Bob Geldof has revealed that he considered suicide after his wife Paula Yates left him for Australian pop star Michael Hutchence.

Only the thought of his children resolved him to keep going, the former Boomtown Rats singer said in an interview with Australian TV.

I don't think I could get married again, for fear

Bob Geldof

Geldof, who had three children with Yates, said that when she left him in 1996 he wrote out two lists, one with reasons to stay alive and the other with reasons to take his own life.

"The 'why bother?' list was two pages. The 'why stay?' list was two words - the children," he said in the interview, conducted by telephone from his holiday home in Majorca.

He also said that after losing Yates - who died in September 2000 - he would be unlikely to marry again.

"I don't think I could get married again, for fear. I'd be scared stiff now," he said.

Tiger Lily now lives with Geldof and her half-sisters

The Dublin-born singer, who was knighted after his Live Aid famine relief project, now lives with French actress Jeanne Marine.

He said that he thought the deaths of Hutchence and Yates were both accidental.

Hutchence, singer for Australian rock band INXS, was found hanging from his belt in a Sydney hotel room in 1997.

A coroner ruled he committed suicide, although Yates always said Hutchence was engaged in a sexual pursuit which had gone wrong.

'Accidents'

She died from a heroin overdose in her west London home two years ago, leaving her daughter Tiger Lily an orphan.

"In both cases it was accidents," said Geldof.

"Accidents that happen when you are way out on a limb of what you are doing.

"Knowing full well the circumstances under which both accidents took place, I can absolutely say they didn't kill themselves - it just happened."

After Yates' death he adopted Tiger Lily, now six, who he said was "a fantastic kid", loved by her half-sisters Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches and Pixie.

Geldof, a campaigner on Third World debt and world poverty issues, was given his honorary knighthood in 1986.