Personal Life
Geldof's longtime girlfriend and eventual wife was Paula Yates. Yates was a rock journalist, presenter of the cutting-edge music show The Tube, and later notorious for her in-bed interviews on the show The Big Breakfast. Geldof met Yates when she became an obsessed fan of the Boomtown Rats during the band's early days. They got together as a couple in 1976 when Yates travelled by aeroplane to Paris to surprise him when the band was playing there.
Before they married, the couple had a daughter, Fifi Trixibelle Geldof, born 31 March 1983 (and while Geldof was still conducting an affair with the young Claire King). She was named Fifi after Bob's aunt Fifi, and Trixibelle because Paula wanted a belle in the family. After 10 years together, Bob and Paula married in June 1986 in Las Vegas, with Simon Le Bon (of Duran Duran) acting as Geldof's best man. The couple later had two more daughters, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof (known as Peaches Geldof) on 13 March 1989, and Little Pixie Geldof (known as Pixie Geldof) on 17 September 1990. Pixie is said to be named after a celebrity daughter character from the cartoon Celeb in the satirical magazine Private Eye, itself a lampoon of the names the Geldofs gave to their other children. Geldof has stated that his children find his music 'crap' and him an 'embarrassment'.
In 1995, Yates left Geldof for Michael Hutchence, the lead singer of INXS, whom she had met several years previously when she interviewed him on The Tube (TV series), and again in 1994 when she interviewed Hutchence again for The Big Breakfast. Geldof and Yates divorced in May 1996 and Yates moved in with Hutchence. Yates and Hutchence had a daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, born 22 July 1996. Hutchence later was found hanged in a hotel room on 22 November 1997. Geldof soon after went to court and obtained full custody of his own three daughters and has since become an outspoken advocate of fathers' rights. After Paula Yates's death from a drug and alcohol overdose in 2000 Geldof became the legal guardian of Tiger Lily, believing it best that she be raised with her three half-sisters. In 2007, Geldof formally adopted her, changing her name to Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence Geldof although she simply goes by the name of Tiger Hutchence-Geldof.
Regarding his Jewish ancestry, in an interview with the Manchester Jewish Telegraph, Geldof said “I was a quarter Catholic, a quarter Protestant, a quarter Jewish and a quarter nothing – the nothing won.”
Geldof currently resides in Battersea, South London with his partner, French actress Jeanne Marine, and Tiger.
His father died on 26 August 2010 at the age of 96.
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