I have never understood the concept that business is dull,” says Bob Geldof, his drawl strengthening to grumpy-old-man pitch. “There’s an element of creativity that’s just as strong in business as it is in music. I find the whole thing f****** fascinating actually — it’s a culture of ideas that’s genuinely interesting.”
Is Geldof serious or merely ranting? It would be a legitimate question if he were, like so many of his faded rock star contemporaries, just a “dabbler” in the stock market. But Geldof is a seriously successful media entrepreneur.
The Sunday Times Rich List estimates him to be worth £35m, mainly based on the rise of the share price of Ten Alps, the television documentary production and publishing company he co-founded with Alex Connock and Des Shaw in 1999, and which acquired McMillan-Scott, the UK contract publisher, in a £12.25m cash deal this March. Geldof also has a one-third stake, valued at £20m, in Castaway Television Productions, which makes reality TV shows and owns the rights to the Survivor series.
Geldof’s interest in television dates back to 1991, when he launched Planet 24, a television production company, with Charlie Parsons and Lord Alli. Planet 24, the firm responsible for making The Big Breakfast and The Word, was sold in 1999 to Michael Green’s Carlton Communications for £15m. Ten Alps, Geldof’s replacement company in which he serves as a non-executive director, has since made such upmarket programmes as Catherine the Great and Dispatches, and produces about 30 television programmes a year, plus radio shows and 300 printed publications.
It was the arrival of cable television and generic channels dedicated to sport, entertainment and music that fuelled Geldof’s current passion for niche television, leading to a consortium led by his company winning a four-year deal to run the Teachers’ TV channel for the Department for Education and Skills.
“I have loved factual television since I used to come home late at night and turn on the Open University,” says Geldof. “So much of that stuff was absolutely brilliant.
“I’ve been able to see the attraction of niche TV for a long time, and when we got involved I thought we had to go to the high end. I’m sure people want the business-to-business component. Why not a channel for the police force, where all the different forces can communicate with one another, sorting out their recruitment and their training needs? Why not a plumbers’ channel? Why not have the same for the health service? Television has endless potential — it has got to move on from providing just entertainment.”
Geldof is spoken of in reverential terms by his business partners. “He’s a visionary,” says Connock, chief executive of Ten Alps. “He has never sent a memo, signed a cheque or studied a Vat return in his life, but he’s our human capital. He has this amazingly fast Intel processor of a mind, and he’s incredibly perceptive.”
But what, over and above his passion, intuition and “aura”, does Geldof himself think that he brings to the party? “That’s pretty f****** difficult to define because I don’t go into the office — like, ever,” he says, with a shudder. “The others have banned me because I bore them and I annoy people when I go there, so I do things from the Picasso, the Italian cafe in the King’s Road.
“But I do strategise, if that’s the right word. I understand the necessity for a good board and for good ideas. You know, managers are the enablers in society. They’re like drummers in a band — they aren’t glamorous, but they create the backbeat. They are the ones that enable things to happen. And I have around me, in Alex Connock and Waheed (Lord) Alli, two management geniuses.
“I do the pitches. Like there was the Bill Clinton appearance on a programme for us (Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace, a three-part documentary on the Middle East) where my name allowed me to get to him and he went along with my ideas. And I’ll do the same with people like City brokers and head teachers. They will listen to me because they know that what I have done in the past has been a proven success. I do all that stuff. I’m not bad at business you know. I’ ve got a good strike record.”
Although Geldof affects ignorance of the day-to-day goings-on at Ten Alps, he’s obviously sufficiently in touch to sense the “vibe” among the workforce of 450 — which, incidentally, has a retention rate of about 90%, very high for the sector.
“There’s a palpable loyalty to the company, which is good,” he says. “That’s because the economies of scale work well for everyone, giving them sufficient space and money to be creative. There’s a benign feel to the company and Alex allows people to do what they are good at.”
But, as everybody who has seen a Geldof tirade or fit of pique on television will know, there is a flip side to his personality. He once caused a certain amount of embarrassed coughing when he turned up at a formal meeting for a sponsorship project dressed in a frock coat and “looking like Dracula”, as Connock recalls, on the way to a Sir Elton John fancy-dress party.
On another occasion, he told an important red-faced portly businessman he “should get some of that weight off”, which resulted in an exchange of less than complimentary e-mails. So does the former Boomtown Rats singer enjoy being a business “suit”? “The business world is changing very fast,” Geldof says. “When I first started out, trying to run a music magazine in Ireland in the early 1970s, I had £2,000 of my own money and when I went to the bank for a loan, the manager took one look at me and said, ‘How old are you, son?’ I said I was 20 years old. And do you know what he said? ‘Go away and come back when you’re 40.’ Well, f*** that.
“But that was Ireland and that was the 1970s. Now the whole world of business has changed. It’s a world I really enjoy, particularly the corporate thing — being part of a team. It sounds corny, but it’s very like being part of a band.
“And to have an idea — just an idea that I have talked through in the Chelsea Arts Club and to see management make that idea actually work . . . to see it work! It’s just such a pleasure.”
