marieclaire.com.au 199GRANT SAINSBURY/PHOTOSHOT/AUSTRALSCOPE
She was the aristocratic It girl who skied
with Prince Charles and went to all the
best parties. But the socialite, who died
earlier this year, also saw the dark side
of celebrity. By Amanda SandhurstT
his is a book I totally want to read. Not only
do I want to read it, I want to live it all again,”
enthuses Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, pearl ear-
rings swinging, before rapidly changing
tack. “So much has happened since that
book, I mean, oh my God, that’s history!”
It’s 2010 and Palmer-Tomkinson is talking a mile a
minute about her new novel Inheritance, a thinly veiled
roman à clef based on the adventures of a “naughty” socialite.
It seems obvious that the author is high, although she has
repeatedly spoken during interviews about how unfair it is to
be forever tarred with that brush: people are always presum-
ing she’s on drugs, when in fact she gave them up long ago.
Yet here she is with a wild look in her eyes, jittery, waving
her hands about like a windmill. It doesn’t help that her nose
looks odd. The tabloids have been hounding her about it
again, six years after they’d reported her as saying: “I’ve given
myself a nose job because of all the cocaine I shoved up it.”
Palmer-Tomkinson stares down the camera and says:
“The It girl died the year I went to rehab, it was years
ago. That was her obituary, now I want to be taken