Content Warning: This article touches on the topic of suicide which may be triggering for some readers.
Tina Hutchence hasn’t seen her niece, Tiger Lily Hutchence, the daughter of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence, in almost 20 years.
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Now, Tina has been forced to face the shocking reality she may never again see Tiger Lily.
“I don’t have a relationship with her,” Tina, 71, tells New Idea of Tiger Lily, who was just 4 years old when Tina last saw her.
“It’s sad for her, but it’s her life. And it’s sad for my children because they didn’t get to know her either.”
While she was once thought to be eking out a meagre existence in a ‘squat’ in London, Tiger Lily, now 23, is living in Fremantle, Western Australia, where she has been spotted out and about with long-time partner Nick Allbrook.
Tina says she’s tried reaching out to Tiger Lily – who is the spitting image of her dad, Tina’s half-brother, Michael – but to no avail.
“She doesn’t know me,” Tina laments. “And I don’t know what she’s been told.
“But she’s old enough to know if she wants to know me or not. And if she wants to know more about Michael, I’m not difficult to find.”
Michael was found dead in a room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Sydney’s Double Bay on November 22, 1997, aged 37, when Tiger Lily was just 16 months old. His death was later ruled as suicide.
With January 22, 2020 marking what would have been Michael’s 60th birthday, Tina can’t help but feel emotional.
“Obviously, he’s missed so much of Tiger Lily’s life,” she says.
Tina is adamant about the kind of dad Michael would have been to Tiger Lily. “I think he would have been a wonderful father,” she says.
“He was so thrilled when Tiger Lily was born; absolutely over the moon. She was everything to him.”
It is unfortunate, Tina says, that Tiger Lily has not received money from Michael’s estate believed to be worth $50 million.
“She should have got 50 per cent of everything,” Tina says, adding none of the Hutchence family have received “anything, not a cent.”
After Tiger Lily’s mother, Paula Yates, died of a heroin overdose in September 2000, her ex, singer-songwriter Bob Geldof, controversially adopted Tiger Lily, raising her alongside her half-sisters Fifi, Peaches and Pixie. As far as Tina is concerned, her ties to Tiger Lily were cut.
When Tina and Michael’s mother Patricia Glassop was given three months to live, Tina asked her mother what would make her happy and she replied, “to see Tiger Lily”.
“I called Bob immediately and I explained this to him, offering to pay for Tiger Lily and a friend or a nanny to come out and just spend a week in Australia, and he said, ‘I don’t think so, love’, and hung up.”
During another phone conversation, Tina allegedly asked Bob how Tiger Lily would get to know her father without contact with the Hutchence family. According to Tina, Bob said “something very insulting”.
“He said, ‘It’s okay, love, I’ve got videos I’ll show her,’” Tina alleges.
At the time of Michael’s death, Paula was in a bitter custody dispute over her children with Bob. The legal stoush meant that, despite Michael’s pleadings, Paula would not be coming to Australia – and Michael would not get to see Tiger Lily – that Christmas.
Tina believes Michael might still be alive if Paula had flown to Australia at that time.
“She didn’t have to stay in London,” she says. “Michael had bought plane tickets and she just had to say ‘Yes, I’ll be on that flight.’ And she should have been on that flight.”
For Tina, who’s been travelling the US with INXS tribute band: Kick – The INXS Experience, her late half-brother is never far from her mind. “I miss him every day,” she says.
If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help is always available. Call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit their website.
