It’s not easy to like Peaches Geldof, I discovered, moments after clapping
eyes on her. At a photo studio at 10am, the 19-year-old is slumped in a
chair looking rough, her skin gone to pot with a cold sore, bad hair
extensions and reading a ropey tabloid exposé about ... herself! She
actually grunts when we are introduced, adding a sullen, “Oh, hey,” as she
shakes my proffered hand so limply that I can feel the life drain out of me.
There is, we are led to believe, another Peaches. An opinionated, talented
young woman with devoted friends and a pistol-quick brain. This Peaches
works hard – to be fair, she is here today modelling her new collection for
the fashion label PPQ, in store at the end of October – and pulls in tidy
sums as a newspaper columnist, television presenter and DJ. Of course,
“clever Peaches” and “bitchy Peaches” have been eclipsed by a third
incarnation: “tabloid Peaches”. This version is far and away the scariest of
the lot – a girl who appeared to spend every night of her school days
pie-eyed and partying, who dates unsuitable rock boys and has thrice been
busted in drugs-related incidents. First there was the video of her,
allegedly, buying gear off the Typhoid Mary of celebrity dealers, who
featured in a similar video of Amy Winehouse that was shopped to the tabs;
then a “shopping list” of uppers (cocaine, Viagra) and downers (Diazepam)
surfaced that Peaches is believed to have jotted down and discarded in a
London pub. Last month, it was reported she had “overdosed” at her King’s
Cross flat. An ambulance was called, only to be met by the spit-flecked
celebutante crying, “You’re invading my privacy!”
Bit rich, really, for a girl who was happily posing for the paps at the new
Batman film premiere the following night. It all reeks of that same fame
lust that seemed to drive Paula Yates, her late mother. As I watch Peaches
sullenly stalk about the studio, communicating monosyllabically, I’d say she
has more than a touch of her grumpy father in her, too. After six hours in
front of the camera, it is finally time for our sit-down. Peaches collapses
moodily, crosslegged on a sofa, eyes fixed on some point 3ft to the left of
my head. She starts chatting stiffly, in her public-schoolgirl accent, about
her collection for PPQ. Actually, I like the clothes: dramatic,
couture-edged – and good value at £200 for a dress. She worked closely with
the PPQ founders, Amy Molyneaux and Percy Parker, travelling to Japan to
research Harajuku’s “gothic Lolitas” and fusing in elements of 1980s new
romanticism and even Jack the Ripper. Then, suddenly, she explodes with
outraged laughter. Across the studio, she has spotted David, the
photographer, reading a piece about her in one of the weekly gossip mags. “I
can see what you’re reading!” she shouts. “Just so you know, I’m not
anorexic! Nor am I competitive dieting with my sister!”
“Ah, but you’ve got your eyes shut in this paparazzi shot,” he shouts back.
“Bad sign of moral decay, blinking.” So you’re aware of your reputation, I
ask. “That I’m this spoilt brat, hardened to partying, addicted to 10
different drugs, best friends with Amy Winehouse and f***ing her way across
the indie circuit?” Well, yes. “I’ve never been spoilt,” she cuts back. “My
father would never have allowed it. I occasionally go out with musicians, I
keep myself to myself, and I get followed by people with cameras. I feel
like I should give some kind of public apology because I see this person in
the papers, too. It’s like reading about a character in a Lewis Carroll
novel, like Alice in Through the Looking Glass. I’d love to meet this person
and tell her she’s a bitch – but she’s not me.”
Er, hang on – it’s partly you. I’ve seen Blagrove’s video, and it’s hardly
surprising that the papers are going to freak out about drugs. “I don’t
think it’s even drugs. I think there’s an innate fear of young people who
are outspoken and who do things that are thought of as being negative but
can be ... I don’t know how to phrase it.” She pauses. “There’s an innate
fear of freedom and freedom of expression, and of people doing things
considered outlandish.”
You’re saying drugs are about freedom and healthy outlandishness? “I’m not
saying that. I don’t promote drugs. I’m talking about freedom as a whole.
