I predict a very fiery response for “Saint Bob” any day now.
Bob Geldof is shown at Nelson Mandela’s birthday party on 6/25/08. Peaches Gedof is shown at the premiere of The Dark Knight on 7/21/08. Credit: WENN
