Live Aid hero BOB GELDOF has revealed he was once homeless and unemployed because he couldn't find a decent job after leaving school.

The former Boomtown Rats frontman fell on hard times and was so desperate to find somewhere safe to stay, he often slept on the floor at London's Gatwick Airport.

Geldof volunteered to help homeless people in his native Ireland as a teenager and, as a result, he felt comfortable among other vagrants, but he admits he could never rest for fear of other people attacking him or stealing from him.

He says, "I worked with the Simon Community (homeless charity) aged 15 and 16, going round Dublin all night with flasks of soup for the homeless. I was alert to that sort of thing.

"And when I left school, I lived among those sorts of people for many years, because I just had c**p jobs. I groped my way around the world.

"At one point, I was living on the streets of London. It didn't bother me because I was young and I could get a sleeping bag and a sponge mattress in the crypt at High Holborn, or I slept at Gatwick Airport for a while. But all the time, I was alert and watching people."