It’s about people who are not instilled with the conservative point of view,
who aren’t tied down by social politics and who are young. There’s this fear
of that in the press, like all these 40-year-old housewives writing about a
19-year-old girl with such vitriol. Don’t write rubbish about someone’s
daughter who’s just living her life!”
Okay. But there are some facts to face – like that video and the shopping
list. And what about the “overdose”? “The drug thing is something I can’t go
into for legal reasons, but I will say that it was blown completely out of
proportion. I never overdosed. Drugs for me are something I don’t normally
meddle in. I have tried drugs in my life, I’m not going to deny it, [but] I
don’t need to go to rehab because I never, and will never, have any sort of
habit with drugs. It’s something that everyone – well, not everyone, smart
people usually don’t do it,” she says, smiling, “but it’s something that
people go through in their lives, especially growing up in London, and it’s
not something I’ve ever had a problem with. I’m not friends with Amy
Winehouse; I don’t live in Camden.” Have you ever smoked crack? “I’ve never
smoked crack in my life. I’ve done other drugs, I’ve had experiences with
drugs – some good, some bad – and it’s not something I want to pursue. I can
say now, I’ve never overdosed.” But an ambulance was called to your flat?
“It wasn’t an overdose,” she repeats, totally matter of fact. “I had a bad
experience; it was nowhere near an overdose.” By this point, she has
uncurled her rigid limbs, is looking straight at me and even – gasp! –
smiling. I’m starting to thaw to Peaches. Yes, she’s precocious and totally
unabashed, but she’s also deliciously forthright. She apologises for being
frosty at first. “I have a bad habit of prejudging people.” Naturally, I’m
wondering where she gets all this vim from – the angry dad, the provocative
mum?
“There are some things that really disconcert me,” she says. “One of them is
the constant comparisons to my mother. The journalists who write this, don’t
they ever step back and think, ‘How bizarre, I’m comparing a 19-year-old
girl I have never met to her dead mother.’? Do they never think how sick
that is? It’s my dead mother, and I don’t want people writing
about that. It’s wrong and it’s hurtful to keep bringing it up.” She takes a
breath. “Obviously, I have my parents’ genes, but just because I work in
television doesn’t mean I’m doing it to copy my mother, that I want to be
like her in every single way. I don’t. The sad thing is, I didn’t even know
her that well. I was 11 when she died. It wasn’t like I was 15 and knew
everything about her. I may have some inherent things that I might not even
know about.” Like what? “I would say that I inherited good traits from both
my parents and bad traits too,” she says softly. “I’d say that I’m really
stubborn, like my dad. I’m also really messy, which is something my mother
was, and I change my mind quite a lot, which is also something she did. But
I’ve inherited good things from her: television presenting, writing, good
people skills.”
The people skills are debatable, I think, as she fiddles with her rings,
looking ever so young. “I find it such a lame comparison.” What, that you’ll
die from drugs too? “Yes. It’s like people almost wish it would happen. But
if my mother died in a car crash, does that mean I would have to run out in
front of a car and it would be history repeating itself? If I was
photographed by a road, would it be, ‘Peaches Geldof gets too close! She’s
following in the path of her mother!’ every time?”
I admire her wit under fire, but Peaches does seem to be flailing. For a few
years after her mother’s death from a heroin overdose in 2000, she lived in
southwest London with her father, his girlfriend Jeanne Marine, her sisters
(Pixie and Fifi Trixibelle) and half-sister (Tiger Lily). She went to
Queen’s College in central London, and enjoyed the privilege of a sloaney
upbringing. By her mid-teens, however, she had discovered rock’n’roll
(thanks to her dad), moved out of the main family house into the basement
flat and became a fixture on the capital’s social scene. Did Sir Bob fail to
keep her in check?
“People want to push my father off a pedestal that never even existed. He’s a
good man, but people want to see a downfall.” Was he lax with you? “My
father is a good father because he gave me rules – but you have to have an
equilibrium between rules and freedom. When I turned 17, I said, ‘Look, I’ve
got to move out. I’ve got to forge my own path.’ ” So he doesn’t tear a
strip off when you get busted by the press? “Look, I’m a 19-year-old woman.
