Unapologetic and blunt, Bob Geldof is still an inspiration

He turned 70 this week, and he’s still the same romantic hippy punk he was when he banged the table in 1985 during Live Aid and shouted: “Give us your f***ing money!”

While watching the brilliant Late Late Show special to mark his birthday – or “this mortifying evening”, as he called it – I realised what a profound influence he has been on me and my generation.

The lesson I got from him was: don’t hide from the intensity of your ­emotions, don’t be afraid to express yourself, don’t be led by what others think.

If you believe in something, be impassioned, be irreverent; disrupt, confront, challenge, offend if necessary, and take the consequences. What’s the point, otherwise?

As Bob says: “It’s not in my nature to shut up.”

Italia ’90 is the default event of my era, but equally, it was Live Aid.

I still vividly remember July 13, 1985, watching in awe as Queen stole the show at Wembley; at David Bowie and Mick Jagger Dancin’ In The Street.

We had been out all day, going around the local houses with big empty putty buckets, collecting coins for Live Aid. I was only a kid, but it’s one of those occasions I recall as clearly as yesterday.

It was uplifting and enlightening to watch this unapologetic, blunt, boundless Irishman leading the charge to fight famine in Ethiopia through music.

He made the world look at what was happening beyond their comfortable lives – “There’s a world outside your window” – and forced it to respond.

As he said: “Through the lingua franca of the planet – which is not English, but rock ’n’ roll – we were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surplus.”

It awakened a life-long consciousness in me.

It stirred the legacy of the famine in the national psyche.

The Great Hunger was the driving force behind Geldof’s empathy in action.

He later said Ireland gave more pro rata than any other country as “there was an immediate association and understanding of the horror of it”.

On the Late Late special, Sting captured Geldof’s essence best when he described the Dún Laoghaire man’s strong sense of self.

“He has an intimidating sense of his own uniqueness, along with the requisite courage it takes to be that, without apology or compromise.”

In other words, as Sting summed up: “It takes a lot of balls to be Bob Geldof.”