They are both deeply creative souls, so perhaps it is no surprise that when Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof and her fiancé Ben Archer announced they were expecting a baby they decided to do so with a touch of creative style.
Posting an artistic ‘flyer’ onto his Instagram account showing his then girlfriend sporting a large baby bump, 28-year-old writer and director Ben wrote ‘My love @heavenlytiger is doing a show’.
She in turn responded with a hatching chicken emoji and the words ‘Wahooo love you’.
Given Tiger, who describes herself as a musician and art psychotherapist, and lives with Ben in North London, is due to give birth any day now, the announcement in February came as no surprise to the couple’s tight-knit circle of family and friends.
They had known their happy news for months – and gathered last weekend at a low key, intimate wedding reception at an East London restaurant to celebrate after the couple decided to tie the knot in advance of the new arrival.
But it was public confirmation that Tiger Lily, 28, the only child of the late rock star and INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and television presenter Paula Yates – who was subsequently adopted by The Boomtown Rats’ frontman Sir Bob Geldof and his French actress wife Jeanne Marine – has found stability in a family whose backdrop is a world away from the wild antics of her notoriously party-loving parents.
Resoundingly upper middle-class, her new father-in-law, Mark, is an erudite Cambridge-educated investment banker, while mother-in-law Gillian is a similarly well-heeled graduate with a passion for renovation and interior design.
They own a flat in central London and a beautiful country estate in Herefordshire and are, according to those who know them, ‘hugely clever but also easy-going and creative, with a love of the arts, and film in particular’.
Tiger is so close to them that, along with Ben, she spent some of last summer on holiday with the couple in Italy. They are already ‘deeply fond’ of their new daughter-in-law.
Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof and her fiancé Ben Archer announced they were expecting a baby and decided to do so with a touch of creative style
Sir Bob, in turn, has an easy, jocular relationship with former public schoolboy Ben, who shares his passion for punk music and has made a number of well-received short documentaries celebrating the punk scene. Last year, he was spotted dining with Ben, Tiger Lily and his eldest daughter Fifi, 42, at a French restaurant in Chelsea, the four exchanging warm hugs as they left.
These ’refreshingly normal’ family dynamics, as a friend refers to them, are certainly a world away from the tragedy that shaped the early years of Tiger Lily who, with her intense brown eyes and curving, scowling smile, is at times the mirror image of her famous father.
She was born in July 1996, following a passionate love affair between Paula Yates and Hutchence, the charismatic Ausralian rock star known for his romances with a string of beautiful women.
When the relationship started, Paula was still married to Sir Bob, with whom she had three children, Fifi, now 42, Pixie, 34, and the late Peaches Geldof, who died aged 25 in 2014. Their intense chemistry was evident when the then 34-year-old peroxide blonde interviewed Michael while lounging on a bed for the Channel 4 show The Big Breakfast in 1994.
Yet only 16 months after Tiger was born her father was dead, found hanged in a Sydney hotel room. His death was ruled a suicide by a coroner, though Yates always insisted it was auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong.
She was devastated by the death of her lover and less than three years later, she too was dead, after overdosing on heroin at her West London home. Four-year-old Tiger Lily, who was alone in the house with her mum at the time, raised the alarm after answering the telephone and informing the caller that she ‘couldn’t wake Mummy’.
Such a traumatic series of events experienced so young could destroy anyone, but those who know Tiger Lily say that, despite her bohemian outlook, she has long had her – often barefoot – feet planted firmly on the ground.
Much of the credit for that must go to Sir Bob and Jeanne, who took Tiger Lily in the moment they learned of Paula’s death.
A bitter, well-publicised custody battle ensued, with Tiger Lily’s paternal Australian grandparents Kelland and Patricia fighting for custody – despite Paula stipulating in her will that they were to have ‘no access’ to her daughter.
The couple lost and it was ultimately decided the orphaned child should be raised in the UK alongside her half-siblings, a ruling that created a rift with the Hutchences that was never healed.
Tiger Lily as a baby with her late parents Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates in 1996
Sir Bob Geldof with his adopted daughter Tiger Lily at a play premiere in London in 2008
Right up until her death in 2010 aged 84, Patricia accused Geldof of doing all he could to erase Hutchence’s memory from his daughter. In an interview with an Australian magazine she said she had ‘begged and pleaded’ with Sir Bob to be allowed to see Tiger Lily again. ‘He’s turned a deaf ear,’ she said. ‘He’s treated me shabbily.’
Sadly, it is believed that while Tiger Lily has had sporadic contact with Michael’s sister Tina, an author now in her sixties who today lives in LA, and his half-brother Rhett, who is now based in Bali, they are not close and neither attended last weekend’s wedding.
It did not help that there were issues concerning Hutchence’s estate, which was expected to be around £25 million, but in reality was nearer £12 million. Mystery initially surrounded the location of the money, with his executors originally indicating Hutchence was effectively bankrupt.
In fact – as the Mail revealed in 2018 – there was money. Tiger Lily inherited a solid chunk on her 18th birthday in 2014 which she invested in an apartment in New York. Nonetheless, she is said to be ‘resolutely disinterested’ in wealth, at one point in her early twenties choosing to live in a London squat. Perhaps this is a result of a series of life events which have shown Tiger Lily that no amount of money can insulate you from tragedy. Certainly, the loss of her birth parents so young and her estrangement from her father’s side of the family is not the only horror Tiger Lily has had to live through.
In April 2014, just two months before she came of age and inherited some of her late father’s estate, her half-sister Peaches, who of all Paula’s daughters probably bore the greatest likeness to her mother both in looks and character, died of a drug overdose at the age of just 25. Friends say Tiger was a ‘phenomenal support’ to Peaches’ husband Tom Cohen, who was left to parent their two young sons when she died.
The two half siblings were close – they all are – and it says a great deal about her ongoing sadness that eight years later, it was Peaches who inspired the majority of the songs on Tiger Lily’s first album, released in 2022 and titled Tragic Tiger’s Sad Meltdown.
Despite some of the profound tragedy that has shaped much of her life, she appears to have enjoyed a happy upbringing.
Sir Bob wanted Tiger Lily to avoid the pitfalls of fame, and she relished the happy family and home life he and Jeanne created. She is exceptionally close to Jeanne, and friends say Tiger ‘idolises’ her. One said Bob ‘wanted to do Paula the honour of bringing Tiger up as far away from the toxic limelight as he possibly could, he very much succeded.’
Bob was tough on Tiger. He would impose a 9pm curfew during family holidays in Majorca and make her take homework with her. He also wouldn’t allow her to go to Glastonbury for years. One friend of the family said: ‘While her sisters were out gallivanting in their teens, she was focusing on her exams and enjoying her guilty pleasure – which was to listen to Olly Murs.’
After attending private school in London, she studied acting and performance at a college in New York, as well as spending some time at the famously arty Goldsmiths University in South East London. She then settled for a while in the popular coastal city of Fremantle, Australia – notably on the opposite coast to her paternal grandparents.
By then she was ensconced in a relationship with musician Nicholas Allbrook, the frontman of Australian psychedelic rock band Pond. When that relationship ended in 2022, she returned to the UK, where she has since worked as a musician and artist. Earlier this month, she attended the opening of a month-long exhibition of her work at the Big Yin gallery, a ‘proudly black-owned, artist-led space’ in St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex.
Called I Want More, the exhibition features artwork, photographs and pottery created by Tiger and her friend Lily Gutierrez – who was a close friend of Peaches – and which is described as ‘an odyssey of self-discovery, truth, ownership and a subversion of societal expectations that often keep people small’.
Also present was former public schoolboy Ben, who Tiger Lily met in 2023 through mutual friends.
Tiger’s life with Ben is a paradise of surfing, meditation and yoga – a world away from the gritty celebrity scene enjoyed by her late parents
The eldest of two siblings, Benedict Archer attended Shrewsbury, the prestigious £45,000-a-year boarding school but, like his new wife, was drawn to a career in the arts, attending University of the Arts London, from where he graduated with a first in film and television in 2018. He also worked as a model after being signed by international agency IMG at the age of 17. He now works as a film and documentary maker.
In this, he was no doubt encouraged by parents who, despite their outwardly ‘blue chip’ credentials, also have a keen interest in film, literature and design.
Both are English Literature graduates – Mark studied at Cambridge and achieved a PhD in the subject, Gillian attended University College London – and both have forged successful careers. Today, Mark is head of global institutional business development at the investment management firm Metropolis Capital, while Gillian, who also studied fashion design and trained as a textile conservator, is a highly respected interiors and renovations expert.
Arguably, her biggest project has been her own home. In 1999 the Archers bought Perrycroft, a stunning Arts and Crafts house in Colwall, Herefordshire, built in 1895 for Liberal politician John William Wilson. Cut into a terrace with stunning views, it had been used by the Boys Brigade for 30 years, but Gillian oversaw a painstaking and sympathetic renovation of the house and its expansive gardens, which are now open to visitors by appointment. They also run four holiday let cottages on the site.
That is not to say that behind this outward picture of success the family has not been without some emotional ups and downs. Ben’s 24-year-old sibling Charley is a trans woman who has been open about her attempts to be accepted in her new identity.
A former student at Balliol College Oxford, where she was an elected officer for the LGBTQ+ Society, she has written several articles for student magazines about her struggles.
In one, she talked of ‘internalised transphobia induced from my teenage years’ and in another referenced the ‘passive aggressive transphobia’ of her parents, arguing that they exploited the long delays in getting access to medical treatment to ‘prevent me from socially transitioning and as a buffer for them to ‘hope’ that I would move on from this ‘phase’ and ‘go back to normal’.
In 2021 she set up a GoFundMe page, aiming to raise £27,000, and describing her desperation to complete the transition she had first embarked on at the age of 17.
She wrote: ‘Hey, I’m Charley, and I’m trans! I’ve been transitioning with hormones for nearly four years, and got to the stage where I’d like to get Gender Recognition Surgery to fully complete this process.
‘The NHS waiting list is insane and will never end, so I’d love to go private if possible, but it’s extremely expensive. I still feel out of touch with myself and I need this surgery to truly get to being my true self. I am starting this GoFundMe to help pay for this surgery and I can’t fund it any other way. Thank you for donating and for reading.’ The fund currently stands at just shy of £3,000.
It is not clear whether family relations have been fully restored in recent years, although it seems Ben has embraced his sibling’s transformation, referring to her as his ‘sister’ on Facebook.
He has also formed a bond with Tiger’s surviving siblings: Pixie, a former model who lives in North London with husband, drummer George Barnett, their three-year-old daughter; and with Fifi, who works in PR and lives out of the spotlight with husband, sand sculptor Andrew Robertson. They married in 2016 at St Mary Magdalene and St Lawrence church in Davington, Kent, close to Sir Bob’s country home and the church where Peaches was laid to rest.
Perhaps, in the fullness of time, that same church will be the site of a christening of the newest member of the Geldof – and now Archer – clan. It would, you think, be a perfect way to mark the start of a new chapter for a family which has seen its fair share of turbulence.
- Additional reporting: Simon Trump
