Peaches blossoms

As Peaches has got on with being a teenager in her own, undeniably inimitable way, the world has watched and worried. Most recently she has provoked disapproval for her drug-taking, her marriage to a boyfriend of ten days and her subsequent comments that she doesn't expect marriage to last forever anyway. She is horribly famous. She is studied and reviled, fair enough. Or is it rather unfair, all things considered?

Peaches is very delicate with a limp little handshake and slightly nervy manners. She has long blonde extensions that she has got rid of since we spoke and limpid blue eyes that are wary and a bit confrontational at the same time. Wow, can she talk. She can talk and talk and talk. She's incredibly changeable and, when animated, charismatic. She is bored one minute, chirpy and diverted the next. She is arrogant and self-deprecating by turn. She delivers opinions that can develop into mini manifestos and I would say that she knows her own mind if I weren't convinced that she'll change it any minute. She can be both a pain and adorable. She's annoying and she's interesting. Above all, she's only 19. And yet it feels as though she's been around forever.

Peaches is the middle of the three daughters from Bob Geldof's long-term relationship with and then marriage to Paula Yates. He was the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, she was a music journalist and television presenter. Later, of course, he became a saint and she became a cautionary tale. Fifi, the eldest, was born in 1983. The couple married in 1986, Peaches was born in 1989, with Pixie arriving in 1990. Paula left Bob for Australian rock star Michael Hutchence in 1994 and their daughter, Tiger, was born in 1996. Bob and Paula had joint custody of the three oldest girls and when Paula died of a heroin overdose in 2000, Tiger moved in with Bob and her three older halfsisters. Peaches was 11 when her mother died. 'I have seen videos of myself when I was little and I was always doing some weird dance routine with Pixie,' she says in her upwardly inflected, transatlantically accented, privately educated voice. 'I used to pretend I was a dog all day when I was about six, which was weird. My father says I always had a frantic mind.' She is still a keen thinker.

As Peaches scandals have abounded, tales have surfaced of Bob as a neglectful parent. The most often repeated example of this was probably the story that he and his girlfriend, the French actress Jeanne Marine, lived in one flat in Battersea while the children lived below them in another, selfcontained flat on their own.
'My father had the flat upstairs and when Tiger moved in we needed a bigger place,' she says. 'We needed one anyway because we were all sharing a room and the flat downstairs came up for sale, so my father bought it and built in stairs so it is like a big house.' Bob sounds more like a mentor than a minuteto-minute minutiae-obsessed parent.
Peaches has made her own money since she first started writing a column at 14. 'I've never been supported by my father,' she says. 'He grew up in an Irish household and that's stayed with him. All my friends at school [Queen's College in Harley Street] were getting, like, £200 a week and there was me with my 50p. Everyone was like, "Why don't you have money? Your dad's really rich." So I was like, "Dad, why don't you give me more money?" And he was like, "Fook off, earn your own fookin money." And I was like, "But Dad, I'm ten." And he said, "Well, get a fookin paper round."'

Peaches, for all her extemporising on subjects from media - particularly female, tabloid journalists - to fashion to music, is straightforwardly loving about her family in a way that most teenagers aren't. She finds her father 'hilarious. He's a demagogue and he's so eloquent and well-read.' She feels she has been given everything she needs in the way of nurture. 'I think it's a very stagnant and old-fashioned view that you need a woman in your life,' she says. 'I don't. My father grew up surrounded by sisters and his mother died of a stroke when he was eight, so he can relate to stuff like that. It was never awkward. I never felt like I needed a woman there. Of course I missed my mother, but I never lusted after a female presence and I had my stepmother.'

Pixie, 18, has now joined Peaches in the spotlight and under the microscope and the general consensus seems to be that the elder sister must be furious that the younger, more mysterious, gamine one has stolen some of the attention. 'Why would I be in competition with my sister?' says Peaches flatly. 'I grew up with her. I love her. I've been through so much with her. I've never felt anything but admiration for her and I've never said anything to suggest that I feel in competition with her. It is completely wrong. I find it insulting and I know she finds it difficult. I hope she achieves everything.'

Pixie is the sister Peaches is closest to in age and in spirit. Bashed by the tragedy of their mother's death by her own hand, the two girls must have pulled together to form a little human life raft for themselves and, although she is the elder by only 18 months, Peaches is passionately maternal when she talks about Pixie, who is now modelling, with campaigns for Pringle and New Look already behind her.

'When I open up a magazine and see these deadeyed, anorexic, Scandinavian models staring out, they've got nothing. And then I see Pixie, who is this completely enigmatic girl who can change into anything. It's always a delight to see her being so beautiful. No one really knows but she's a singer/ songwriter and she's so talented and she's got such a way with words, which is weird because I always used to tease her about being terrible at spelling and reading and now she's writes this poetry. I have nothing but respect for her.' All this comes out in one great torrent - super-fast and superclear. In general, Peaches has unusual clarity about what she feels. Tragedy can do that; blurred feelings suddenly threaten to make you mad so it's best to be as sure as you can about everything, even if that involves a fight.

At 25, Fifi is the oldest girl. She works in public relations for Freud Communications and is the private one. 'Fifi was the sister who wanted to go to boarding school because there were horses and she was always the horsey, jolly-hockey-sticks one,' says Peaches. 'Me and Pixie were going to dive bars in Camden and we are closer in age so there is an obvious connection, but I have a connection with Fifi, too. She lives on the King's Road with her affluent and sweet boyfriend, Joe, who is a banker and looks like the BFG, and they are very happy together. They are probably going to get married and then she'll have kids and be a really good mother. She's very down-to-earth; she's a lot more quiet and safer really.'

