It is quite something, to step off a train at a deserted station in Kent to see Bob Geldof waiting for you – in a face mask. He’s picking me up so we can drive to his 900-year-old former Benedictine nunnery of a home and spend the next three hours talking about everything from Live Aid to world politics to the return of the Boomtown Rats. And he doesn’t seem too happy about it. Word came only an hour or so beforehand that I should head over to his house near Faversham to do the interview, yet the first thing he asks is why we have to do it face to face. It’s seven days before the country goes into lockdown – it turns out
Bob Geldof on the Boomtown Rats, Live Aid, family tragedies – and why he has no desire to be liked
He’s the rock’n’roll singer who became a global hero, the outsider who mixed with world leaders, the husband and father whose life has been overshadowed by tragedy. The one thing Bob Geldof has always been is bloody difficult. And that’s just the way he likes it. Will Hodgkinson meets him
Bob Geldof
DEAN CHALKLEY/SOLO SYNDICATION
The Times