Geldof: My grief at losing my girls

The poverty campaigner and musician complains in a forthcoming TV interview that he was subjected to anti-male bias when he sought custody of his three daughters after Big Breakfast star Yates left him for her doomed romance with singer Michael Hutchence.

Bob with American TV journalist Daphne Barak in the revealing interview

Bob Geldolf and former wife Paula Yates (left), Bob with daughters Peaches, Pixie and Fifi Trixibelle

In an interview with American TV host Daphne Barak, airing on the eve of next month's G8 summit, he says the discovery that the law was "skewed" in Yates's favour - just because she was a woman - plunged him into an "ocean of grief."

"It freaked me out," he told Barak. "I could not live without my kids. I missed the sound of them turning in their sleep. I just wanted to go to some dark, grey corner of the world and howl into the void.

The Geldof family dining at RYO in Soho earlier this year

"The key in my pocket still fit in the door, but I was no longer allowed (to put) this key in the door and go into my home.

"It's very hard to get your head around that. I went to the door, and I was too humiliated to knock on my own front door.

"That's my house, my home, my children. I could hear them laughing in there. I was too scared of (knocking) and one of my kids opening the door and saying 'Hi Dad' and not being allowed to let me in.

"I didn't want to impose that on them. I didn't want it to happen to me. I didn't want her to come to the door and say, 'What are you doing here? You're not allowed to come here.'"

"So, I went back out, and I sat in the car and I just cried. I just stayed and watched their bedroom lights go off, and I went home. That shouldn't happen to anyone.

"If you put impediments in the way of men seeing their children - making them jump through all sorts of humiliating hoops - the kids become a weapon, a sword and a shield simultaneously.

"You're suffering so much. Eventually, no person can take that and the kids lose a father. It is hurtful."

Geldof, 55, finally was awarded custody of Fifi, Pixie and their sister, the model, Peaches, following a 1996 drug raid on the house where Yates and Hutchence were living.

After his ex-wife died in 2000 from a heroin overdose and Hutchence was found hanged, he adopted the tragic couple's daughter, Tiger Lily.

"What's she got to do with any of the mess?" he told Barak.

"She should be with those she knows and loves. She's a hoot. She's gorgeous."