Paul Merton says he ‘supported’ Paula Yates on Have I Got News For You after viewers were left horrified by ‘bullying’ clip from 1995 – and claims she and Michael Hutchence thanked him for ‘protecting’ her after filming the show
- The BBC panel show team captain said he was ‘surprised’ by Hislop’s behaviour
- READ MORE: ‘Everyone is waiting for me to die’: Paula Yates eerily prophesises her own death as she speaks of the pain of losing Michael Hutchence in unheard tapes played in new documentary
Paul Merton has claimed Paula Yates thanked him for sticking up for her on Have I Got News For You in 1995 after viewers were left horrified by an unearthed clip of Ian Hislop mocking the tragic TV presenter on the BBC panel show.
Merton, who has been a team captain on the topical panel show alongside the Private Eye editor since 1990, appeared in a clip played on Channel 4 documentary Paula, which aired in March this year.
The two-part documentary featured audio tapes that had not previously been made public in which Yates discussed her life and the depression she sank into following the death of her partner, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, in 1997.
It also examined how Yates, who died at 41 following a heroin overdose in 2001, was portrayed in the media after the breakdown of her marriage to Bob Geldof, with whom she shared three children, and the custody battle that followed.
In one clip, branded ‘repugnant’ by the Daily Mail’s Christopher Stevens, Yates is subject to mockery on Have I Got News For You as Ian Hislop denounced her as attention seeking and sexually promiscuous – but as Merton speaks out five months on from the release of the documentary, he claims he protected her amid Hislop’s attacks.
A clip from Have I Got News For You in 1995 shows Paula Yates appearing on the topical panel show where she is subject to jibes about her breast implants and autobiography
After the clip was played in Channel 4 documentary Paula in March, viewers criticised Ian Hislop for ‘bullying’ the Big Breakfast presenter
Speaking to the Telegraph, Merton said: ‘I don’t think I was mean to [Yates]. I think I was supportive.’
He added he was ‘surprised’ by his co-star Hislop’s ‘anger’ towards the Big Breakfast presenter, which he believes ‘took her by surprise’.
Merton claimed that, following the recording of the episode, Yates and Hutchence visited his dressing room, and Yates told him: ‘Thank you for looking after me.’
The clip, played in the first episode of the documentary, is from 1995 shortly after Yates and Bob Geldof announced their split, as Yates went on to date Hutchence.
With her blonde hair in a pixie crop and wearing a diamond tiara on her head, Yates gives a wry smile as both Merton and Hislop joke about her having had breast implants.
During a game in which contestants must name the one thing that four public figures have in common, Yates, who is Merton’s teammate, is listed as one of the four people.
Merton guesses: ‘Is it breast implants?’ to which Yates sarcastically replies: ‘Oh well, that’s very gentlemanly. That’s really nice.’
Paula Yates tragically died at the age of 41 at her home in Notting Hill, London, following an accidental heroin overdose
Journalist and restaurant critic Grace Dent, speaking in the present day, said she had been left ‘angry’ at Yates’s treatment on the panel show. She argued: ‘[Yates] got a drubbing that a politician wouldn’t, who had led the country into absolute ruin.’
As the clip continues, Hislop further discusses Yates’s breast implants and argues she has little right to privacy because she likes media attention.
In an attempt to stop Hislop’s scathing attacks, Yates says: ‘Ian, please stop being unkind.’
Reviewing the documentary, the Daily Mail’s Christopher Stevens pulled out the Have I Got News For You clip as ‘particularly repugnant’ in highlighting how Yates received unpleasant treatment in the public eye.
He concedes that, in the full clip, Merton did intervene as the Private Eye editor went on to bash Yates over her autobiography.
He told Hislop that if he carried on, ‘I’d take great pleasure thumping my fist into that great face of yours.’
After the clip resurfaced in the documentary in March, viewers were left horrified at how Yates was treated by the presenters of the show, saying it amounted to ‘bullying’.
One viewer wrote on Twitter: ‘The treatment of Paula Yates by Hislop in the clip from Have I got news for you, was really uncomfortable to watch. Especially when she’s asking Hislop “to be kind”. It was just bullying, hope Hislop watched and is ashamed.’
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