Katy French: The final words from her Hot Press interview

Have you ever tried a line of coke yourself?” Given the prevalence of cocaine in the media and fashion worlds, it was a natural question to ask Katy French, in a Hot Press interview. By that stage, back in October, she was already Ireland’s best known model, as well as being a semi-permanent fixture in the media. We were more than half way through an interview that itself was destined to grab the headlines.

“Who hasn’t?” she replied, instinctively. However, Katy – the circumstances of whose recent, tragic death have become the stuff of rumour, counter-rumour and urban myth – backtracked as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Almost immediately, she went into self-protective mode and disguised the admission implicit in her initial answer with a humorous comment: “…No. I have been to Amsterdam – that was some craic now. But what went on in Amsterdam stays in Amsterdam.”
For clarity’s sake, I asked her again if she had ever experimented with cocaine. Katy denied ever trying it and then went on to speak in great detail about her abhorrence of the drug, pointing out that people didn’t call it the ‘Devil’s Dandruff’ for nothing.
Despite being sceptical about her denial, I had no valid reason to disbelieve her. Katy had been extremely forthright about other contentious issues during what was an extraordinary and highly engaging in-depth interview. And besides, it was perfectly understandable why someone like Katy – who was dependent on the goodwill and respect of a wide variety of clients for her modelling work – might not want to admit to breaking the law. If she preferred to deny it, I wasn’t going to browbeat her.
It was a touchier point than I’d realised. According to an article by Liam Collins, written for the Sunday Independent just after her death, after reading the Hot Press interview, Katy’s mother had asked her: “Why did you lie?” Apparently her mother sensed that what she knew to be an untruth would be “unmasked”.
In retrospect, I can only presume that Katy herself had feared that the potential repercussions for her modelling career – or the career as a TV presenter to which she aspired – were too great to risk admitting the truth. Or perhaps she feared that acknowledging that she had used cocaine might have a bad influence on the increasing number of teenage girls, who saw her as a role model.
“The things that celebrities do obviously influence people,” she had told Hot Press back in May, when she participated in the Rock The Vote campaign, championed by the magazine, “whether it’s what they say, what they do, what they wear, how they wear their make up, how skinny they are…” .
So why did she, then – apparently of her own free will – volunteer the information about having used cocaine, to a tabloid newspaper, no more than three weeks later? Was it that she knew – having denied it in the Hot Press interview – that someone was about to ‘out’ her in relation to cocaine? It seems highly probable. In fact, just a few days before she died, Katy told one journalist acquaintance of mine that she regretted admitting to the Star On Sunday that she had used cocaine. She said that she would explain all at a later date. Unfortunately, Katy’s sudden and shocking death means that she has taken the true motivation for her public about-turn to her grave.

While the interview with Katy printed in Hot Press was a very lengthy piece, which ran over seven pages, it didn’t include large sections of our conversation. Characteristically, she had been very generous with her time, speaking to me for almost two hours on a variety of subjects. Looking back over the interview now, and listening again to the tape, it's striking just how bright, opinionated and intelligent she was. She was also good fun, with a sparkling sense of humour.
We talked at considerable length about drugs and it seemed at the time that she had a very prudent attitude, if anything erring on the side of caution. I wanted to know what she thought about legalising the drug here in Ireland. “We both visited Amsterdam,” I had stated to Katy, “and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with being able to smoke hash in the cafés there.”
“You know, there doesn’t, but that’s because it has been there for so long,” she told me. “We are a drinking nation – leave it that way. People say legalise marijuana and they will be hugging themselves on the street, right? Maybe we would all be sitting in, with the giggles, instead of cracking glasses off each other’s heads. But once you introduce one level of the drug chain, it just opens the avenues. Once that starts coming in, then all of a sudden the ‘Class A’ drugs become ‘Class Bs’ and then there would be new drugs coming in. Look at Amsterdam. It’s all well and good but it’s the biggest home for weapons-trafficking, and all the drugs that come in here are from Amsterdam because there are more legal ways for having E factories or cocaine cutting – or whatever it is they do with the coke. Amsterdam has a lot of criminal activity and that’s because the lower form of drug is legal there.”
Given her liberal attitudes generally, I was somewhat taken aback by her anti-legalisation stance. In the light of subsequent events, it takes on an even more curious light.
We also discussed how she’d built up her media profile. Katy readily agreed that she’d been propelled into the limelight, thanks largely to the much-publicised break-up with her ex-fiancé, the restaurateur Marcus Sweeney. Katy made no bones about the fact that she was “working the media”. In truth, she had a far better handle on things than most models – or indeed than most people of her age. She was still only 23 years old at the time.
“I can’t just go out there and say, ‘I’m Katy French’,” she told me. “No, you’ve got to know what sells, how it works, how the media works, how tabloids work. There is a business there. It is formulated. Working with the media taught me a lot.
“Sorry if I’m making people sit up and pay attention – like whatever way! People don’t like new things. Tabloids are new here – the way the media has morphed itself is only a new thing in the last two or three years. They tell you (the journalist) what to write before you write it. They know the angles; they know what they need to fill the papers; they know what they want – it is important to understand that.”
Katy was adamant that the jibes she’d been receiving from certain sectors of the media didn’t distress her – beyond a certain level, that is.
“It actually takes a lot of inner strength to be able to see the difference between the business side of it and the personal side,” she confided. “Even when my private life is being talked about in the papers I can’t get emotional about it. I can’t be like in a panic or a frenzy. That’s not going to get me anywhere.”
But perhaps inside she did panic, particularly after some of the more malicious articles written about her 24th birthday bash, held in Krystle nightclub, just two days before her death. It was an example of the media biting back, in a way that seemed both tasteless and unnecessary. Whether that was a factor in the events that led to her collapse is impossible to know. But what you can say is that, despite her precociousness and the talent she had revealed for generating publicity, there was a vulnerability about Katy French that was often under-appreciated.
Perhaps the fact that she was a shrewd businesswoman blinded people to her potential for inner turmoil. Unlike many models, I pointed out to her, she didn’t have her own Bebo or MySpace. I jokingly suggested that she probably didn’t have one because she hadn’t got a clue how to switch on a computer. Not so, she assured me. Instead, she couldn’t see the economic advantages of maintaining a website of that type.
“I never got into it because I don’t have time for it,” she said. “It’s the new reality TV really, isn’t it? Yeah, it is influential, but where’s the money to be made from it? How do you make money on Bebo? So other than that, it’s a hobby and a pastime – and it’s just not a hobby that I’ve an interest in. I’m not knocking it – it looks like great fun. Like I said, if I want to talk to someone, I pick up the phone.”
It was a refreshingly practical and straightforward attitude that expressed much of what was best and most likeable about her.