Tiger, the tiny little girl who found her mother's body and whose father had previously died in inauspicious circumstances in an Australian hotel room, is now 12 and fully integrated into the Geldof clan. 'Tiger is the best-looking of us all by a long shot,' says Peaches with certainty. 'Whenever I see her she seems to have got a million times taller and she has these languid limbs, and me and Pixie are always grumbling about how we got the bad genes. Tiger is so cute, but she is in that transitional period where she is turning into a young woman and I find that weird to watch. Pixie is always reading her diary and teasing her about boys.'
All the girls are immediately memorable for their Christian names alone, but Peaches appears to have determinedly followed through on her famous beginnings. 'I was born into a family that had notoriety and achievement behind them, so I was born into fame. It would have been unavoidable as I grew up,' she says. 'I could have avoided it, like Fifi has, by being very stringent about it, but the circles that I move in wouldn't have allowed that. And I move in those circles because I love music and I love artists, and I find it a cathartic and visceral thing to be at a concert or a play or to read a book by a person and then I want to meet that person and then they become my friend. It was unavoidable, especially with my surname. So I have used that to my advantage. I get photographed but I also want to work in the media and become like one of the people I admire. I don't care if I get bad press for it.'

On the up side, Peaches enjoyed school and managed to write a column and make a documentary by the time she was 16. Apart from her collection for PPQ, her early column and her television work, she has won a place to study English and film at St Mary's College, part of the University of London. She says she has deferred it because of her recent marriage and subsequent move to New York.

However well-adjusted she seems, the angry child within sometimes gets the better of her. There have been reports of her stealing, shoplifting, having tantrums, buying drugs, overdosing on drugs and generally behaving badly. 'A lot of it is complete bullshit,' she says. 'I would say that a huge amount of it is bullshit or grossly amplified.' Last July an ambulance was called to her rented Islington flat and it was thought that the panic was drug-related. She was well enough to attend the premiere of The Dark Knight the following evening looking radiant if mischievous. 'I have taken drugs and I have had bad experiences with drugs and I haven't taken drugs for a while,' she says. 'I haven't even had a social drink for a while. I decided that I couldn't be bothered and I might as well nip it in the bud.'

Disturbingly, whenever she has looked drunk or high, comparisons with Paula's demise pour forth. 'It is bewildering because I think it's very sick,' she says. 'It's like a Peaches Geldof watch: "I wonder if she's going to die like her mum. Let's count the days until she dies like her mum. Let's nudge her and put that slant on it." It's so Freudian and sick. It's not fair on my family and it's not fair on my sisters and I have a 12-year-old sister [who, of course, lost both parents] and people forget that and that's not right.'

Joining her on the wagon is her husband of five months, Max Drummey, an American musician with the band Chester French. She is wearing an Art Deco diamond ring on her wedding finger, given to her by her new mother-in-law. Peaches dated Frederick Blood-Royale (real name Fred McPherson) from a band called Ox.Eagle.Lion.Man for six months back in 2006 and left home to live with him. 'He sort of used to put me down,' she says. She was then linked with various rockers before settling with Faris Badwan of The Horrors, who she describes as 'a lovely boyfriend'. She was still dating Faris when she stumbled across Max at the iTunes Live Festival in June. 'He wanted to move away from LA, where he'd been recording his album, because he thought it was really secular and materialistic, which it is for someone who was brought up in Boston and has been to Harvard,' she says. 'He has a masters in social anthropology - he's really smart - and he's spent his life being a classical musician and he plays 30 different instruments to teaching level. It's really intense. He's always been this crazy artistic person but with a lust for freedom and to be on stage.'

She absolutely blooms when she talks about Max and that little china-white face opens like a flower. She also sounds quite American. I think Peaches cleaves herself to people. Beneath the precociousness and self-righteousness is a loving nature with an eagerness to learn that also makes her easy to influence. That, perhaps, is something she should watch.
She left her boyfriend, Faris, in London, and went to help Max with his road trip. 'It was platonic and cool and somewhere into the ten days - I never thought it would happen to someone like me - but I guess we really fell in love.' They decided, immediately, to get married in Vegas. She wore a long white vintage dress with a wreath of flowers around her head. The groom wore a tiny blazer, heart-shaped sunglasses and a skirt. 'I called my dad and he was like, "This is a little bit crazy." I was like, "I know, but I really feel this way about this guy and sometimes when you meet someone it is like a jigsaw falling into place and I've never experienced anything other than lukewarm feelings and with Max it was like something exploding." And my father said, "Well, if you really feel this way then do it and if it doesn't work out then it doesn't work out, but if it does then more power to you.''' Maybe Bob is relieved. After all, who needs drugs when you're this high on romance?

Peaches has moved, with her husband, to Brooklyn, but she misses London. She starts banging on about something to do with the punk scene in New York not having really been happening since the Seventies, but she sees quickly that she's lost me and tells me that she's loving being 'no one' in Manhattan. I don't think she'll love the 'no one' thing for long. I think Peaches has a yearning to be heard, which is why it is right and good that she is settling into a journalistic career. She writes regularly for NYLON magazine and is editor-at-large of her own publication, Disappear Here, a magazine about 'music and fashion and everything you love', put together by her and James Brown, who founded Loaded magazine. Disappear Here is totally self-indulgent but exuberant and fun, and can be found scattered across clubs, cinemas and boutiques all over London, or online.

We share a black cab. I am off to a meeting and she is staying at The May Fair hotel. She chatters away, texting all the while, as fresh, funny and constantly outraged and distracted as a 19-year-old should be. Some things have come easily to this girl, but an awful lot has been taken away from her. When we say goodbye, I am surprised to realise that I feel rather protective. Because, while there's a little bit of monster in Peaches, there's a whole lot of magic.

Hair by Jimo Salako at Jed Root for Sebastian Professional.
Make-up by Amanda Bowen using MAC.
Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo