Truth behind famously gay Rupert Everett’s secret six-year affair with married Paula Yates, why he’s bringing it up again… and why her fiercely protective daughters will be so upset

Host Paula Yates and guest Rupert Everett looked very close indeed as they flirted in the iconic Big Breakfast bed.

It was 1995; It comes 12 months after Paula split from husband Sir Bob Geldof and met the man who would become her final boyfriend: INXS superstar Michael Hutchence.

Dressed in a floral bottom miniskirt and a red top, Paula wore out the animal-print fur scarf as she interrogated the player with flashcards in hand, but she almost certainly didn’t need them. Because, as we now know, Paula already knew Rupert very well.

In fact, what loyal viewers of the Channel 4 show didn’t realize was that Paula and Rupert had a six-year affair in the 1980s, which continued in part while the former model was married to Sir Bob. Famous journalists working at that time said that this was the best kept secret of show business.

‘No one had a clue,’ says one industry publicist. ‘Paula was working on air but was actually quite busy having a child with Bob.

‘And Rupert was gay, very openly gay. No one would look.”

In fact, the case first came to light in 2006, six years after Paula died of an accidental heroin overdose at the age of 41.

In his memoir Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, Rupert describes how they had dinner together at Langan’s restaurant in London’s Mayfair the night before he interviewed him for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1985.

Paula’s affair with Rupert took place partly while the former model was married to Sir Bob Geldof.

As well as Paula, Rupert also had heterosexual relationships with Bianca Jagger, actors Susan Sarandon and Beatrice Dalle.

He then undressed her and their love affair began. It was a jaw-dropping revelation, and those who knew Paula and Sir Bob wondered why Rupert had chosen to reveal it. One described it as ‘a bit disrespectful’.

This week, during a promotional interview for his latest film MadFabulous, a historical drama about Henry, 5th Marquess of Anglesey, Rupert, 67, once again opened up about his unlikely showbiz side.

The actor, who also had heterosexual relationships with model Bianca Jagger and actors Susan Sarandon and Beatrice Dalle, said of Paula: ‘She was so lovely and beautiful. We were bonded by our sense of drama. We liked things to be dramatic and dangerous.

‘He was a brittle rock; she was tough but also very vulnerable. We were kindred spirits.’

He confessed: ‘Being straight was heaven because you adapted to it so well.’ He recalled a dinner he and Paula had with Upstairs, Downstairs actor Gordon Jackson and his wife, Rona Anderson; ‘it felt like the entire restaurant was celebrating the normalcy of two couples getting together. Gordon was telling me about getting a mortgage and I remember thinking: “God, that sounds so good!”

In 2021, Rupert also appeared in the now-defunct ITV show Piers Morgan’s Life Stories; where the host asked the My Best Friend’s Wedding and Rivals star about the getaway.

‘I must say we have been very, very close for a long time and he is someone I admired and still admire. I think I was in love with him. I adored him,’ said Rupert. Piers then asked how he ‘compared’ Sir Bob regarding the incident.

Rupert insisted that he did not feel guilty at all, that he was ‘just ignoring it’ and that the Live Aid organizer knew about the incident. However, others close to the Geldof clan were not positive about Rupert resharing details of the incident.

Paula’s second daughter, Peaches, died of a heroin overdose in 2014, aged just 25. Their other children are Fifi Trixibelle, 43, and Pixie, 35, as well as Sir Bob and Tiger Lily, 29, whose father is the late Hutchence.

When her mother passed away, Fifi was 17, Peaches was 11, and Pixie was 10. Tiger Lily, who was taken in by Sir Bob and his partner Jeanne Marine, was only four years old.

Friends of the women say they are ‘extraordinarily protective’ of their beloved mother’s memory and ‘hated’ how her sex life was used for pleasure after her death at her mews house in London’s Notting Hill. In the past, they were also disgusted by people who used their dead mothers to make money.

Recalling going out to dinner with Paula and another couple, Rupert says: ‘Being heterosexual was heaven because you fit in so well.’ (Image: A young Rupert with Madonna)

Katie Hind reveals those close to Paula and Sir Bob are said to be extremely unhappy that Rupert continues to discuss the issue even after his death

A source tells our journalist: “It’s not just Paula but Bob too. He was the innocent party in all this but still has to read more about a man having sex with his wife.”

‘Pixie, in particular, will defend him with determination,’ says a friend of mine. ‘It seems a bit unnecessary for him to bring up his past.

‘On his tenth birthday he learned that his mother had died. It was tragic for her, as it was for all her sisters. They were all special about her in their own way, but it’s so sad that people are starting to drag things out about Paula.

‘Not just Paula, but also Bob. He was the innocent party in all of this, but he still had to read more than just a man having sex with his wife. Even though she’s used to it, it doesn’t make her any more beautiful.’

Another former colleague of Paula’s, who worked with her throughout the 1990s, also predicts that Rupert would not like her revealing his secrets. ‘Paula, who has been making headlines in the tabloids for years, didn’t want any dirt about her floating around,’ they told me. He understood. He was a journalist himself and Bob was a media friend, but there were still limits.

‘The girls were little, they didn’t know, but now they know. ‘They’ve been through a lot when they were so young, and they’ve lived through a lot of it.’

There really is.

Sir Bob and Paula, who was in his 30s when he discovered his biological father was legendary game show host Hughie Green, became a couple in 1976 and married a decade later. She ended the relationship after meeting Hutchence in 1995, leaving the Boomtown Rats star alone.

Paula and Michael’s romance made headlines in the British and Australian press, especially when he was with Tiger Lily in July 1996.

Their happiness was short-lived; Just over a year later, Michael was found dead in a Sydney hotel room and the coroner ruled he committed suicide by hanging.

Paula had planned to visit him in the city with Tiger Lily and their three other daughters, but Sir Bob had taken legal action to stop this.

Sources said Paula claimed Michael was distraught when she told him he couldn’t bring the girls with him and insisted he couldn’t live without seeing his little girl.

Paula refused to accept the coroner’s verdict and believed that she died of auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Today Fifi Trixibelle works as a personal assistant at London-based PR firm Freuds, run by Matthew Freud, a friend of her parents. She split from her husband of ten years, sand sculptor Andrew Robertson, earlier this year.

Pixie works as a model and is the mother of a four-year-old daughter with her husband, drummer George Barnett. Meanwhile, Tiger Lily is a singer-songwriter and artist. Last year she married model Ben Archer, with whom she has a child. All three girls tried to put the tragedies behind them.

‘The girls have done very well for themselves,’ says a friend. ‘Instead of taking into account what they read about their mother, they try to look forward and remember their mother the best they know how.’