By Indrajit Hazra (Hindustan Times)

New Delhi: One would have thought that immediately after holding forth for an hour to a hallful of people on how culture can be a tool for change, Bob Geldof would be tired. But he’s not even lost for words.

After tearing off the wrapper of a gift like an impatient child on Christmas morning (“Oh look, it’s a craft thing!”), the man with a mission continues: “Between a bad artist who does public good and a good artist who does lousy public good, I’ll pick a good artist any day.” Which is ironic for someone who, self-admittedly, got to be at home with his wife and child watching starving Ethiopian children on television because his career as a pop star was in the doldrums.

Tearing his knotty hair away from his Victorian gent face, he speaks of what may lie at the root of him turning from a singer in a 80s rock band to a conscience-keeper and activist against poverty in Africa.

“I was young and my parents were dead and Ireland was not a pretty place to be in when I was growing up. I think I channelised a lot of the anger — against the System, against any powers above — for my bum deal. I became part of an anti-apartheid movement in Dublin. I had nothing better to do, it was anti-authoritarian and it was terribly romantic.”

The seeds of going against the grain would take shape in playing for a rock’n’roll band, the Boomtown Rats. He was clear about what he wanted by being a rock musician. As he points out with a curly smile, “The only Bob Geldof quote that’s in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is the one about me playing in a band ‘to get rich, to get famous, and to get laid’. And I did, although good Irish Catholic girls were the last people to throw themselves at me.”

From taking on the establishment through punk rock, somewhere down the line he focused his energy on bringing attention and relief to poverty-stricken Africa. “Perhaps by that time, I had been suffering from ‘the fake syndrome’, feeling guilty of largesse.”

But what about celebrities who tend to espouse a cause without really going beyond making it a part of their popular persona? “I think if a silly celebrity says something about, say, breast cancer, it’s still bringing the subject to the notice of a lot of people.”

Geldof, though, manages not to say silly things because he keeps only one thing on his agenda: African poverty. He is focused on this issue for very pragmatic reasons. “I have access to world leaders and that access for me is very important. I know (Tony) Blair and (Gordon) Brown well. I get to meet George Bush and all of them have been very proactive on Africa. Now if I suddenly start talking to them about global warming or something, they will rightly say, ‘What the f**k do you know about global warming?’ I know my Africa and can argue my case.”

For someone who’s still really an outsider in politics, doesn’t he feel constrained when it comes to taking policy decisions? After all, he knows that power in terms of changing policy does lie in politics and not in activism. “Well, you can stand outside and piss into a tent. You can be inside a tent and piss out. I tend to be inside the tent and piss inside right there.”

Email: ihazra@hindustantimes.com