There Just Isn't Enough Popcorn For This!

It seems Bob Geldof never bothers to read what he writes, or look at people's reactions to it. In fact, he remains blissfully unaware of how he comes across.

Because he's at it again:

The singer and activist Bob Geldof (Ed: Surely that's the wrong way round..?) 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".

Ahhh, bless.

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.

Thou shalt not mock a rock star!

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.

Heh. 'Meandering and at times emotional' being editor's shorthand for 'Gather round, folks! We got a live one here!'.

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.

Well, quite, because Live Aid eliminated poverty forever, whereas the anti-glo...

What's that? It didn't? That can't be right, surely?

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."

Yes, it's a complete mystery why a concert featuring world-famous rock stars drew a bigger global audience than some politicians gathering to eat canapes and discuss the political situation in Africa. Who'd have thunk it?

...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."

That's hardly surprising, is it? An earnest documentary on politics from the guy who made 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and 'Love Actually', before going on to the dizzy, Oscar-quality material of 'Mr Bean's Holiday' and 'The Boat That Rocked', or Jonathan Ross, who might say something inappropriate on live TV and bring in audience figures that will go through the roof?

That's a puzzle for a prime-time broadcaster, Bob, I'm sure you'd agree...

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'm going to break the habit of a lifetime, and say that that was actually a good thing.

Because Bob Geldof is rapidly becoming something of a national icon. Rather like the loony old uncle who is forever launching into rants about his favourite hobby horse in spectacularly inappropriate settings, like the middle of a funeral. And writing interminable letters in green ink to his local newspaper, that have all the editorial staff weeping into their morning coffee with mirth.

You know he's a total embarrassment to the family and to himself, but you can't help feeling that life is just that little bit less exciting and unpredictable on the day when the doctors finally arrive with the syringe of Thorazine and the butterfly nets...