Bob Geldof still breaks down weeping over 'clever, sweet, eccentric' Peaches

Bob Geldof still grieves for his daughter Peaches and gets "involuntary" surges of emotion that "utterly inhabit" him.

Time "accommodates" but does not heal, he added in an interview with The Mail On Sunday's Event magazine.

The lead singer of the Boomtown Rats said he knew Peaches was taking drugs before her death from an accidental heroin overdose in 2014. She ran away from rehab not long before, he revealed.

Her mother, TV presenter Paula Yates, died the same way in 2000 at the age of 41.

Looking back at her life, Geldof said Peaches had been a restless child with a "franticness" and a "constant panic in the eyes".

She struggled to sleep as a baby - something that "continued all through her infancy".

Later, she had "her own language, a dog language", and would greet visitors with a series of affectionate growls.

Geldof said he "did try, of course I did" to help Peaches calm down, adding that she was "such a clever, sweet, eccentric girl".

Discussing drugs, Geldof said he knew Peaches had "always dabbled and that the panic was always there".

He told Event: "By 2013 we'd been through it. The family had gone to Utah to a rehab place there. She was doing pretty well and we all flew out, because you have to.

"But then she ran away from there. I tried to stop her at the door but there's nothing you can do. She was free to leave."

He recently attended a friend's son's funeral, describing it as the "same deal".

Geldof, 68, said grief can overwhelm him as he drives from his London flat to his second home in Kent.

"It surges forward, this involuntary subconscious flood of emotion inhabits you, utterly," he explained.

"I'll be at the traffic lights and I start to weep and I think, 'You're weeping'. And I say, 'Let it go. Let it happen.' Then I begin to sob, racked sobs. I weep then I sob. Then I wise up and look around to check that nobody's taking pictures or filming."

Peaches, the second daughter of Geldof and Yates, was born in March 1989. She worked as a model and TV presenter and married singer Thomas Cohen in 2012, with whom she had two sons.

She was 25 when she passed away. The day before, she posted a picture of herself as a young girl with Yates on Instagram.

It was captioned: "Me and my Mum."

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