In her heyday, Paula Yates was second only to Princess Diana in the top tier of UK celebs. This documentary shows why everyone fell for her – and why she has never been bettered
I had forgotten how brilliant Paula Yates was. I had forgotten, if I’m honest, all about Paula Yates – at least on a day-to-day basis, despite her being an almost constant presence on the television screen and in the tabloids throughout my youth. As the new two-part documentary Paula points out, in her 1980s and 90s heyday she was second only to Diana, Princess of Wales in the world of UK celebrity. “I love it when you are on the front page of the paper,” Diana once told her. “It means I’ve got the day off.”
At first the idea of a documentary about Yates seems somewhere between pointless and exploitative. She was media fodder then – do we have to make her media fodder again now? The documentary is part of Channel 4’s 40th anniversary output, but the peg on which it is hung – the airing of never-before-heard interviews she gave in the two years before she died with the (now) former editor of the Sunday Express and OK! magazine, Martin Townsend – means a slightly grubby pall is cast over proceedings as they begin.
