Michael Hutchence, Paula Yates had sex ‘five minutes’ after flirty TV interview

A new documentary on the late Paula Yates has revealed that she and Michael Hutchence hooked up immediately after she interviewed him for a British TV show.

A new documentary on the troubled life of Paula Yates has revealed the British celebrity had sex with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence “five minutes” after interviewing the Australian rocker during a now infamous television appearance.

Yates, who was married to Bob Geldof at the time, interviewed the INXS star on the British TV show the Big Breakfast in 1994. (Yates and Hutchence had met a decade previously when she had interviewed the singer for another music show.)

The two were deliriously happy until things turned dark. Picture: Supplied

The chemistry between the two was palpable.

“This is a guest that has everything a rock star needs to have — danger, talent, curly hair. For the first time this is a guest that I want to have my leg over,” Yates said, her leg draped over a beguiled Hutchence.

Asked in the documentary how long it took the two to get together, Yates’ close friend Belinda Brewin says: “Five minutes! In the green room.”

The revelations come during an upcoming two-part documentary on Yates, which features interviews with her friends (including Robbie Williams) and four “extraordinarily compelling” interviews with the star, recorded in 1998 and 1999 shortly before her death of a heroin overdose in 2000, which have never been seen before.

But the stories about Hutchence will be of most interest to fans of the late INXS star.

Before the two had even met, Brewin says in the documentary that the star even had a photograph of Hutchence on her fridge on which she had written: “Love dog”.

Michael Hutchence with Paula Yates and Tiger-Lily in Sydney. Picture: Supplied

Her husband at the time, Bob Geldof, had written “c**t” over it. In the documentary, Yates says her personality changed after she met the Australian. “The need to flirt, which had been a cornerstone of my personality, evaporated,” she recalled.

The late star also recounts how Hutchence helped deliver their daughter, Tiger Lily, who was born in 1996.

“I’ve never laughed as much as when Michael was delivering our baby with a midwife,” she says.

But that joy was replaced by insurmountable grief after Hutchence died by suicide in a Sydney hotel room in 1997. She recounts in the documentary hos she went to see Hutchence’s body in the morgue.

“I’d never seen anyone dead,” she says in the interviews.

Paula Yates with her daughter Tiger-Lily at Michael Hutchence’s funeral in 1997. Picture: Supplied

“You are like ice. I made the mortuary send out for a [doona] … tucked him in.”

She also speaks about the shock of losing Hutchence.

“I’m not that old and yet I think, ‘Is this it?’ To be this lonely, this is it. And if anything it gets worse every day. The price my family has paid, it’s unbearable. To me it’s almost unliveable on a day-to-day basis.”

But there are moments of levity in the documentary.

In the film, Yates’ close friend Belinda Brewin tells a fabulous story about being in a jewellery shop with Yates in London in the 1990s, when they ran into an even bigger star – Princess Diana. “I love it when you’re on the front page of the papers,” Princess Diana told Yates. “Because it means I’ve got the day off.”

The couple’s love story ended tragically. Picture: Supplied

Singing superstar Robbie Williams also appears in the documentary speaking about his “crush” on Yates.

When Take That appeared on the Big Breakfast, band member Jason Orange kissed Yate’s arm. Williams was gutted.

“I was thinking, ‘Don’t fancy Jason!’ ” Williams says in the film.

Williams has never spoken publicly about his closeness to Yates until now.

“As he sat down, it just started to come out,” the film’s director Charlie Russell told The Times.

“She was hugely influential on him. He had a massive crush on her but it quickly evolved into a real friendship. He saw similarities in them.” Yes, both were outwardly cocky and inwardly vulnerable. “He felt like he was lucky, that the only difference was how it ended.”

Yates’ overdose was deemed the result of “foolish and incautious” behaviour rather than a conscious act.

In the film, Brewin, who was with Yates the night before she died, says: “It was the best place I’d seen her for a very long time. She took illegal drugs for the first time in two years and her body couldn’t handle it.”

Originally published as Michael Hutchence, Paula Yates had sex ‘five minutes’ after flirty TV interview