Fifteen years ago Bob Geldof’s impassioned pleas on behalf of the starving peoples of the African continent inspired millions to dig deep into their pockets. His raw, straight-to-the-heart appeal raised an incredible $150 million to feed the Third World’s starving. Recently the ex-Boomtown Rats frontman returned to the land he championed and had seen in such distress, to show his daughters Fifi, 18, 12-year-old Peaches and Pixie, ten, plus Tiger, the four-year-old daughter of his late wife, Paula Yates, another side of the continent, on safari in South Africa.
Sir Bob Geldof on what experience has taught him life is about:
“It’s for finding out what this chance consciousness called me can do – which is more than some people and less than others. You test it to the very limits of its capabilities, and if at all possible, you don’t hurt other people on the way”
On his and his children’s memories of his late wife, Paula Yates:
“She was fun, a really very funny girl. She was brilliant and beautiful… so these are the things the children have of her. There is nothing maudlin or overwrought about the memories they have. We talk quite openly in a totally normal way: ‘Do you remember being here with Mum?’. It’s just ordinary recalling and it’s nearly always funny”
On former South African president Nelson Mandela:
“He really is as advertised. Clearly something other people just cannot be – brave, courageous to a fault, open, friendly, moral, unembittered, incredibly dignified… the perfect hero, though I’m probably the zillionth person to say so…”
On his memories of the famine which led to Live Aid:
“The snapshots I really remember are classic famine – the blasted landscape and a mother giving a single grain of burned wheat to her child who’s supposedly two but looks like three months old. The child was dying, the unmilled grain was hard and sharp and tore at the child’s stomach, which was in turn being evacuated onto the ground. The child died while I watched. These things stay with you”
On the ‘Drop the Debt’ campaign to eliminate Third World debt:
“The simple problem issue is that the Third world can’t pay their debt and we in the West don’t need it. Third world countries must pay more on annual debt repayment than they spend on health and education, and this at the time of the Aids pandemic. We are the fourth richest nation on Earth, not a country of debt collectors, bailiffs and repo men”
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
