REVISITING the Boomtown Rats’ back catalogue recently, a new "Best Of" compilation to showcase, Bob Geldof claims he was struck by the early songs’ sense of entrapment. He may be longer in the tooth, but nothing’s changed for the King Rat. The unwieldy Saint Bob tag and public knowledge of his private life are surely as straitjacketing as hell.

An accomplished raconteur, Geldof gives you the full story behind the songs - from lustful misadventures chasing Mary of the 4th Form, to tracks from his last album, Sex, Age and Death, presaged with warnings of painful rawness and a tendency "to disappear inside" himself at the memory of Paula Yates.

As nakedly emotional as the day it was written, the last of these, My Birthday Suit, received a massive response, but to follow it with a throwaway, crowd-pleasing I Don’t Like Mondays seemed ill-judged. Banana Republic and Rat Trap, by contrast, were given due reverence and were better received, requests like Joey’s On The Street Again and Like Clockwork dutifully delivered, and the encore, featuring a blistering reprisal of the opener, The Great Song Of Indifference, was awesome.