Tara: crazy queen of the party scene
Tara: crazy queen of the party scene
Fashion shows, premieres, private jets: the It girl’s Style column charted a mad social whirl, leaving us gasping at the glamour and laughing with TPT, says her editor
At the time it did not seem life-changing. Being summoned to the editor’s office at The Sunday Times was, all the same, a nerve-racking experience. Had I done something wrong?
No, we were getting a new columnist. I was deputy editor of Style at the time and in charge of the opening column. We had tried out various short-term celebrities who, to paraphrase a critic of Charles Dickens, “went up like a rocket” and came “down with the stick”.
The new writer, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, who had been talked about in gossip columns for kissing Prince Charles on a ski slope, looked less likely than most to hold the readers’ interest. Little did I suspect what was coming.
The original idea, that Tara would pen her own account of her fabulous party-going life, soon hit the buffers. While she could write perfectly well, she had a relaxed view of deadlines. We settled on a plan of me “talking it out of her”, which sounds easier than it was.
Tracking Tara down was a weekly challenge worthy of MI5. I would invoke the help of her mother, her sister and her agent, before Tara herself would call (once from a car wash) and announce that she was ready to “do the column”.
Like that of Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, Tara’s voice was full of money. But then, so was her life. At our first meeting she told me how her boyfriend, landing a helicopter in her parents’ garden, had blown all the petals off her mother’s herbaceous borders.
“Mummy was furious,” Tara recounted between bites of toast. “So from now on it has to be landed in the orchard.”
I quickly realised that I was dealing with comedy gold. And there was much more to come. Tara’s maxim about flying was that “in economy you make enemies, in club you make comrades and in first you make friends”. She warned me that champagne made your breath smell. Her suspicion of canapés — “ones that get dropped on the floor are put back on the trays” — means it has been years since I’ve been able to look a miniature fish and chips in the eye.
I also became expert on Tara-speak, the argot of the uber-Sloane: OPM (other people’s money), PJ (private jet), NSIT (not safe in taxis) and QNI (quiet night in) — a rare occurrence in those days. Tara, by her own admission, barely slept for 20 years.
Well aware of how funny this all sounded, she played up to it. She had a strong self-deprecating streak and happily let me refer to “the reader who wrote recently to say that me wearing La Perla underwear was the equivalent of putting Pirelli tyres on a Vauxhall Cavalier”.
She took private jets like others take buses. In London she’d party with Elton John, in LA it would be Tom Cruise
This ability to laugh at herself, along with a sequence of unsuccessful romances, was the secret of the column’s success. As big-haired Euro-hunks in gleaming Gucci loafers drifted in and out of her life, the theme of her eternal quest for a man became the perfect foil to the enormous envy that Tara’s glamorous existence would otherwise provoke in the reader.
And, cripes, was it glamorous. Never before or since have I met anyone who had quite such a good time, all the time. Tara’s life, as chronicled through the column, was a succession of supermodel-stuffed parties, fashion show front rows, dinners, premieres and luxury launches.
She took PJs like other people take buses, never leaving home without her passport in case lunch in Windsor ended up in Italy (one billionaire host decided English coffee wasn’t up to snuff and flew everyone to Venice). In London she would party with Elton John, Michael Caine and Princess Caroline of Monaco. In LA it would be Richard Gere and Tom Cruise.
I asked her one day whether the glam and glitter ever got boring. Was I joking? “If rich people can be dull, poor people can be duller,” Tara quipped, but both she and I knew she didn’t really mean it. Beneath the glittery party princess was a wellies-and-Labradors girl who loved country walks and log fires. Her comment last year, that she had expected to be living the rural life of her parents by then, is horribly poignant in the light of her lonely London death.
Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s Social Diary became amazingly famous with amazing speed. At the height of her fame she was written about in The Wall Street Journal (“You’ll be able to buy shares in me soon,” she joked). Everyone read it — and in some unexpected places. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Bosnia plastered their mess with a collage of the articles. A Captain Allison wrote to say that Tara brightened up the Balkans for his bomb disposal unit. She was something of a forces sweetheart.
People were desperate to be in the column. “Please mention us,” begged Lord Frederick Windsor and friends when Tara ran into them at a burger bar. Tara duly mentioned them, as well as every shop, restaurant, club and brand of make-up or car with which she came into contact.
The columns had more plugs than B&Q, but Tara’s breezy freeloading was all part of the fun. And fun was the word. Looking back on the columns, I am struck by how jolly and innocent they were. Nothing sleazy or sordid, no hint of what was to come; just Tara rushing from party to premiere like a friendly, designer-clad dog. She completely got it that the point was to entertain and that the column should be as funny as possible.
