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From left: at her
Bond-themed
27th birthday party;
a tabloid favourite
until the end;
atending a charity
event in 2016.
Below: her car-crash
interview with Frank
Skinner in 1999.provided the perfect glam antidote to
’90s grunge. TPT was invited to put her
name to a weekly column in The Sun-
day Times style section called Yah!
(ghostwritten by Wendy Holden).
In hindsight, the 1996 Tatler cover
that made Palmer-Tomkinson officially
famous is poignant. It shows her grin-
ning with American heiress Normandie
Keith under the banner: “What does it
say about us that we care so much
about them?” A cover line pointing to a
separate story reads: “Can you cut it?
Why cocaine is on the menu at a dinner
party near you.”
Commenting at the time in The
Independent, journalist Emma Forrest
observed: “They don't have jobs as
such, since they come from inordi-
nately wealthy families. What Tara and
Normandie do, what makes them wor-
thy of the ‘It’ girl title, is hanging
around the fringes of social gatherings,”
she wrote. “What do these people think
gives them the right to choose a career
as a socialite in the first place?”
But TPT didn’t have a career plan.
She was just a well-connected kid,
showing off – like a million others
would given the opportunity.
If Palmer-Tomkinson read
Forrest’s scathing story, which she
probably did – being then too young
and naive to have learnt not to readher own press – it must have stung.
Eighteen years later in a radio inter-
view with the BBC, Palmer-Tomkinson
spoke of the curse of knowing you don’t
deserve your status.
“It was not by my choice,” she said.
“Suddenly everyone was like, ‘This girl
is the girl of our time, she’s the It
girl!’ ... After a year of all the fun
parties and the fun clothes, you sud-
denly realise you’ve done absolutely
nothing and you feel a bit unworthy.”
Before long, the cocaine and booze
she’d been consuming for fun turned
sinister. “You are so frightened because
you’re trying to go out and be this per-
son that everyone thinks is so great, but
you just don’t feel that great.”
By 1999 Palmer-
Tomkinson was in a “ter-
ribly dark place”. Her
cocaine habit was report-
edly costing her 400
pounds a day. She
appeared intoxicated on
a chat show hosted by
comedian Frank Skin-
ner, who egged her on
shamelessly. It’s excruci-
ating to watch. She keeps
forgetting what she’s
said. At one point she
gets on her knees and
pretends to be her dog.And yet, she remains oddly
charming throughout. You see her vul-
nerability, and even though she’s
wasted and admits her column is a
vehicle for getting free stuff, she’s still
nice – the boarding school girl, brought
up to smile when someone’s rude to
you. It’s Skinner who comes off as the
idiot, making jokes at her expense.
Shortly after this mortifying expe-
rience, Palmer-Tomkinson checked
into rehab and burnt her address book.
She began going to regular therapy ses-
sions and returned to an early love for
music. In 2012, she released a pop
album called Flawed. She said yes to
more TV, and in 2014 she gave an emo-
tional interview to Jeremy Kyle – which
of course landed her in the papers all
over again. Behind the scenes she gave
much of her time to charity work,
speaking in schools about the dangers
of drugs and lending her support to
Comic Relief and Child Line.
She wanted children, but the
husband she’d expected would simply
materialise one day never did.
“My life is so lonely,” she told the
Evening Standard in 2005. “I don't
want to whinge because I know many
people have much more difficult lives
than mine. I find it hard to trust
people. I had a flatmate for two years,
my best friend in the whole world,
who stole my credit cards and ran up
thousands of pounds on them. Now my
best friend is my Polish cleaner.”
Inevitably, her death caused a flurry
of speculation. Did addiction kill her
in the end? There’d been rumours of
a life-threatening brain tumour (it
turned out to be benign). “Ta ra died
peacefully in her sleep due to a
perforated ulcer and
peritonitis,” said Santa
in a family statement.
“Those that knew and
were close to Tara knew
that there was no retreat
to a ‘dark place’ as some
have disappointingly
sought to suggest. In the
last few weeks Tara was
happy, positive and
making plans for when
she recovered her
health.” Her body was
found by her cleaner.Ta r a’s c o c a i ne
habit was
reportedly
costing her
£400 a dayLIFE STORIES