The Mystery of Paula Yates

Do a search online for Paula Yates and you won’t find much that ties Paula Yates to Blackpool. Her Wikipedia page claims she was born on 24 April 1959 in Colwyn Bay, Wales, to English parents, and that she was brought up in a show business family. Her mother was Elaine Smith who was from Blackpool. Her stage name was Heller Toren, who later wrote under the pseudonym Helene Thornton. Up until 1997, Paula Yates believed her biological father was Jess Yates, who hosted the ITV religious programme Stars on Sunday. A DNA test in that year revealed that her biological father was game show host Hughie Green.

Yates described her childhood as lonely and isolated; her mother, she claimed, was absent for much of her upbringing. She attended a village primary school, Penrhos College, and Ysgol Aberconwy. The Yates family ran the Deganwy Castle Hotel for a time, before moving to a house near Conwy. After the break-up of her parents’ marriage in 1975, Yates lived mostly with her mother despite having a closer relationship with Jess, and also had periods in Malta and Mallorca where she was a pupil at Bellver International College, before returning to Britain.

This may all be true but there’s no mention of Yates going to Blackpool’s Elmslie Girls School on Wikipedia. However, if you do a search on Facebook for Elmslie Alumni, you’ll find plenty of women claiming they went to school with her… at Elmslie. If you search ‘Paula Yates Blackpool’ on Google, its new AI Overview claims Yates was born in Blackpool and that Jess Yates was her aunt (when in fact Jess is a male). So who knows? Blackpool Timeline would love to learn more, so if anyone out there can shed some more light on this, please use our contact form and reach out to us. It would be very appreciated.