Geldof comes out for single fathers

Bob Geldof is making a stand on behalf of single fathers.

He is hitting out at the idea mothers should be granted automatic custody of their children.

The singer is urging the courts to acknowledge that men can make better carers when couples split up.

Geldof went to court to gain custody of Fifi, 18, Peaches, 12, and Pixie, 11, by his former wife Paula Yates.

He also now cares for five-year-old Tiger Lily, the daughter Yates had with INXS star Michael Hutchence.

"Where one partner leaves the other, the children should remain with the partner who has not left," Geldof told Reader's Digest magazine.

"To suggest that the interests of the children are nearly always best served by the presence of the mother is just not empirically true.

"Men adore and love their children as much as women, though they may display it in different ways.

"Courts and judges need to understand that not all men are brutal, indifferent bores, and women ministering angels."

Geldof confessed he has endured "universes of grief and deserts of emptiness" in the past few years with his divorce from Yates, the subsequent custody battle over the children and her death in 2000 - what he calls "those nightmare years".