Live Aid legend Bob Geldof urged people not to pay their water bills during a four-letter rant at fat cat utility bosses.
The Boomtown Rats star also branded Boris Johnson a “hollow, incompetent oaf” when he spoke at a public meeting near his home in Faversham, Kent.
And he also revealed how he wanted to go into space on a Russian rocket to highlight climate change 30 years ago – but the collapse of the Soviet Union wrecked his dream.
Geldof blasted Southern Water over a sewage leak scandal during a two-hour discussion on climate change on November 11.
He said a £90 million fine the water provider was landed with earlier this year for illegal discharges into the sea was a “drop in the ocean” for the utility firm.
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Geldof also supported the decision of some residents in nearby Whitstable to make a stand and refuse to pay the waste water portion of their bills.
He said “Don’t pay your water bills to Southern Water, they can **** off!
“I can’t understand why this giant utility company can’t be held to account.
“Why aren’t the board liable? Why aren’t they going to jail? “I really don’t understand it.
“They are doing vile harm to adults and children who go swimming, and vile harm to livelihoods. How are they allowed to do this?
(Image: Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images)
“I’m absolutely certain if there was a one-year minimum custodial sentence for them, then it would stop.
“God bless those people of Whitstable. I’m straight there to join them, in fact I’ll join them immediately.”
The Live Aid founder was speaking as a guest at an event called ‘Sustainable Development: Vision or Pipe dream’ at Faversham’s Assembly Rooms.
The singer, who has lived in nearby Davington Priory for 40 years, also revealed how close he came to being rocketed into space to highlight the impact of climate change in the early 1990s.
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He told the meeting: “The BBC had been on at me to do another Live Aid, because for them it was a big TV success.
“So pre-Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, I went to the Soviet Embassy and said ‘will you put me up into space?’.
“I wanted to zip around and film the earth from space, and as we go over each part of the world we’d articulate the scene – be it industrialisation, industrial pollution, carbon et cetera. People would watch because it’s from space.
(Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images for Bow)
“It was all go, three people came over to measure me from Bulgaria, but I was too tall. I said ‘can you not just extend the thing’ but they couldn’t.
“Hence, we were going to pay the Soviets £6 million. NASA said no, they refused point blank.”
Geldof added: “It was all go and, typically, the Soviet Union then fell apart and I never got to go up.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
