Meet Martin Townsend whose unheard tapes of Paula Yates debut in Channel 4 documentary

I will never forget my time working under the Editorship of Martin Townsend on OK! Magazine. To anyone from the outside, the time would have been seen as incredibly glamorous. One minute I might have been interviewing Luciano Pavarotti at his horse show in Modena, Italy, and the next, I could be in the kitchen having a cup of tea with David Seaman.

However, as Martin will testify, more often than not, we were working through the night or on the phone at three in the morning trying to get an exclusive with a Hollywood A-lister. I distinctly remember Martin used to often receive phone calls from Paula Yates and would be out of the office to see her the minute after their conversations ended. 

I didn’t realise until I spoke to Martin today ahead of the Channel 4 documentary Paula that he had actually known of her years before. “I first met her in 1978/9 when I was working for a music paper called Record Mirror,” he recalls. “They had this fantastic Editor at the time, Alf Martin, who persuaded Paula to be a columnist on the paper.

Paula was going out with Bob Geldof at the time and used to sit in the corner of the office where she would hammer out the column every week.”

Martin then didn’t meet her properly until years later when he became Editor of OK! Magazine. “Michael Hutchene had just died and I told my publisher that we should try and get an exclusive interview with Paula Yates,” Martin recalls. 

"I contacted Belinda Brewin (Paula Yates's right-hand woman) to secure an exclusive interview with her," Martin says.

Martin went to meet her at The Groucho Club in London. “She was drinking a cup of coffee and was dressed all in black,” he recalls. “Paula looked like a pathetic, shrunken figure, a shadow of her former self. It was a fantastic interview where she opened up about the impact of losing Michael.”

Martin interviewed Paula several times after their initial chat and would always keep in touch with him. “When she died, it was a complete shock to everyone,” Martin says. “Paula had told me that she wasn’t going to die even though all the newspapers thought she would. I think it was accidental.”

Fast forward around 20 years and Martin was contacted by Curious Films to see whether he would be interested in taking part in a documentary about Paula. “At first I said no. I had these tapes of our conversations recorded that I was originally going to send to Paula’s daughter Tiger Lily.

One of the main reasons why Martin decided to allow the tapes to be heard for the first time was that he was keen for a more ‘rounded’ picture of Paula to be presented to the public.  “She was very intelligent, witty, and incredibly loyal to her friends and family,” he explains. “All of the things you would expect her to be, she wasn’t.

Paula dressed like a star and was one. She was extremely well read and we were exactly the same age, so had a lot in common. She was incredibly good friends with people like Rupert Everett as she needed individuals whom she could joust with. Although Michael Hutchene was a wild rock star, he was also a true gentleman, which is why Paula and him worked so well together.”