What’s my father going to do? Drive all the way from Battersea to lock me in
my room?” That’s how the stories go. “My dad p***** himself about that. He
says, ‘Hey, Peaches, apparently, I drove to your house again last night and
locked you up in your bedroom.’ ” She sighs. “He doesn’t read the press. If
anyone tells him anything about me, he’ll call me up, ask me if there’s any
truth in it, and then understand it has been blown out of proportion. If
it’s something bad, then he’ll help me through it. He’s not some Irish
psycho wielding an axe.”
The real villains, she says predictably, are the paps. “I try to stay upbeat,
but I’m not smiling when a paparazzi is thrusting a camera in my face, or
lying on the floor outside a club so he can get a photo up my skirt. A, I’m
wearing Bridget Jones underwear every time I go out, and B, you’re a pervert
– get a real job. It’s like stalking. It’s constant, and it’s disconcerting
because I’m a young girl. They stay outside my house. I have to keep my
curtains shut all the time. It’s harassment.
“I can’t do anything in private because of my family,” she says. “I don’t want
to come across as a spoilt brat – I know I’ve been given opportunities
people have worked their whole lives for, and I’m a dick for it, and I’m
sorry. But I don’t know many other 19-year-olds who’ve done a lot of the
stuff I’ve done.” Yes, because you got the breaks. “But I’m not shit,” she
replies instantly. “If I was shit, I would never get hired again – and I get
hired a lot.”
Next month, Peaches will start university – Queen Mary College, studying
English and film – and is also planning to leave her shared flat and live on
her own. For the past six months, she has been dating Faris Badwan of the
Horrors. She shows me a tattoo he designed for her – a noose and an old book
inked onto her tiny biceps. “It’s to symbolise me being owned by him, for
him to have a rope around me.”
It appears tattoos are where Peaches’ darkness is revealed. On her forearm are
the words, “Disappear Here”, taken from Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis’s
novel about angst among affluent teenagers. Beyond everything, she wants to
be a novelist and worries about her inability to settle to it. “He’s really
disillusioned,” she explains breathily of Ellis’s hero, “and he hates
everyone around him. The only thing prevalent in his mind is escaping from
mass consumerism and finding freedom. I got it tattooed when I was 14. I
thought it was relevant.” How depressing.
“I found out recently that a lot of the girls I went to school with have had
nervous breakdowns,” she continues. “I was so shocked because I can
understand it. When I hear about the things they have to go through, I get
it – the day-to-day pressures that make you go crazy. I have so much shit
put on me.” She stares at her hands. “I haven’t felt like I was a teenager
since I was 12. I’ve felt like I was 30 since I was 13. I don’t think I had
a teenage time. Maybe my twenties will be easier.”
I’m surprised when she gives me a clingy, childlike hug as she says goodbye. I
still think she’s a little madam, but I worry for her. She missed her
childhood and now has to cope with living on her own, trying to keep a man,
dodging paps and having all her mistakes splashed on the front pages – and
she is still only 19. On reflection, I don’t think she’s like her mother.
But this clever, troubled baby-woman would benefit from having her around.
Not that Peaches will thank me for saying it.
PEACHES LOVES
Depeche Mode: Just Can’t Get Enough “I always play it when I’m
DJing. It goes on for eight minutes, a real floor-filler.”
Catch, Shoreditch “I can’t bear Boujis. What am I going to do? See
Prince William making out with Kate Middleton? I’d rather see an amazing
band.”
Mac brown eyeshadow, £10 “I use it under my eyes – cooler than
black.”
Red Roses, by Jo Malone, £59 “It’s light and simple. Most other
perfumes are too oppressive: my boyfriend says they make me smell like a
brothel.”
Topshop jeans, £45 “The best jeans I’ve ever owned – the ankle is
so tight; just what I look for.”
Jimmy Choo black ankle boots with silver stars, £595 “I got sent
them recently. I love them.”
