BOB GELDOF

Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do.

Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me.

Physically I'm tired at the end of the day and quite glad to be reading in bed by midnight.

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

Music can't change the world.

But if somebody dies, if something happens to you, there is a normal process of depression, it is part of being human, and some people view it as a learning experience etc.

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life.

Divorce is a by-product of the fact that maybe the nuclear unit is gone.

So when I got to 50 I just thought, Hold on: I'm thin. I've got my hair. I'm well off. I survived, you know.

I do think I feel it but you don't think you are cause at a certain time you are no age but you don't think you are anything. You feel the life you have lived. I feel that. It's been a long fifty years.

But I think Prozac is a lethal drug, I've several friends just haven't made it by taking Prozac.

Everything that's rock n roll is ever meant to be is happening now. I need to get over the shock that that thing is actually happening and that thousands of millions of people around the world are watching.

Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American President for Africa. But it's empirically so.

Men who are not given any voice in this because of the secret nature of the courts, what they're left with is dressing up ridiculously, but at least using humour to try and draw attention to their kids.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

90% of the divorces are initiated by women. That is really odd. Why? What's going on? What's the great discontent at the heart of it?

I'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing.

I don't think anyone sets out to malign poor people but certainly that's what we do through organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

When I hit 11 so did the careers of Dylan and the Stones. A year later it was the Who and the Kinks.

And whereas women had to fight to find their way into the workforce, men are now fighting to reclaim their place in the family structure.

Music is something I must do, business is something I need to do, and Africa is something I have to do. That's the way it breaks down in my life.

And part of that is, what is the point of having children if you don't have the privilege of bringing them up?

If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older.

It's really very simple, Governor. When people are hungry they die. So spare me your politics and tell me what you need and how you're going to get it to these people.