The Boomtown Rats’ founder and frontman Bob Geldof is another Irish icon who has had to contend with terrible family losses that played out in public. The Band Aid founder and tireless activist, whose song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” raised millions for charity in the 1980s, lost the mother of his children, the British TV personality Paula Yates, in 2000. She died of a heroin overdose, leaving behind four daughters, three of whom she had with Geldof. (Her fourth daughter, Tiger Lily, was adopted by Geldof after her father, Michael Hutchence of INXS, died by suicide in 1997.)
A couple of Geldof and Yates’ children went on to have careers in the public eye, including their daughter Peaches, who became a star while still a teenager as a model and TV personality. Tragically, she was found dead at her home on April 7, 2014, at the age of just 25. A coroner later confirmed that, like her mother, she had died of a heroin overdose.
Speaking to Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan, Bob Geldof said in relation to his grief that “the abyss is infinite,” and that he is often struck by his loss unexpectedly and finds himself crying for his daughter (via The Independent).
