Background and career
Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof (; born 5 October 1951) is an Irish singer-songwriter, political activist, television producer and entrepreneur. He rose to prominence in the late 1970s as the lead singer of the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, who achieved popularity as part of the punk rock movement. The band had UK number one hits with his co-compositions "Rat Trap" and "I Don't Like Mondays". Geldof starred as Pink in Pink Floyd's film Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982). Geldof is widely recognised for his activism, especially his anti-poverty efforts concerning Africa. In 1984, Geldof and Midge Ure organised the charity supergroup Band Aid for famine relief in Ethiopia, and co-wrote the best-selling single "Do They Know It's Christmas?". They organised the charity super-concert Live Aid the following year and the Live 8 concerts in 2005. Geldof serves as an adviser to the ONE Campaign, co-founded by fellow Irish rock singer and activist Bono, and is a member of the Africa Progress Panel (APP), a group of ten distinguished individuals who advocate at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa. Geldof was granted an honorary knighthood (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1986 for his charity work in Africa. It was an honorary award as Geldof is an Irish citizen, but he is often referred to as 'Sir Bob'. Among numerous other awards and nominations he was a recipient of the Man of Peace title, which recognised individuals who had made "an outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace". In 2005, he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.
Geldof was born and brought up in Dún Laoghaire in County Dublin in Ireland, a son of Robert Geldof (1914–2010) and Evelyn (née Weller). His paternal grandfather, Zenon Geldof, was a Belgian immigrant and a hotel chef. His paternal grandmother, Amelia Falk, was a British Jew from London of German-Jewish descent. His maternal grandfather Frederick Weller was a dentist. His mother, Evelyn, was head cashier at a cinema in Cork City, where she met her husband, Robert. Bob Geldof has relatives in County Cork. His maternal aunt Catherine Weller was married to Tommy Nott, who worked as night foreman at the Cork Examiner newspaper, but whose relationship to Geldof has been twice misreported in that newspaper. Regarding his Jewish ancestry, in a 2011 interview with the Manchester-based Jewish Telegraph, Geldof said "I was a quarter Catholic, a quarter Protestant, a quarter Jewish and a quarter nothing—the nothing won." On 5 June 1960, when Geldof was eight years old, his mother Evelyn died at age 45 of a cerebral haemorrhage. He had two sisters, Cleo and Lynn. Cleo died in 2010 and Lynn is a writer, journalist and Unicef campaigner. Geldof attended Blackrock College, Dublin where he was bullied for being a poor rugby player and for his middle name, Zenon. After working as a slaughterman, a road navvy and pea canner in Wisbech, England, he was hired as a music journalist in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for The Georgia Straight. He briefly guest hosted the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation children's program Switchback.
Geldof returned to Ireland in 1975 and became the lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, a rock group closely linked with the punk movement. In 1978, the Boomtown Rats had their first No. 1 single in the UK with "Rat Trap", the first new wave chart-topper in Britain. In 1979, they gained international attention with their second UK No. 1, "I Don't Like Mondays". This song was both successful and controversial. Geldof had written it in the aftermath of Brenda Ann Spencer's attempted massacre at an elementary school in San Diego, California, in 1979. In 1980, the Boomtown Rats released the album Mondo Bongo. Geldof became known as a colourful interview subject. The Boomtown Rats' first appearance on Ireland's The Late Late Show saw Geldof as deliberately brusque to host Gay Byrne and during his interview, he attacked Irish politicians and the Catholic Church, which he described as "a form of social repression" and blamed for many of the country's problems. He responded to nuns in the audience who tried to shout him down by saying they had "an easy life with no material worries in return for which they gave themselves body and soul to the church". He also criticised Blackrock College, where he had been beaten by the priests. The interview, which "lit a fire under Ireland's youth", caused uproar, making it impossible for the Boomtown Rats to play in Ireland again. In January 2013, Geldof announced that the Boomtown Rats would be reforming to play together for the first time since 1986 at that year's Isle of Wight Festival in June. They subsequently announced further tour dates and released a new CD Back to Boomtown: Classic Rats Hits.
Geldof left the Boomtown Rats in 1986 to launch a solo career and publish his autobiography, Is That It?, which was a UK best-seller. His first solo records sold reasonably well and spawned the hit singles "This Is The World Calling" (co-written with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics) and "The Great Song of Indifference". He also occasionally performed with other artists, such as David Gilmour and Thin Lizzy. A performance of "Comfortably Numb" with Gilmour is documented in the DVD release David Gilmour in Concert (2002). In 1992, he performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with the surviving members of Queen at the old Wembley Stadium, singing a song he jokingly claimed to have co-written with Mercury, called "Too Late God". (The song was actually co-written by Karl Hyde.) Geldof has also worked as a DJ for XFM radio. In 1998, he erroneously announced Ian Dury's death from cancer, possibly due to hoax information from a listener who was disgruntled at the station's change of ownership. The event caused music paper NME, which had been involved in a running feud with Geldof since his Boomtown Rats days, primarily because of his disparagement of The Clash, to call Geldof 'the world's worst DJ'.
In 2002, he was listed as one of the 100 Greatest Britons in a poll conducted among the general public, despite not being British. After Live 8, Geldof returned to his career as a musician by releasing a box set containing all of his solo albums, titled Great Songs of Indifference – The Anthology 1986–2001, in late 2005. Following that release, Geldof toured, although with mixed success. In July 2006, Geldof arrived at Milan's Arena Civica, a venue capable of holding 12,000 people, to play a scheduled concert, and found that the organisers had not put tickets on general sale and that only 45 people had shown up. Geldof refused to go on stage when he found how small the attendance was. To offer compensation for fans, Geldof signed autographs for those who had shown up. He played a well-attended free Storytellers concert for MTV Italy in Naples in October 2006. The Boomtown Rats reformed in 2025 for a 12-date, 50th anniversary tour of the UK. A two-album compilation on vinyl and CD, "The First 50 Years: Songs of Boomtown Glory", was released on 19 September 2025.
Geldof's first major charity involvement took place in September 1981 when he performed as a solo artist for Amnesty International's benefit show The Secret Policeman's Other Ball, held at Drury Lane theatre in London's West End. At the invitation of Amnesty show producer Martin Lewis, Geldof performed a solo version of "I Don't Like Mondays". Other rock artists had 'planted a seed' and appeared to have affected Geldof in a similar manner. Monty Python alumnus John Cleese conceived and directed the show, and on its impact on Geldof, Sting stated "he took the 'Ball' and ran with it."
