IN HIS first few sentences Bob Geldof has ticked all the expected boxes. The former Boomtown Rat and man behind Band Aid/Live Aid has mentioned his music, Africa and used a seven-letter version of a four-letter word.

“Why are you working today?” he asks when he phones as arranged on Bank Holiday Monday (so he does like Mondays after all).

“And why are you?” I respond.

“Because I’m going to ****ing Africa,” he replies in characteristic manner.

He’s doing press for the next leg of his tour – which takes in Harrogate Royal Hall next Friday – before flying out to the World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa.

It must be a strange old life gigging on stage one day and talking about African poverty the next, but it’s a dual role that the 60-year-old Geldof has found himself doing since the Band Aid record and Live Aid concert first focused attention on the problem in 1984-85.

Geldof says he would go mad if he only did one thing but music remains his first love. His work highlighting and seeking solutions for poverty is just something he feels he has to do but he wouldn’t want to be labelled a charity worker or do-gooder.

“After 30 years bizarrely I am an expert on the ****ing thing. You get asked to talk a lot and advise a lot, and so you get to very high levels of possibility through politics, given that I understand the hunger, the health work, education.

“The symptoms of famine and illness are lack of economic growth. Poverty can be beaten. It’s very much against our interest that there are poor.”

Music is the only thing he has ever liked doing, he says.

“I like playing music. I can do other stuff but it’s the only thing that moves me or satisfies me – music, whatever guise it is, whether recording or writing or playing it.”

The 2012 shows feature Geldof with the former Boomtown Rat and long-time collaborator Pete Briquette (bass and keyboards), Vince Lovepump (violin and mandolin) Alan Dunn (keyboards, accordion), Johnny Turnbull (guitar), Niall Power (percussion, keyboards) and Jim Russell (drums).

They will delve into Geldof’s illustrious catalogue of songs from Looking After No. 1, Rat Trap and I Don’t Like Mondays to The Great Song Of Indifference and Silly Pretty Thing via his 2011 album How To Compose Popular Songs That Will Sell.

The band does UK gigs throughout the year, in between festivals and foreign dates. “It appears you just jump in here randomly but that’s the way it works. That makes it seem like I spend the whole year gigging,” says Geldof.

His approach to music hasn’t changed. It was – and still is – for the love of the thing. Being in the Boomtown Rats was always a joy but the stuff associated with it wasn’t necessarily so.

“When it was every single day, 24/7 as the cliché is, the rigmarole got to be a drag but being there and doing that was not,” says Geldof. “As time moved on, it became very pleasurable. I enjoy it more now than at any time. I think it’s an age thing. You are more indifferent to it.

“Having to keep up with the Joneses sets the pace and gets in the way of creativity and feels like something you must do. Now those pressures are gone and writing is easier because you’re writing whatever you feel like writing. There aren’t people saying it should be like this.

“It’s freer It’s not a career thing. Contemporaries of mine like Paul Weller or Sting are carrying on because that’s what they wish to do.”

The music industry has changed but Geldof knows there’s still interest in what he does.

“The pop star thing obscures what you want to do. If you say this is what I’m trying to do with this music or that song, it seems you’re up your own arse because it’s just considered pop,” he says.

“As you get on, it reaches different levels. The critique becomes more informed because there’s the body of stuff of what you’ve done. They are kind of familiar with what you do and in my case because I do it infrequently there’s a kind of surprise thing.

“If they do have musical memories of me it’s messed with things like I Don’t Like Mondays, Live Aid and also a bizarre jumble of stuff. I can only go by people’s reaction. A lot of people just come to see that fella who was on telly last night, but then they go away and buy records. I know that happens. Leaving a gig they will buy every single on sale.”

His social work extends further than Live Aid (organised with Midge Ure). He was instrumental in the setting up of the Commission for Africa by Tony Blair, he’s on the Africa Progress Panel and works with Bono on the One Campaign.

Every time Geldof sets out to do something he feels he can push it a little further. He makes a lot of sense – more than most politicians, it could be said – when he talks about the problems in Africa.

He knows that aid works but that isn’t enough and with his talk of economic growth he begins to sound like the chancellor. He can point to success – seven of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world are African.

“The worst thing about progress is not that it’s an illusion but it’s endless. If what you believe what you are doing pushes the whole a nano-inch further it appears to be worth it not just to the individual but to the community,” he says.

“There’s not completion but the next goal rising up against you.”

• Bob Geldof plays Harrogate Royal Hall on May 25, 7.30pm. Box office: 01423 502116 or harrogatetheatre.co.uk