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Bob Geldof ‘half-expected’ Peaches’ death over fears about ‘the way she was carrying on’ in run-up to her death

Heather Saul
Tuesday 01 December 2015 09:47 EST
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Peaches Geldof
Peaches Geldof (Getty Images)

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Bob Geldof has admitted he “half expected” his daughter Peaches’s death because of her behaviour in the years up until she died.

Peaches was found dead in her Kent home after taking what an inquest ruled to be a “life threatening” amount of heroin in 2014. Police found more than 80 syringes in different places around the house, some which had not been used.

Her death tragically echoed that of her mother Paula Yates, who died of a heroin overdose in 2000.

Geldof was speaking to Miriam O’Callaghan on RTE Radio 1 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his band the Boomtown Rats.

In the moving interview, he described the feelings he experienced after Peaches, who was married with two young children, died aged 25.

“With Peaches it was different,” he said.

“Part of me kind of half-expected [it with] Peaches, to be honest with you, you know, the way she was carrying on, there’s nothing you can do about it.

"She's with me every second of every day. She's the girl that bounds into my consciousness at any moment, especially in any down moment when I am not doing something. She is very present.

“This thing of being forever 25, in my head, that’s unbearable, simply because of that cliché: you’re not supposed to see your children die.

“Time does not heal, it accommodates. But it is not accommodating this.

Geldof said his father broke the news of his own mother’s death matter of factly and he understood why his father did this when he had to steel himself and deliver the devastating news that Yates had died to his daughters, who were celebrating Pixie’s 10th birthday.

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