Yates first met Michael Hutchence in a 1985 interview on Channel 4's rock magazine programme "The Tube". During this appearance on "The Tube", Yates was reportedly asked to leave Hutchence alone by the road manager of INXS when she walked up to him and said, "I'm going to have that boy." Yates was unmoved and began to show up at INXS gigs everywhere for the next few years, even bringing her daughter (Fifi Geldof). Yates maintained irregular contact with Hutchence during the intervening nine years and their affair had been under way for some months before their "Big Breakfast" interview in October 1994. In February 1995, Yates left Geldof.