Fight against famine put Geldof on the world stage

Bob Geldof hit the big time as leader of the new wave band the Boomtown Rats, but it was getting musicians behind the fight against African famine that put him on the world stage.

Geldof was born Robert Frederick Xenon Geldof in Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin, and when his mother died when he was seven, grew up with his travelling salesman father.

Geldof, now 53, originally started work as a music journalist, in Canada, and then wrote for NME.

He joined the post-punk Boomtown Rats as one of its founding members in the summer of 1975.

A year later the Irish band had moved to England, and were signed up by a record label.

They had a string of hits in the top 20 before clinching the number one spot with Rat Trap in 1978, and I Don’t Like Mondays a year later.

I Don’t Like Mondays was controversial, as it was written in the aftermath of a US school shooting in which the teenager was reported to have said “I don’t like Mondays”, after opening fire.

The Boomtown Rats scored 14 hit singles in the UK charts between 1977 and 1984.

The band’s popularity was beginning to slide by 1984, when Geldof co-wrote Do They Know It’s Christmas?

The singer was moved into action after seeing Michael Buerk’s harrowing BBC news report on the famine in Ethiopia.

He called on Ultravox’s Midge Ure, and together they wrote the hit charity single.

Geldof, soon to be dubbed Saint Bob, had hoped the track would raise £70,000.

But it surpassed expectations, raising £8m for famine relief, and becoming the biggest-selling single in UK history.

He didn’t stop there, but organised Live Aid in 1985 – a simultaneous concert with top performers like Madonna, Paul McCartney and Queen, in London and Philadelphia, which attracted a worldwide television audience of 1.5 billion and raised a further £50m.

The Band Aid single was re-recorded last year with a new cast of singers and was the Christmas number one.

Twenty years after challenging Margaret Thatcher over famine relief, today he has the ear of the likes of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

Geldof, now recognised as a spokesman for rock music, albeit with a colourful vocabulary, received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and an honorary knighthood in 1986 for his charity work.

Since the Boomtown Rats split in 1986, Geldof has put out a series of solo albums.

But his music has not found the popular appeal of some of the other bands on the original Live Aid bill.

His solo albums, such as The Vegetarians of Love, and The Happy Club received a mixed reception.

Geldof met Paula Yates in the Rats’ early days when the striking blonde attempted to win his affections by going off to Harrods and buying steak and a cake mix.

The couple had a daughter, Fifi Trixibelle, now 21, before marrying in Las Vegas in 1986.

They had two more children, Peaches Honeyblossom, 16, and Pixie, 14.

Geldof’s private life fell apart when Yates fell in love with INXS frontman Michael Hutchence after interviewing him on a bed on The Big Breakfast, the show produced by Geldof’s production company for Channel 4.

When Yates died of an overdose, Geldof, a champion of fathers’ rights, became the legal guardian of Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, now eight, the daughter Yates had with Hutchence.

Geldof, whose scruffy image belies the fact that he has become a multi-millionaire businessman through various ventures such as setting up TV companies and internet travel companies, has found love again with French actress Jeanne Marine.