Bob Geldof first rose to fame as the singer-songwriter frontman of Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, and saw his prominence grow further as a political activist off the back of the Band Aid and Live Aid fundraising initiatives. However, he has sadly also become known for the multiple high-profile tragedies that have affected his life.
Speaking to RTE Radio 1 this week, Bob, 74, revealed that he is still haunted by the way he broke the news to his young children about the death of their mother Paula Yates in 2000. His ex-wife was found having suffered a heroin overdose on their daughter Pixie's tenth birthday.
"When I had to tell my children that their mum had died it was terrible," said the father-of-four, who also shared Fifi, then 17, and Peaches, then 11, with the TV presenter, who was just 41 years old when she passed. "I got a phone call and Paula's best friend said she just found her.
"It was Pixie's 10th birthday that day. And the other two girls [Fifi and Peaches] were there and excited and Pixie was all dressed up. She was going over to have lunch with her mum.
"I put down the phone as if it was just a phone call and Fifi said, 'What? Don't tell me, mum something-something.' And I said 'no, no'. I said, 'Go on, open your presents, stop messing around.'" He told his partner Jeanne Marine: "I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do."
Bob decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had told him about his own mother's death, as a young child, with "directness" and "no obfuscations". He recalled: "I just went up and I did what my father did. And they reacted differently. I think I failed, actually. I think I didn't do it right. That's bugged me subsequently."
The star experienced great career success in the 1970s and 1980s, and he was given an honorary knighthood by the late Queen Elizabeth in 1986 for his humanitarian efforts after Band Aid in 1984 and Live Aid in 1985. However, heartbreakingly, he has experienced several tragedies in recent decades…
Bob's mum died when he was a child
When Bob was just eight years old in 1960, his mother Evelyn died at the age of 45 of a cerebral haemorrhage. He was raised by his father Robert thereafter in Ireland.
The rock star said in the RTE Radio 1 interview that he had a "clear memory" of the night she died, despite being so young. As he grew up, he believed that the aforementioned directness of his father in breaking the news was "precisely what a child needs".
Death of Bob's ex-wife Paula Yates
Bob had met Paula at a Christmas party in 1977, and the couple married in 1986 in Las Vegas. They went on to have three daughters together, Fifi, Peaches and Pixie.
However, in 1995, Paula left him for Michael Hutchence, the frontman of band INXS - and a year later, she gave birth to their daughter Tiger Lily. However, tragically, Michael died by suicide aged 37 in 1997.
After Paula's own subsequent suicide attempt, Bob gained custody of their three daughters. However, she also heartbreakingly passed away in 2000, leaving him to raise their children - and he went on to formally adopt Tiger Lily in 2007.
Loss of Bob's daughter Peaches
In 2014, Bob's daughter Peaches died aged 24 from a heroin overdose. Speaking to ITV later that year, he said he goes "goes over and over and over" in his head what he could have done to help her and said he "blames himself" for what happened.
Peaches was found dead by her husband Tom Cohen, with whom she shared two children, son Astala and son Phaedra. Her last tweet was a photo of herself as a young child with her mother Paula.
In his most recent interview, Bob said: "[Grief] does erupt. I've been stopped at traffic lights, for example. This happened the other day - suddenly Peaches was there. She was with me. And I wept."
He said that one of the reasons he proposed to and married French actress Jeanne the following year was to lift the spirits of his family at such a difficult time. The pair had met at a dinner party in Paris in 1996.