Bob Geldoff is a man that represents goodness and kindness and mischief and intelligence, all things that I rate very very highly personally. I have enjoyed his creativity, curiosity, and correct courage from the moment that he first boomed into our lives as their frontman of the boomtown Rats over fifty years ago. Can you believe it? He is touring the country next year in his show An Evening with Bob Geldof or has it been renamed Life WTF? Whatever
it's called. Get your tickets now at TEG Dainty dot com. I am thrilled to welcome to the Christy Cast. Thanks sir Bob Geldof. I just want to I want to start with I'm so desperate for you to like me.
Yep, and so whether you deranged to sort of pretend you just got into the left when I got in kind of sad. I've been following you all morning, absolutely sucking me at the Melbourne carp.
I have, you know, tried to research as much as I can, and I have found that I've been doing this for over twenty years, and I found the bigger the name, the more bullshit there is written about them, absolutely on the internet. So forgive me if I say something that this is not true breakfast. Do you judge somebody on their opinions about breakfast if they have it or not?
On brexit?
Yeah, breakfast? No, not Brexit. Now we're not this is not this is not going to get politically Okay.
Do you judge someone in their opinion on breakfast? Yeah?
I read that, But you're a breakfast off Shinado. No, oh god.
I mean it's coffee and that's it.
Like that's mad, that's yeah, well that was written about you. What about cups? Are you a cups guy?
What sort of cops?
Well I read about you that you carry your own cup. Oh my god.
That's completely nuts. Now. The thing about the web, but you must know, is that there's a version of the self that takes place in this other universe and people chip in and had bits and it becomes this car. It used to be the tabloid Press which had a version of you. It was your name, but you didn't recognize anything about yourself. It's the same with the Web, which I've never looked at, Not a single time have
I looked at any reference to myself. You know, well, I'm not interested, but two, you know, you just kind of go okay whatever.
So we'd think breakfast, no cups and breakfast. Well that I mean I.
Bought is because in the UK I had a production company and we did the breakfast show for Channel four for ten years, called The Big Breakfast. And so maybe it's that there's a story that I keep a cup, and it's the cup Mick Jagger drank coffee out of when my sister brought me to see The Rolling Stones in nineteen sixty four and I saw Mick and he was drinking a cup of coffee and I ducked in behind the commissionaire, who was the guy at the stage door at the cinema they were playing at, and I
ran in behind him and grabbed the cup. When Mick went to practice, I thought, I now know it's soundcheck, but and I grabbed it. So fast forward and I want the Stones to play live aid and I'm having breakfast Mick Jagger at the Savoy Hotel in London, as you do. And Mick I was probably pre his strict diet. Every think it was forty years ago. So Mick's having you know, classic bacon and eggs. That's English breakfast stuff, and so obviously the Rolling Stones are a huge thing.
Like I saw the Beatles, I saw Bob Dylan in the same Cinnamon the same year, but it was the Rolling Stones. I just said, I'm going to be in that gang. That's it, you know. So I'm saying to make like I still have the fan thing going on. It's odd to me that in my life I've got to know this guy and like, you know, he's not a mate, but like we chat away, you know. But I can't get rid of the fan filter, no more than I could say with David Bowie or people I
really admire. I can't get past that. But I can have a normal chat. But I'm all the time thinking I'm this kid from dud Leary County, Dublin. I'm talking to David Bowie, you know that sort of. So I said to make mix saying no, no. His downs were, can't do a merganism fighting with me out with Keith, you know. So he was going to go to New York and put it together with Tina and Keith. As soon as you heard this, he went off and got that rang bobbed and said can I play with you?
Said?
They had this whole thing going on, But I sort of say, here's the thing, and mix sus what And I said, I have this plastic cup that you drank coffee out of in nineteen sixty four. And I said, I know I could never give that away. I'll never sell it. I said, what's that about, you know? And he said, oh, I don't know. Do you want my fucking bacon and eggs? I said, no, no, I don't want your bacon eggs. But that could be the breakfast and the cup.
It could be. It could be where is the.
Cup right now in my attic?
And what does it look like?
Plastic? It's black with a white rim around the top. You remember those plastics sort of yeah, and it still has a bit of dried froth on the inside. Really yeah, you'd think I'd have it mounted on something nobody's in with all the other crap. You know, I know it is, but it's not going anywhere.
