Huge sense of fun made it impossible not to love her
Katy French's warmth and humour make it even harder to believe that she is gone, writes Victoria Mary Clarke
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The last time I saw Katy French, if someone had suggested that just over a week later I would be struggling to write about her death, I know what would have happened. We would have roared laughing. The very notion was ridiculous.
I know that last week I wrote about another 24-year-old girl and rumours of her impending death, but that was Amy Winehouse. Katy was about as far from Amy as it is possible for a girl to be. I don't know Amy personally, but where she seems fragile, dark, gloomy, sad, confused and self-destructive, Katy was exactly the opposite. Radiantly healthy, sparkling with smiles, determined, focussed, confident, happy and always laughing and joking, Katy was an explosion of positive energy in my life.
I knew Katy, and I have known plenty of other so-called party girls. I was one myself.
She burst into my life only a few months ago, when we both took part in a reality telly show called Celebrities Go Wild. We met in the green room at RTE, as we both prepared to hand over our normal clothes and our mobile phones and head off for an adventure in nature.I had only heard of Katy as a model and socialite, a girl who was always in the papers looking sexy and glamorous.
Like anyone you read about in the papers, I knew nothing of the real girl, but I had formed preconceptions. Maybe she would be a bit up her own arse, maybe she would be a bit of a princess, a bit self-centred. I was not expecting to find a friend in her. But as it turned out, Katy was warm and funny and immediately open. On the mini-bus to Connemara, we decided we would share a tent, even though I hate to share even a hotel room.
She was the one, when I wanted to leave the following morning, who made me laugh at myself for being a prima donna, she was the one who immediately offered to share her lunch with me because I refused to pack any and she was the one who kept me laughing for the two days I did stay, because of her willingness to see the funny side of any situation, and to make mischief wherever possible.
She was also the one who cooked my final dinner, and put her arms around me and hugged me, when I burst into tears and refused to come out of my tent. A few days later, when we were having dinner in her penthouse suite at the hotel, we laughed at the fact that she was nearly half my age and I could have been her mother.
The morning after she was evicted from the reality show, she called me up and suggested we take a helicopter back to Connemara and climb Croagh Patrick, just for a laugh.
My last memory of being with her was at Marina Guinness's house where we had spent the day recording a Pogues song called, (with horrible irony, in retrospect) Down in the Ground Where the Dead Men Go, in aid of People In Need. I was wrecked, lying under a blanket in the drawing room, waiting for a lift home, when she came in and kissed me and told me what an amazing time she had had, and how she was totally up for going busking in Grafton Street, if I felt like it. We came up with the idea that all eight of us would go busking with only tambourines and rattles and make such a hideous noise that people would pay us to stop. We decided to record an album of duets together. As was often the way with her, her sense of fun perked me up.
Only last week, I was supposed to go to her birthday party, but as it was a dark and windy night and I am lazy, I was glued to the sofa instead.
The next day, when some of the papers were bitchy about her party, I felt sorry for Katy because I knew that she hadn't been feeling the best, but was still giving it her all, arriving in a Rolls and posing for pictures in her gold mini-dress. And the sniping was hurtful.
She made her mark on Earth and she will definitely storm the heavens and show those angels a thing or two.