As you can imagine, revisiting the tape of the conversation I had with Katy for this piece was eerily uncomfortable – particularly the point at which I broached the subject of death. I asked Katy for her thoughts on the afterlife. Is there, I asked, a heaven and a hell?
“I don’t know if I believe in them, but I am open to the possibility of heaven and hell. I am open to the possibility of reincarnation. But do you know what I do believe in? I do think that at the end of your days – I will stand in front of your God or my God, or Allah or Buddha – and I will say, ‘I used everything you gave me – and I used it to the best of my ability’. And I think that’s what we are here for,” she replied.
Warming to the theme, she continued: “You are put on this earth, you are given certain blessings, you are given certain gifts. We all have the same capabilities – and we need to function as best as we can, to the best of our good beliefs and principles. Some people have less principles – or better principles – than I have and they practice accordingly.
“It’s about finding your own God and your own beliefs. Once you can have your own beliefs and be true to yourself, then you live every day of your life using everything that God gave you when he put you on this planet – I would like to think that I’ll pass that test. I cannot say that I will be given another chance. I do think we come back again and again. There are certain people who are particularly old souls and there are some that are younger. I can’t explain what it is – there is definitely a higher force, something going on in this world, to make all this happen. Big time.”
I asked Katy if she was a new or old soul. She paused for a moment to reflect on the question, before finally musing aloud in a way that seems even more poignant now, in the light of subsequent events.
“I think I’m getting a bit older. But I am probably not as young as I once thought. I’d like to think I’m not, but then again I could be wrong. Who can answer? Who can tell? That’s the amazing thing of it – it keeps asking us the questions. That’s the fascination with religion, the fascination with everything. There is one thing in this world that we can’t do – that’s fully and finally answer any questions; there is always another question to an answer. Always. In anything. Philosophy, science – anything. You can always ask why? Why? Why? That’s what kids have. Do you ever see kids asking ‘why?’ It is such a great stage to be in – it’s what makes us keep ticking. As I said, I am open to the possibility of reincarnation. I would like to think that if we haven’t used everything we got, we will be lucky enough to be given another chance.”
I still find it hard to comprehend that Katy French is dead – that life ran out for her, in such strange circumstances, a little over a month after we had done the interview. The results of the post-mortem have yet to be revealed at the time of going to press, but there is a very high likelihood that cocaine was a factor. Which – if it is true – begs a number of other questions. What were the circumstances? How pure was the cocaine? How was it being consumed? What other toxins were involved? Which substance actually caused her death?
Whatever the cause, it is a tragic end to a short life in which Katy revealed a huge amount of potential – that will now forever remain unfulfilled. For those close to her, and for the many fans who had looked to her as an emerging Irish icon, 2007 will be remembered as the ‘Year of the French’.
We will never know what might have been.