If you were really fanning and being creepy, you could take it to a lab and reconstitute the coffee that was in it, like Dolly the Sheep.
Reconstitute mixed DNA. Because he's got a big mouth and he's probably that lip stuff is all over the rim of that cup.
And you know, that's another thing I read about you, whoa that you grew up with a big set of lips, and everybody was cruel to you about it, and then cruel.
And heart it was hard hot.
You're still not over it, yeah, I know. And then Mick Jagger arrived and suddenly you were hot.
Yeah, well I wasn't hot. I mean, yeah, it was awkward because you know, boys as they're forming into men eleven two, fifteen, sixteen, they're really crap, you know, yeah, and got one at high Yeah, okay, so I was beyond crap, like and so you know, my hair was a mess, my clothes were a mess, and there was no one to rectify that because my dad was off. He was a commercial salesman, so he was off selling towels around the countryside of irond He'd leave on Monday,
come back on Friday. My mum was dead, so there was no one there too, you know, ironed or do washing or I certainly wasn't going to go to the loan drette at the age of nine or ten, forget it. So and then my hair was all over the place. So I was always kind of getting thrown out of school for deportment or like thereof. And when girls sort of swam into view, it was one Catholic Ireland there was no chance of anything ever happening, but two, quite
correctly from their point of view. I was horrible, you know, my mouth was far too big, my ears were true, I looked like sort of King Charles at the age of eleven, and my hair was a mess, and my clothes were you know, useless.
So you've always spoken about yourself in this way, but you are very attractive men they must.
Be, Yeah, is it if you were fourteen and I was fourteen? Let's go back to it, you know. So the first time I actually did a girl who said yes, she would dance with me, and Rice and what the vampire not her? So we went, you know, basically you got kind of a dancer too out of the girl before she sat down again. It was the days when girls lined up along one side of the room and you were down the other, and it was the Sunday afternoons, and all.
Of that stuff is just fresh hell to me.
So, you know, I asked her to dance and she said okay. By asking her to dance, it meant I sort of grunted at her and kicked her shit, which is an indication. And they said your next dance please, is slow dancing. She stayed with me, so I thought game on, and so, you know, I was trying to cop a feel looking expectantly. Remember this is Ireland and James Bond was banned in Ireland, you know, because there was always a sentence her nipples were a wreck with desire.
I no, no, and I couldn't possibly had no understanding of what that meant. I'd never seen a nude woman, you know, there just wasn't any in Ireland. They didn't ever go you.
In fact, I've always imagined that it must be so exciting as a young man to see your first set of pusease like that moment.
You think so vivid on a second by second basis you are a laser pointed missile. There's just you really are, and if nothing's happened, nature will take its own course and it just you know, naturally, it's just you know, And so I guess it was that. But as I was trying to you know, tune in whatever, you know, copp Field, I expected her to be sort of her head you know, swaying with ecstasy, et cetera, because I've
read about this in my Illegal James Bomb book. And I looked down and she was just there, chewing gum, looking around, completely indifferent to me. As I pulled the Irish Times out of our brasier, you know, and I was reading that day's news from the chest of this young girl. You know, That's what That was my first experience of this. It wasn't good.
I would have been smadged to the print.
Sweat of my pal definitely, you know.
Can you remember what songs were around at that time?
Yeah? They were good. I mean to put this in perspective. The bands that sometimes I heard were Van Morrison's band, you know them who were just brilliant Taste, which was Rory Gallaher's band. They got a bit older. So these were good. We knew they were good. The other bands were pre crap. And but it would have been sort of nineteen mid sixties seventies, so you had the high point of rock and roll lyrics, really a whiter shade
of pale strawberry fields forever. The Who, in particular for me, the King, the Mobs, you know, the King, so Who, the small faces. That was the stuff I just And then of course suddenly at the Blue you get stats in Moltown. That was fantastic. And I've gone on my you know, delayed pilgrimage to visit all those places where those records were made. You know, me too, paid homage to them and they're makers.
