Parenting & Family Quote by Bob Geldof

Shorn of his rock-star mythology, Geldof is doing something more pointed than venting: he’s diagnosing a power imbalance and explaining a tactic for surviving it. The “secret nature of the courts” frames family law as a sealed room where legitimacy is produced offstage. If you’re not “given any voice,” your options shrink to whatever can be performed outside the institution’s walls. That’s where the “dressing up ridiculously” lands: protest as costume, visibility as a last resort.

The line is built on a bleak joke. “Ridiculously” concedes the absurdity preemptively, disarming critics who would dismiss public fathers as attention-seekers or cranks. Geldof’s subtext is: yes, it looks foolish, but the system has made foolishness the only available microphone. Humour isn’t just coping; it’s strategy. It lets anger travel farther, makes onlookers pause without immediately choosing sides, and turns private pain into something socially legible.

Context matters here because Geldof’s public identity complicates the plea. A celebrity father complaining about not being heard can sound, to some, like the loudest person in the room claiming silence. He answers that paradox by shifting from himself to “men” as a category and from grievance to motive: “their kids.” It’s a rhetorical judo move, trying to pull the conversation away from ego and toward the collateral damage of secrecy. The quote asks a hard question: when a process insists on privacy, who gets protected - and who gets erased?