Lily Allen reveals final encounter with doomed Paula Yates: 'It was the saddest sight'

LILY Allen has revealed she was one of the last people to see Bob Geldof’s ex-wife Paula Yates alive.

The pop star was 15 and working as a waitress in London after quitting school when tragic Paula visited for lunch with a known drug dealer, The Sun reports.

The restaurant was called 192 which Lily says was “where everyone groovy in the media met each other to exchange gossip, and network over lunch and drinks and dinner”.

Paula — who was married to Boomtown Rat Bob for ten years and had three kids with him — was later found dead from a heroin overdose aged just 41 on September 17, 2000 and Lily had to speak to cops as part of their probe into the death.

She said: “I remember seeing Paula there, who was eating what would turn out to be one of her last meals — certainly her last in public — before she overdosed on heroin.

“You could tell she was in trouble when you looked at her. I had to talk to the police about seeing her, as part of their investigation.

“She was joined at lunch by this guy that we all knew was a heroin dealer. They’d left together. It was the saddest sight.”

Mother-of-two Lily, 33, shares the story in her explosive autobiography My Thoughts Exactly, which includes sordid details of her sex life, affairs and binges on booze and drugs.

She also opens up about being whisked off to Ireland to recover from an accidental overdose three years ago as her marriage to Sam Cooper was coming to an end and her reckless lifestyle was spiralling out of control.

She had been in the States touring her third album Sheezus and had been sleeping with women and men as well as going on daily benders.

She said: “When I finally returned home from America, in the summer of 2015, I continued to avoid Sam and family life.

“I’d stay in London instead — and get wrecked. One night I overdid it. I took too many pills. Perhaps I misjudged what I’d taken or perhaps it was just that my body had finally had enough of what I was regularly putting into it.

“Either way, I ended up in hospital having overdosed on prescription pills mixed with alcohol and other substances. Clearly, I wasn’t trying to kill myself because before I drifted off into my drug-induced, unconscious state, I phoned the girlfriend I’d earlier been out with.”

Lily said she can’t remember the call but the girl phoned a friend of hers who got in touch with her best friend Seb, a music producer.

She continued: “I felt alone and isolated, but here I was asking for help and here were people getting up in the middle of the night to help me. I feel grateful for that. I feel lucky to have that.

“Seb has keys to my flat so let himself in, scooped me up and got me to hospital. Then he called Sam. I remember nothing about any of it. Sam was in Ireland with the girls, staying with his dad who lives there. He flew back to come and get me.

“We both pretended that what had happened was an accident, the result of my being burnt out. That was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

“We didn’t talk about what was really going on — that I was in deep trouble, that I’d been cheating on him and that our marriage was over.

“Being in Ireland at least felt safe. I like Sam’s dad. I slept for days.” But that wasn’t the start of her recovery — in fact it was the end of her marriage, because when she returned to their country home in England, Lily says she “couldn’t stop drinking”.

She added: “Before I got into bed with Sam, I’d go to the kitchen and quickly and quietly drink a quarter of a bottle of whiskey. I had to drink whiskey to get into bed with my husband. That’s when I knew our marriage was collapsing..”

In her book Lily puts much of her wild behaviour down to her upbringing by film producer mum Alison Owen and comedian dad Keith Allen — whom she says she barely saw because of his partying and womanising. There was a rare occasion when Keith offered to take her on holiday when she was a four-year-old living in Ireland.

But the trip along with her sister Sarah, ten, and three-year-old brother — Game of Thrones star Alfie — was just ploy to cover-up an affair her dad was having.

Lily said: “Mostly, when it came to dad looking after us, it was cancellations, crap excuses and disappointments.

“He did once offer to help out my mum, when she was making her first film, Hear My Song. They were still together then.

“The film was made in Ireland and Mum took us kids there while she was working on it, enrolling us in the local school and nursery in Leixlip.

“Dad had booked a hotel between St Tropez and Nice and, when we went up to our room, we discovered his friend, Nira, who worked at The Comic Strip as the company’s secretary, was in the room next door.

“They did the whole: ‘Oh my God, how weird to see you here! You’re on holiday? You on your own? Come and hang out with us’, thing, but there was no kidding Sarah.

“Alfie and I bought into it. But Sarah knew. Dad and Nira were already having an affair. They’d planned the holiday so they could be away together.

“Soon after, dad and mum split up, and we hardly saw dad at all. I remember him moving out of our flat in Bloomsbury and away from us, his family, and into a little flat on the Waldo Road in with a pig called Morris.

“It wasn’t a dinky micro pig but a real, fat pink f***ing pig. I trust for a time at least they were happy together.”

Lily also admits in her book she felt “betrayed” when her first boyfriend, Lester, sold a story to a newspaper about their outdoor sex romps at an Irish estate. Her hit single Smile was written about her breakup with Lester.

Lily said: “Lester did become interested in me once more when Smile hit number one. At least, he became interested in what he could make by selling his version of our relationship. It’s true, we did have sex outside, at his cousin’s party. It didn’t feel salacious or wild when we were doing it.

“My memory of it had been that it was sweet and intimate and private. The worst part about him selling his story wasn’t that he did it, it was that none of his friends said anything about it.

“Betraying someone you loved for money was apparently fine. I found that confusing.”

This story originally appeared on The Sun and is republished here with permission.

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