You have said that, well, I hope you have, because you've also intimato, So I think this is true. People think I'm scruffy, Well I am a seven year old boy is not going to wash his clothes. He's just not. I am that person. And I heard that and I went, oh, maybe I've got this theory that who we are as a child, like we're born the way we are, and life sort of takes us away from that original person,
the person that we're supposed to be. What did Bob Geldoff like to do in his heart and Saul when he was a little boy.
Well, you are a blank canvas. You've inherited a bunch of genes that will determine some characteristics either way. You look some behavior as we now know, but the most of it is cultural or societal and what forms you. So that's Freuden. We know that you know always as psychiatrist, will go to formative things in your experience. What did I like was a function of the conditions of my life, which very early weren't great. I mean, you know, I'm not playing a fiddle here. I didn't really think much
about it at the time. Retrospectively, I feel sorry for that little boy, but not at the time. It just was what it was. So as you pointed out, you know, no one was going to do the washing. That was because my mum was dead and my dad, say went away, no fault of us. Only had no choice. There was no economy in arms. It was the only job you could get. So it was myself and sisters. The oldest
sister was seventeen. She was not going to be a sort of good mother to a Brasish little brother, and she got out quickly.
So what's the age difference between you and your sisters?
Between My eldest one was about eight to ten years. I think my middle one was five or six years. She was the school geek. She stayed in school. The nuns gave her food, and so I'd come back to the house and make my own dinner and stuff like that, and you know, it was it was maybe I remember a child.
It was a child cook, but what is a child cook?
That's good whatever was in the cupboard. There was no fridge or TV or telephone because we didn't have money. So what I remember cooking for myself. What I really liked cooking, not cooking but already eating, was rice with an oxo cube dissolved in the water. I sort of worked this out myself, plus a bit of bacon sliced up and put put into the water, which gave it a smoky flavor. And then when that was cooked, I'd fried egg and put it on top foot so it was kind of like fried rice, you know.
Yeah, sort of a nazzy goring risotto.
Well not without the peanutsy thing you're going on the stuff. So yeah, I remembered that, and I guess though for lunch there was a scam going on because parents would never allow mothers would never allow their kids to have sugar sandwiches, you know, which is basically uncooked bread and
butter pudding. You know. So I would make you know, sugar sandwiches and you know it's bread, butter, sugar, and knowing that the guys you know wanted this, I'd make six sandwiches for myself every morning before going to school, and I.
Got twelve pieces of bread.
Yeah, and I'd swapped them then far because they all wanted it. So I'd swapped one sugar sandwich was worth one to match or one egg sandwich, and so two sandwiches for one one ham and thing. So I was the king of sandwiches in school, you know, stuff like that. So yeah, it was all right. I mean I worked my way. The point is to your point, at that age, because of this, you become very self reliant, very independent,
and very organized, you know. So the adjunct to what you said is that I was always scruffy, yes, but I had a tidy mind. And that's the mistake people make because this shambling oaf wanders into a meeting and he sits there apparently not listening and scratching and looking around and being distracted and dudling NonStop, not looking at anyone. But I'm listening intently, not not that's what I do unconsciously, and they're going, you know, and in political well, in
political meetings in particular. But I remember getting the Order of the Nile second Class from the President of the Sudan who was, of course, inevitably some cockamami general who'd taken over the day before sort of thing. And they were giving me this medal, which is amazing thing. It's this blaze of gold, silver and ivory and ceramic on
my chest. And I walked in. I will not go into these meetings without journalists to make a record, because I don't want to be nailed for being, you know, not saying the right thing or pulling up these leaders on an amnesty report or anything. And so the general walks over to the smartest looking general. Are the smartest looking journalists, says mister Geldoff, You know, so and so so some the journalists just pointed at me, and you could see the guy got him. You know.
I was there sneakers and jeans that haven't been washed, and hair all over the place that just come out of the desert. So like, you know, I was a mess, and he kind of just slapped it on my chest and said, off you go.
That sort of thing happens. So it's a useful device when it comes to those sorts of things. It's equally useful in rock and roll. You know, there's an idea of Bobby Boomtown and it's largely true.
It's like your alter ego.
Well, I think guy on stage is.
Yeah, Bobby Boomtown and Bob Geldoff both deeply do not care what people think of them.
