The arrogance of Saint Bob Geldof

[Jan Klimkowski]

Bob Geldof condemns lame and ineffective anti-poverty campaigners

Singer pens letter to director of documentary that criticises his rock concert campaigns

The singer and activist Bob Geldof has launched an impassioned defence of his lifetime's charitable work, claiming he has used his fame to persuade world leaders to take global poverty seriously and mocking anti-poverty demonstrators as "wankers dressed as clowns".

His comments were penned in a 6,000-word letter to the director of a documentary that makes stinging and, Geldof believes, entirely unjustified criticisms of his rock concert campaigns.

In an attempt to persuade the director to retract the allegations from the film, which will be broadcast next week, Geldof wrote a meandering and at times emotional explanation of his work.

In the letter, seen by the Guardian, Geldof claimed to have had significant influence over world leaders, including Tony Blair, in the run-up to the 2005 G8 summit, and contrasted the achievements of his Live 8 campaign with the global coalition of anti-poverty campaigners, which he characterised as "a bit lame" and almost entirely ineffectual.

Claiming that "all that the combined lobbying might of the total NGO community" failed to ignite public opinion over global poverty, Geldof drew attention to the powerful impact of the Live 8 concerts, which were televised simultaneously to audiences around the world. "They are the vast billions watching," he said. "Brought together around the electric hearth of the TV or computer screen by the Pied Pipers of Rock 'n Roll."

He also defended his proximity to world leaders: "Like it or not the agents of change in our world are the politicians. Otherwise you're always outside the tent pissing in. They stay inside their tent pissing back out at you. This is futile. My solution is to get inside the tent and piss in there."

The film that appears to have angered Geldof is Starsuckers, a polemic against media and celebrity that will be broadcast on More 4 on Tuesday. A section of the documentary makes a string of allegations about singer-turned-campaigner.

They include the suggestion money raised from the 1985 Live Aid concerts to tackle famine in Ethiopia was mis-spent, leading to deaths, and criticism that the successor concerts two decades later, Live 8, overshadowed a mass movement of campaigners in the Make Poverty History coalition.

Geldof strenuously denies the allegations made in the film, and his lawyers have written to the film-makers, and are also in contact with Channel 4 and the regulator Ofcom over the broadcast. But Geldof is understood to have been so riled by what he considers the "untruthful and wrong" claims in the film that he wrote to its director, Chris Atkins.

A source close to Geldof said he was "not surprised" Atkins chose to ignore his request for the letter not to be made public. It contains a reference to some NGOs as "boring, futile and adolescent" and takes a swipe at the BBC, which Geldof said declined to show films about poverty produced by his friend, Richard Curtis. "Instead we had Jonathan Ross camping around in a yellow suit talking bollocks."

He vigorously defended the 1980s Band-Aid initiative to raise funds for starving Ethiopians, though acknowledged his difficulty in dealing with the country's brutal dictator, Mengistu.

"I approached him and berated him on his "re-settlement" policy. I told him it was mass murder. He simply stared at me. Luckily he decided not to shoot me. I don't believe I shirked my responsibilities."

Rather than contributing in any way to the deaths of "resettled" Ethiopians, as Starsuckers claims, Geldof said his campaign saved 500,000 lives and "helped halt a monstrous programme of murder".

He gives a more detailed description of Live 8, the string of benefit concerts inspired by the 1985 campaign.

"Richard [Curtis] and Bono came to me and said do another gig. I said you fucking do it if you're so eager. Bono said he'd play with McCartney and they'd open the gig with "It was 20 years ago today" – a reference to Live Aid. I wanted to see that. Precisely that rock n roll moment I wanted to see, so I said ok. That's why I did it. Pathetic but y'know …"

The decision to try to mobilise world opinion through concerts was justified, he said, because "the lingua franca of the planet is not English – it's pop music".

Fearing that Make Poverty History, a global coalition of development agencies, was failing to galvanise public opinion, he said he embarked on a publicity drive. It included "pretending" that millions of activists were headed to Edinburgh from the continent to "re-enact a sort of Dunkirk", he said.

Geldof also referred to his personal influence over Tony Blair in run-up to the summit, revealing he "put up" a journalist to ask the then prime minister whether he would adopt a radical set of benchmarks for tackling global poverty.

He said that Blair, fearing other leaders would not accept a deal of such "radical nature", was reluctant to agree to the proposals. "Having asked the question and Blair hesitating in a stumbling response I, who shared the platform with the PM and Gordon Brown, jumped in and said 'Yes he will. Won't you prime minister?' Everyone laughs and Blair says something like 'oh well if Bob says so I'd better.'"

In the end, Geldof said, the Live 8 campaign helped change the opinions of world leaders and constituted a landmark mass movement. "It finally brought the Live8ers and [Make Poverty History activists] into one stadium. (And James Brown was amazing!!) I had another plan as well, but Pope Benedict fucked it. But still, the G8 knew we were there."

The Starsuckers film alleges that Geldof exaggerated the impact of his campaign in the aftermath of the summit. Controversially, Geldof gave world leaders "ten out of ten" for their aid spending commitments and "8 out of ten" for their promises on debt relief. In his letter Geldof reiterated his assessment, but said, on reflection, G8 leaders deserved an upgrade on for their work on debt cancellation, and scored them "ten out of ten".

He contrasted the success of the Live 8 initiative with the efforts of anti-poverty demonstrators who "were never mentioned" at the summit, where they wielded "not a single shred of influence".

"The G8 has become a pointless ritual where the marchers and the wankers dressed as clowns (wow! Radical) get to throw stones at cops miles from the decision makers, who can't even hear them, and the cops get to crack some heads," he said, adding that he suspected other campaigners knew that his methods were simply more effective. "I can do rock n roll, they can do marching."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr...tarsuckers