United Kingdom, Jan. 27 -- Bob Geldof's grief when Paula Yates left him was "worse" than when she died.

The Boomtown Rats frontman's marriage to the presenter - who he wed in 1986 after a decade together- ended in 1995 when she left him for INXS frontman Michael Hutchence and he has recalled how he "didn't want to wake up again" in the months afterwards, but ultimately kept going for their children.

Reflecting on Paula's death from an overdose in 2000, he told RTE1: "It was not as bad - people are probably going to go nuts on me now and I hope, I wish they won't - it was not the feeling of loss. The grief, the agony, was not as bad as when Paula left me. That was worse.

"That required something else in me and, honest to god, I just did...