I think that's true. So I'm not bothered by social media. I never never ever look at it. I don't have sights. There are sites saying Bob Gelvin that was nothing to do with me. It just has no interest in me whatsoever.
More than that, I don't want to look at anything that I'm meant, like to say the Queen movie or where there's a version of me, or this musical that's on in the West End about live called Just for One Day, which I did have to go to and is absolutely fantastic, but there's a guy doing me and
I had to get over that and very weird. Yeah, well it's you know, I was expecting some guy to come on stage and go I should be right, you know, because it's hard to do my dull monotone at anoidel south of the middle class accent.
You know, is it over overdone? Like does he shamble?
He hasn't nailed. I mean. The interesting thing about it is that from the when he was nine years old. His granny used to make him stand on the kitchen table in Liverpool and do Bob Geldoff, which is kind of mad. I mean, he was in Hamilton and now he's doing this and that. He's like, he's big, but he's not bad. And actually, because physically he's not like me, it doesn't matter his attitude. So it's it's a bit disconcerting because I'm good. I'm not like that, you know.
But when the family go, he's just like you shut up. He's nothing like me.
Wow.
So that's kind of that's kind of now I see him as a character and it's just is that character playing well tonight? But in general I don't And it goes to your point about being scruffy. It's an easy cartoon to make of someone. Yeah, and you know, don't. I don't like seeing myself. I don't like hearing myself. I will never listen to this. And if I if I heard you on the radio and me, I just turn it off. I don't like hearing me singing. I
just can't stand the stupid things I say. So I'm so so annoyed with myself, so embarrassed by myself.
Wow. I also never listen to myself, but that's because I don't care what I say either. Do you think that your absolute belief in the way that you live your life and your opinions and the fact that you don't care about what other people think comes from all the time alone you spent as a child.
Listened to. Again, that's clever, I think, along with the independence and the self organization. The downside of this is that because you're on your own, there's no one to temper. You're rapidly growing ideas and opinions of the world, so you tend to be very dogmatic and see things in black and white. And I don't care what you think, you know. That's what's it, I think. And my dad and we had a tough time. We eventually ended up
as mates, thank goodness. And I regret the things that happened, and I regret me being such a prick with him, but equally I regret that he was such a fucking idiot with me. I regret that too late. But we did grow to be good pals, and when he was asked about me, he'd say, you know, I was ashamed of him. I was embarrassed by him me the way he looked, and when I was with my friends, he'd shamble along in these long coats and just grunted people,
and his hair was everywhere. And he said the thing that I had to understand very very early, was that Robert, which he still call me Robert, just simply didn't care what I thought about him or what other people thought about him. Now, I'm not sure that's a virtue. In fact, there's a vanity in that. And I disliked that, so
I din't, well, I do you know. I mean, I'm careful with leaders, democratic leaders, because they have been whether you agree with them or not, and you know, whether you agree with their politics, they were elected by the vast by a majority of people, so therefore they do represent those people, and the other people who didn't vote for them have accepted that. So you accept that those people's vergic and you must respect that. And I do.
I have to correct myself before I go into this and say, it's not this person you disagree with, it's this person who has this position, and he is legitimately there. So if I met Putsin, he's illegitimate, he's you know, he's an autocrat. That's the that's power through the military. If if Trump gets in, you know this will go out afterwards. I can't respect that. It's the power of wealth. Is it's a it's a plutocracy, it's illegitimate. So but
that's me. And you know, if I did meet that horrendous, amoral creep, then I would be very hard put to have a normal conversation with them. In fact, I wouldn't. I just wouldn't bother. No, you wouldn't.
I want to talk about parenting because you enjoy parenting, and for me, parenting has been one of the greatest joys of my life, but for reasons that are unexpected, I didn't really know what to expect it. I love it a lot more than I did thought I would. Given that your mother passed away so early and your father was largely absent, how did you know how to be such a beautiful father.
You'd have to ask the girls whether that's true or not.
I think it is. I think it is.
It very strange. Last night I was out with friends and the women were talking about, you know, being homes and I actually said, did you enjoy it? And you know their children are all grown up and boringly we were showing each other, you know, pictures of our kids. But I was showing my latest grandson, who's the cutest thing that ever walked the planet. You know, old is he and he's three and he was a shock last week for Halloween. You know, he was shark ever and like was.
