Meet the Geldofs: Bob Geldof and family appear on Late Late Show for birthday celebration
Bob Geldof with Jeanne Marine and children Pixie, Tiger Lilly and Peaches in Dublin in 2006. Photo: Gareth Chaney Collins
Bob Geldof is turning 70 and to mark the occasion, The Late Late Show is hosting a celebration in-studio this evening.
Geldof and his wife Jeanne will be attending with their children Pixie and Tiger and Bob’s sister Lynn. For those unfamiliar with the Boomtown Rats singer and his famous family, here’s everything you need to know.
Geldof is a singer-songwriter from Co Dublin. His family has a strong connection to Co Cork: his grandfather Tommy Nott worked in the Cork Examiner as the night foreman and his mother was head cashier at the Savoy Cinema, which is where she met Geldof's father. His parents had Crosshaven links also — his grandfather, mother and father all worked at The Grand in Crosshaven. Geldof holidayed in Youghal as a child and he has relatives living in the county.
He rose to fame in the 1970s as the lead singer in the Boomtown Rats. Some of the group’s most played tunes include and . Geldof gained international recognition in 1984 for organising the charity supergroup Band Aid and the concerts Live Aid and Live 8 with Midge Ure to raise money for anti-famine efforts in Ethiopia. He also co-wrote the iconic song , one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Geldof was granted an honorary knighthood by Britain’s Elizabeth II in 1986 for his charity work in Africa and is often referred to as 'Sir Bob'. His charity work has continued since the 1980s and Geldof currently serves as an adviser to the ONE Campaign and is a member of the Africa Progress Panel.
He also has spoken about father’s rights in the past, drawing on his experience as a single parent following the death of Paula Yates, his ex-wife and mother to his daughters. Geldof obtained full custody of his three children and after Yates' death from a heroin overdose in 2000, he adopted her daughter Tiger. Today, he lives in South London with his wife, Jeanne Marine.
Jeanne Marine is a French actress who starred in films including . She married Geldof in 2015 following an 18-year relationship. Bono, Richard Branson, Demi Moore and Marianne Faithful were among the guests who attended their wedding in France. Marine Geldof spoke about their marriage on the Tommy Tiernan Show last year, and said the intimate side of their relationship is “easy” with her.
"You must be very careful, because the beauty of a long-married wife hides in plain sight. And you must always look to that woman who animates you, so that once again she electrifies you. It's very easy with my missus who I've been with for 25 years, I'm sort of a one-woman geezer."
Fifi is the first child of Bob and Yates and she was born in 1983. She is a make-up artist and married sand sculptor Andrew Robertson in 2016 in Kent at the same church where her mother and sister are buried. In 2019, Fifi paid tribute to her late sister on what would have been Peaches’ 30th birthday and added she was "thinking of her and missing her more than ever".
Geldof’s second child with Yates, Peaches, was a model and worked in television. She married American musician Max Drummey in 2008 in Las Vegas but the marriage ended in divorce in 2011.
She married Thomas Cohen, lead singer of the London band S.C.U.M, in 2012 and gave birth to their sons Astala and Phaedra in 2012 and 2013.
In April 2014, Peaches died of a heroin overdose in her home at the age of 25. A coroner found her cause of death was opioid intoxication. Peaches had been taking methadone for two and a half years before her death but started taking heroin again in February 2014. Geldof stated the family was "beyond pain" after he confirmed the news of her death.
During last year’s appearance on the Tommy Tiernan Show, Geldof said his grief remains “unbearable” in the years since his daughter’s death. “Time doesn't heal, time accommodates, it's ever-present," he said. “You cry to the maximum and then you go, the grief is bottomless and intimate. I didn't understand why I lost everything I thought to be true."
Geldof and Yates’ third daughter, Pixie is a model and singer. She has appeared on the cover of magazines like Tatler and been the face of advertising campaigns for Levis, Agent Provocateur and more.
She inherited her father’s love of music and is the lead singer of the band Violet. She was due to DJ at Coachella in 2014 but cancelled it following the death of her sister, Peaches. She married George Barnett, drummer of These New Puritans, in June 2017 in Majorca and the couple has one child together, who was born earlier this year.
Tiger is the daughter of Geldof’s first wife, Paula Yates. Her biological father is Australian singer Michael Hutchence, for whom Yates left Geldof. He became Tiger’s legal guardian after Hutchence died by suicide in 1997 and Yates died in 2000 from a heroin overdose and Geldof later adopted Tiger in 2007. Since 2019, her legal name is Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof.
Tiger, now 25, has remained largely out of the spotlight, though Richard Lowenstein, the director of 2019 documentary Mystify: Michael Hutchence, revealed on a podcast that Tiger Lily has not received any money from her father's estate.
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