Geldof Starts Travel Web Site

DUBLIN (Reuters) — Bob Geldof, the rock star whose efforts raised millions for African famine victims with the 1985 Live Aid concert, said Friday sheer exasperation had driven him to set up an Internet travel venture.

The 44-year old Irishman is setting up an online travel agency, deckchair.com, after failing to find cheap tickets last year.

Geldof, in Dublin for a fireworks extravaganza staged by his Planet 24 entertainment company for the city's St. Patrick's Day festival week, told reporters that exasperation had driven his career from rock star to fundraiser to entrepreneur.

"I just get irritated. I couldn't hear the music I wanted to hear, so I set up the [Boomtown] Rats. My kids had nothing to watch on TV in the morning, that was the Big Breakfast. I couldn't get a flight to Florida, that was deckchair," he said.

Geldof, several million pounds better off this week after selling Planet 24, which produces Britain's innovative Big Breakfast show on Channel Four television, said he had struggled to find cheap tickets last year through airlines. The Internet was even worse.

"My mate said, get on the Net. But it drove me mad. … I asked, why can't you just go and find the cheapest flight, put in your credit card number and the thing arrives in two days. So that's what I've done," he said.

Geldof said his online ticket agency expected to begin trading on April 1.

Geldof's successful business ventures have not diminished his love of music. A solo album is almost finished — "I just have to do the vocals but that bit always scares me."

But he has no plans to re-form the Boomtown Rats, the group that propelled him to stardom.

"Never," he said. "The past is another country and I've no wish to visit it."