He baby shark? Baby shark?
Probably he was, you know, he had his outfit and he went and his his little girlfriend, so he was was of course a zombie princess, you know. So. But I liked the responsibility of it. There's a part of you that always in Caru you are, says it's going to be better than what I had. Though I have met people who've got who've had just the most brilliant childhoods, and they seek to replicate that, which is equally fine.
But how did you not replicate yours?
Because the conditions weren't there? I mean, there were there were things that happened which seemed to me time looping about itself. So I remembered when my mom died, my dad the night before my mom. So memory is pristian, you know, cruse thing about remembering smells and things. So I pieced together of a version of my mother. I
think anyone does anyway about memory. So my mother to me is lipstick on a fag button the ashtray, lipstick on a teacup velvet, evening gloves up to the elbow, and legs moving up and down on the thread mill of a singer sewing machine. Because I must have been underneath that, and from that you conjure up a sense, though I never needed to, and I have no memory of her. And I don't say, oh my god, that's nothing. It just isn't there. But if you asked me to put together something, it would be that.
And so it's very that's a very sensory account. Is that how your brain works?
No, I mean no, you know, I remember the night of it, but only for specific reason. There were two things happening. My sister was having a midnight feast with her who was on a sleepover. I said, can I be in the sleepover? You know, the small annoying brother, And they said, yeah, okay, we'll wake you. So I was allowed to sleep in the other bed in their bedroom. And I woke up in the middle of the night and I heard them crying, my sister and her maid,
and I said, why are crying? And they said, we're not, we're laughing. Go back to sleep. And I said, well, has the feast started yet? They said no, no, we'll wake you. So I went back to sleep. The next morning, they're not there, but I heard this hubbub in the house, various aunts and uncles, very soft talking and you know, touching and soft sobbing and that, and you know, odd.
And then my dad came up and he just sat on the side of the bed and he I remembered this that there was this silence, and he took my hand and I don't think he knew what to say, but he just said, your mom died last night. And then he started crying. And I'd never seen my father cry, like grown men crying. It just had never occurred to me. And that then made me cry because I got afraid, why, you know, like, I've never seen this, so you know,
I started crying as that. But it wasn't because my mom died, because that's meaningless in that age group, you know, infinity in terms of that's just means nothing. So that's that's what happened. And so when the time came to tell my children that their mom had died, I remember
that very well. And you know, I had to put down the phone and I left the room and I collected myself and I came back and that they were in the they were all the same room, and I just said, you know, I've got something to tell you that's very serious. And they were small, and you know, and I just said, your mom died last night. Now it was less of a shock, but it wasn't a shock to me that she was dead. But there was no indication my moment die. She just had a brain hemorrhage.
Bank one. She was forty. It was less so around the more contemporary circumstances because things weren't good. So but nonetheless I just took the lesson from his playbook, be very direct with children. You know, don't in any way equivocate, don't hedge, because they know. And once you're clear, then they can absorb that. They can handle it unto themselves. And if they need help with absorbing it, then you could help to unpick that and unpack it for them
and sit with them and do it. And so you know, stuff, as I said, loops around itself. And so that moment came back when it was necessary to return to me.
Yeah, when you're dealing with serious family situations like that, would you recommend easy silence or whatever's offers of questions.
Whatever's necessary, you know, don't be all hearty and say everything's going to be just you know, let it happen. I mean, they will come to you when they need to, and if they need to you just just the awareness. You don't have to say, I'm always here for you. It's a given. I mean, if you're a parent, that's the job. And I don't like people. This is not what we're here for. But I just don't like people
being bad. I don't understand it. It's possible to have your jobs, it's possible to do that to you know, to do whatever you like in your life. But also the primary function of being grown up, of being grown up exactly what those words are. The primary function of the species is to raise the young to be able to live a proper life and fulfill whatever possibleies they have in that little brain.
To that point, do you think sometimes a rough childhood or discomfort in childhood is a good thing.
