The death of Peaches Geldof is another tragedy to hit the family –14 years after she was left grieving the loss of her own mother, Paula Yates.

Peaches was just 11 when the former presenter died from an accidental heroin overdose in 2000 at the age of 41. Yates had two years earlier lost custody of Peaches and her sisters Pixie and Fifi – who went to live with their father Sir Bob Geldof – after an apparent suicide attempt. Sir Bob would later take custody of Yates’s daughter Tiger Lily after the deaths of her mother and father, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence who was found dead in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.

In November 2012, Peaches told Elle magazine of her struggles to get over her parents’ split – the couple divorced when she was seven years old – and her mother’s death. She reportedly said: “I was completely aware of the whole situation, the transition of my mother who was amazing, who wrote books on parenting, who gave us this idyllic childhood in Kent; and who then turned into this heartbroken shell of a woman who was just medicating to get through the day.

“On top of that, there was my father who was very embittered and depressed.

“It was like living on a permanent see-saw, very scary and sad. Those feelings have always stayed with me, they just never went away.”

She also said that when her mother died, “I didn’t grieve. I didn’t cry at her funeral. I couldn’t express anything because I was just numb to it all. I didn’t start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16.”

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