There were signs, even then, that her life was not as much fun as it seemed
For one day each week I lived Tara’s life by proxy. I too was a jetsetting socialite with Charles on speed dial and parents with a butler. For the author I wanted to be, there was no better training. Every week in the pages of The Sunday Times I was writing a serial novel. One that had become an instant hit.
If I mentioned my role, though, people thought I was a fantasist. While ghostwriting was hardly a new idea, everyone was convinced that Tara wrote every word. Possibly this is a reflection of how close the column was to her actual personality and the extent to which she had instantly — and, it seems, eternally — embedded herself in the national consciousness. Her blue-blooded bonkersness had something very British about it.
That she was stunning hardly harmed things: super-glamorous with glossy hair, a year-round tan and a fabulous figure that never gained an ounce despite the horse-like appetite and vast amounts of food she put away. Her favourite lunch was chicken, mash and gravy, which she ate so often that the King’s Road restaurant that she patronised named it “chicken Tara”.
Her famous drug problems certainly explained a few things. There were signs, even then, that her life was not as much fun as it seemed. As well as “lovers”, the column also chronicled a revolving door of fair-weather friends. At one of her parties I found her in a corner saying that she didn’t have the foggiest idea who most of the people were.
When I finally left Style for Tatler, it was with the germ of a novel inspired by our relationship. Simply Divine had as its main character a socialite called Champagne D’Vyne, whose diary column is written by someone else. Eventually she makes an idiot of herself on a chat show and seeks help for her chronic drug problems.
I was nervous that Tara might take umbrage, but with typical generosity she turned up to my launch party in a ski hat and gave me a quote for the book cover: “I’m absolutely furious but secretly very flattered.”
Tara was special. She was a witty, clever and kindhearted person, and there was much more to her than people imagined. That her once-glittering life ended in such a sad death is a tragedy. She certainly won’t be forgotten. She captured the public imagination and enlivened the public stage with her own crazy blend of posh glamour.
There were other It girls around, but Tara easily led the field. She had something that none of the others had — personality. In spades. And no one else looked quite so good in tight white trousers.
TPT on facing up to her drug addiction
“Hi! My name’s Tara, and I’m an addict.” Not the kind of small talk I was used to making, but this is what I said at my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. After five weeks in rehab, I was finally ready to admit that I had a drug problem.
“Hi! My name’s Tara, and I’m an addict.” Not the kind of small talk I was used to making, but this is what I said at my first Narcotics Anonymous meeting. After five weeks in rehab, I was finally ready to admit that I had a drug problem.
Six months ago I was terrified of anybody finding out that I was addicted to cocaine. Ironically, the stress of hiding your habit makes you rely on it even more.
I’m not quite sure how it happened. I suppose I was insecure and blindly stupid, unaware of the consequences until one day it became obvious that if something wasn’t done, I would end up dead.
Although I took my first line of coke when I was 21, I began taking it regularly nearly three years ago. Cocaine comes around with the canapés at a lot of parties in London, and the drug was always easy to get hold of. It started as a social thing: I wanted to impress people and show off. As I became more well known, I thought that cocaine would give me an extra boost of confidence when faced with rooms full of strangers and flashing paparazzi lights.
I was very much mistaken. The drug eats away at your self-esteem and makes you paranoid. Suddenly, I was an addict and my life spiralled out of control. I went to hundreds of parties — often three in one evening — and could never keep still. I also began drinking a lot. By this time, the habit was costing me hundreds of pounds a day.
I became selfish, self-obsessed and deceitful. I never wanted to hurt anyone — especially those close to me — but I couldn’t help it.
It seemed that there were two Taras. One was a sweet, country-loving girl who relished her weekends at home with the family; the other was the one you’d see in the gossip columns, hogging the limelight. In the end, the two Taras blurred into one, and I hated her.
Tara Palmer-Tomkinson was talking to Jeremy Langmead in 1999
Yah! The sex, the clothes, the royals: Tara’s Style diary highlights
■ “HRH the Princess of Wales looked stunning in a pearl-embroidered shalwar kameez given to her by Jemima Khan. The dress code was ‘your national dress or black tie’. I chose Italy’s — Versace!”
■ “The only time I feel a bit inadequate is when I’m in the sack with someone. You want to be this fantastic Venus temptress, not concentrating on lying on your side to make your boobs look bigger.”
■ “Despite my efforts to be a Denise Van Outen-style ladette, soccer doesn’t blow my skirts up. I don’t think I’d know Ryan Giggs if he landed on my head.”
■ “At the Conservative ball . . . I joined Jacob Rees-Mogg on the dancefloor in an attempt to teach him some rhythm, which on the whole was quite a success. When I left him there he was gyrating like a young Iggy Pop.”
■ “I bumped into the literary agent Ed Victor at a cultural bash. He’s always pestering me to write a book, so I’m thinking of introducing a new genre of fiction — the shopping and shopping novel.”
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