No, I'm not convinced by that. It messes you up. I mean I'm not. You know, there's deep anger in me, and my animus is rage. My response to something that I think is unfair is rage. I temper it because I'm old. But when I was when the band started, the Rats, that howl of anger, that is our early music, which powered us up the charts, because that's what people felt. They were disenfranchised. Britain had twenty seven percent inflation when
we arrived in England. Twenty seven percent. I mean what you know, everything you buy is twenty seven percent more expensive there for your wages twenty seven percent less. That's not possible to live.
And a lot of people couldn't afford it when it was twenty seven percent less at that time.
They couldn't. So you know, where's the future. What's the future for the young? Ireland had a zero economy viz my father, you know, and so when we came of age, there was nothing for us. That's a form of treason by a government when they cannot give their younger future. And you know, New York was bankrupt. New York, the
great City had declared bankruptcy. So it's not a mistake that out of New York you get the Ramones out of Range, you get the Boomtown Rats out of the UK, you get the Class and the sex pistols, and we all meet at this full crumb of anger and demand change. That's the purpose of rock and roll in my time. And you know all of us had the same thing. You know, this is crap. You know. The first thing you heard Johnny Rotten say was I'm the antichrist. I'm
an anarchist. There is no future in England's dreaming. That's brilliant. Joe Strummer of the Class, I want to riot on my own, you know. Bob Geldoff, the first thing you heard him say was the world owes me a living. I don't want to be like you. I'm going to be like me, you know. And so this blast, you know, so it found itself at the right moment, at the right time, expressed through this really good band, and I was lucky, you know. But it's still the thing and
where I will agree with you. If you've had bad luck when you were a kid in your upbringing, then I think you recognize you're very alert to it happening around you. You're very alert to people on the street, You're very alert to what the news is telling you. Because pathetically you associate your own conditions with that, and that would be conditions of it's not right, it's unjust injustice, and you know, we had no money, and it's crap. Poverty is crap, Greed is not good, greed is stupid,
and so all of those things that you imbibe. But you're not a where they're informing you. You just get on with your life the best possible way you can. I just got into a rock and roll band at a period when rock and roll was the lingua franca
of the planet, the common language. It wasn't English, it was pop music, and everyone could understand pop music, and so it seemed logical to me to talk to the world in this common language through the you know, through this new medium of satellites, about a common problem of thirty two million people dined unnecessarily of hunger.
Do you believe that the timing of the Boomtown Rats was perfect because you learned to express your anger be the voice of a whole generation of.
It's luck, timing and talent, I mean, but rock and roll and technology go hand in hand. You can't get Elvis and Little Richard unless you have the transistor. And the transistor was the means to the glue of the packs Americana. American troops were all over the world. How did they stick together through the transistor this new thing?
And what was the music that first utilized that. Elvis and little Richard, who you know, weren't allowed into the American dream because they were on the wrong side of the tracks. But you know, Elvis young, beautiful, force of nature, you know, brilliant understanding of you know, his times. Little Richard young, black, gay, beautiful. He was never going to get on Telly, But here they come. The Beatles were
the function of television. Britain gets TV for the first time and hear these working class boys who don't even understand the word deferent. So when they meet monarchies and prime ministers, they're just laughing. You know, they don't understand that your hair has to be this way, we want it this way, you know, And they laughed the whole time. Are the Rolling Stones contemptuous insolence. They will sort of wander on stage picking their noses. No concession to show
business at all, you know. And and so you go forward, and you know, you get the punk thing with satellites and stuff like that, and then you guess the death of rock and roll with the introdus and the web.
Bob Gildoff webbing wrapped up, but I could talk to you for ever. Thank you so much for your time today. If you want to see Bob Geldof, and why wouldn't you enjoy an evening with Sir Bob Geldoff, hit up, I'll.
Change the name. Oh oh, what is it I've called I'm decided to go it Life WTF.
I love it. Guys, see Life WTF with Bob Geldof, hit up, tech Dainty dot com. Thank you again, and thank you for being the first person that, at the age of eleven years old, I was watching live aid. It was the hugest thing in Australia. It was the hugest thing in the world. But in Australia, you know, we were so far away from everything, and.
There was this so connected.
Magical explosion of kindness and care and it just it made me feel so understood that you made kindness cool, because sometimes kindness is like why would you do that? And you were this amazing, inspirational, strong scrupl a little bit fucked off guy going this is not good enough and look what I made. And I just want to thank you for that.
Thanks