My intolerable pain over Peaches, by Bob Geldof

The signer claimed he will sometimes “buckle” when he thinks of the loss of Peaches, 25, who was found dead at her home in Kent three months ago as a result of a suspected heroin overdose.

Geldof said her death was “still very raw” and added: “I’m walking down the road and suddenly out of the blue there’s an awareness of her - and you know, I buckle.

“And I’ve got to be very careful because walking down the Kings Road there are paps (paparazzi) everywhere so I have to duck off into a lane or something, and blub for a while and then get on with it and that’s it, so I’d imagine that will be there for a long time, I mean what else?”

Discussing his loss, he said: “It’s intolerable - it’s very hard as everybody must realise, especially if it happened to them too, and what else do you do, you get on with it.”

Geldof added: “I’ve always done that and being on stage is entirely cathartic, it just clears your head I just get on a stage and go mad. If I dwell on the words sometimes I find it hard to struggle through the song because they take on whole meanings that I never meant when I wrote them.”

The Boomtown Rats frontman - who has just announced a national tour with his reconvened band - said his family’s life had been “part of the national soap opera”. Other tragedies in his life have included his former wife Paula Yates, leaving him in 1995 after an affair with the Australian singer Michael Hutchence.

Hutchence died in a hotel room in Sydney, which was ruled to be suicide, and Yates later died of a heroin overdose of her own in 2000 with Geldof going on to take custody and then adopt the couple’s daughter Tiger Lily.

Geldof said: “Bizarrely, and I wish it were other, from the very get-go, my life seems to be incredibly episodic like a soap opera and I’m never aware I’m in the next scene until something happens and I’m already in the middle of it and there’s no getting out of it and you have to move on to the next scene, whatever that it is.”

He stressed Peaches’ two young children would be able to move on from their loss, much as he did when he lost his own mother as a child.

“They are so small, the little chaps, that I’m not sure that they’ll have this craving to remember their mum, and I think that is healthy. I don’t want them becoming wrapped up in the Geldof life, it’s great in some respects, it’s appalling in other times.”

He also explained how messages and sympathy from the public had helped to come to terms with his grief, adding: “It’s a cliché also but it really helps. Not just the number of letters, just the sentiment. I mean some of the stories they tell you are heart-rending as you know - but just the sentiment, just one line and you open them up and the impact. I was amazed by the impact of her, so young, on her generation.”