Bob Geldof

Paula Yates died of drug and alcohol overdose in 2000 and Bob Geldof lost his second daughter Peaches in 2014, at the age of 25, due to heroin overdose.

He now lives in Battersea in South London with his second wife Jeanne Marine, a French actress, whom he married on 28th April 2005 in France.

Bob Geldof was born on 5 October 1951, in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, to Robert and Evelyn Geldof. His original name was Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof.

At a very young age of six, Geldof lost his mother due to cerebral haemorrhage. His childhood became tougher when he got continuously bullied by his classmates for being a poor rugby player as well as for his middle name, Zenon.

He attended the Blackrock College and after doing some odd jobs, he got the job of a music journalist in in Vancouver, British Columbia for the Canadian weekly newspaper ‘The Georgia Straight’. Geldof also hosted the children’s program called Switchback in CBC for a brief period of time.

Bob Geldof returned to Ireland in 1975 and formed a rock group called the ‘Boomtown Rats’ which was very closely linked to the punk movement.

In 1978, The Boomtown Rats came up with the single “Rat Trap”, which became their first No. 1 single in the UK.

In 1979, the band came up with its second UK No. 1 single “I Don't Like Mondays”; it gained them huge international attention and at the same time the song courted controversy as it was written in the aftermath of Brenda Ann Spencer's attempted massacre at an elementary school in San Diego, California.

In 1980, The Boomtown Rats came up with their album ' Mondo Bongo' and its single 'Up All Night' became a huge hit in the U.S.

During this time, Geldorf became one of the most talked-about interview subjects and in the first appearance of the Boomtown Rats in ‘The Late Late Show’ in Ireland, he attacked the Catholic Church and Irish Politicians and blamed them for various problems in the country.

Geldof wrote “Do They Know it’s Christmas’’ in 1984 with Midge Ure after viewing television reports of the famine in Ethiopia. It became the number one song in the UK singles chart and stayed the same for five long weeks. It also became the best song for Christmas of the year and the largest selling single in the UK with almost a million copies being sold in the very first week.