BOB Geldof is known for his passionate, frequently expletive-peppered devotion to humanitarian work and music – but the quality of his recent critically acclaimed documentary on Irish poet WB Yeats seemed to catch everyone off guard.
Originally screened in two parts back in March as part of RTE's run of programming tied-in to the centenary of the Easter Rising, Geldof on Yeats: A Fanatic Heart later went out on BBC4 as a slightly revamped two-hour programme.
Both broadcasts of the RTE, BBC and PBS-funded programme generated a wave of raves from reviewers who deemed it to be a cut above the usual vacuous 'celebrity x on subject y' fodder our TV schedules are teeming with.
Now, BBC One NI viewers are set to discover this for themselves on Monday evening.
Geldof's seemingly encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject is delivered with the infectious, unfakeable enthusiasm of a 'true believer', making the former Boomtown Rat's potted tour of Yeats's haunts from the west of Ireland to the south of France compelling viewing regardless of how much you know about this great Irish poet and his Nobel Prize-winning work.
And there's plenty of his verse to enjoy, courtesy of the none-more-well-connected Geldof's raft of celebrity readers: Bono, Liam Neeson, Shane MacGowan, Van Morrison, Sting, Noel Gallagher, Richard E Grant, Stephen Fry, Damian Lewis, Dominic West, John Boorman, Ardal O'Hanlon, Tom Hollander, Bill Nighy, Colin Farrell, Edna O'Brian and 'Sir Bob' himself all treat viewers to snippets of of Yeats favourites, from The Lake Isle of Innisfree to Sailing To Byzantium to Under Ben Bulben.
"It was just a case of asking whoever was around," is how Geldof frames this A-list role call.
"It was very interesting to watch a great lyricist like Noel Gallagher being confronted by Yeats. I could see him pull-up sharp every time he found a line that resonated with him. So what you see in Noel is what happened to me when I first heard Yeats when I was at school."
In 1966, the 14-year-old Geldof found himself appalled by the "appallingly mawkish and nationalistic guff" surrounding the 50th anniversary of the 1916 rebellion.
However, when one of his teachers began reading WB Yeats to his class, the young Geldof's mind was blown by the evocative words of the misfit "who sang Ireland into being" by reconnecting his country with its pre-Famine and Christianity creation myths while becoming a major catalyst in the Celtic Revival's cultural renaissance.
He tells viewers: "Yeats was the oddest, bravest, downright weirdest of revolutionaries – and he never killed a living soul. Yet it was his revolution that won in the end: the revolution of the Irish mind."
Indeed, what makes this show a uniquely Geldofian watch is the Band/Live Aid man's positioning of his Protestant, Anglo-Irish subject as a national hero who deserves to be lauded over and above the leaders of the Easter Rising.
"It's just my small corrective to the 1916 nonsense, really," says Geldof of why he wanted to make the programme, co-written with historian Roy Foster.
"The Rising wasn't the foundational moment of the Republic, that was actually probably John Redmond securing Home Rule in 1914.
"My argument is that Yeats was actually the one who set up the structures on which the State could be built: there's no structures in firing a f***ing gun, dude.
"You need to be able to build cultural structures that come out of the people – I learned that in Africa. Countries can't just be invented by lines drawn on a map, they need to be founded on some bedrock of the people, upon which you can hang an agreed constitution
Bob Geldof's defiantly anti-republican, anti-Rising stance throughout the show is guaranteed to leave republicans bristling.
However, Yeats lovers will be in their element.
"Yeats is without a single shadow of a doubt, a genius," enthuses Geldof, who carries a Seamus Heaney-edited volume of the Sandymount-born poet's works with him wherever he goes.
"He's one of the greatest poets in the English language, ever. Auden defined a great poet as somebody who leaves behind two poems that are remembered: Yeats left dozens, so much so that his language has entered our common vernacular.
"'A terrible beauty' (Easter, 1916), 'things fall apart; the centre cannot hold '(The Second Coming), 'no country for old men' (Sailing To Byzantium), yadda-yadda-yadda."
As Geldof is quick to remind anyone who will listen, it's not just Yeats's poetry that should be celebrated, but also his role as a cultural innovator in turn-of-the-century Dublin.
"He's our Shakespeare, there's just no question," he tells me.
"Yeats set up his own theatre (The Abbey) and ballet school, founded the Academy of Letters and brought on talent for the same reasons Shakespeare did, because there just wasn't an outlet for these people.
"He also tried to introduce modernism into the island. Don't forget that this guy went off to Paris and was hanging with Verlaine and Mallarmé and Alfred Jarry."
What makes Geldof on Yeats a particularly enjoyable watch is that the presenter is not shy about criticising his hero (he has particular disdain for the republican symbolism in Kathleen ni Hoolihan) and highlighting the stranger, occasionally farcical episodes and aspects of his colourful life.
As he points out, this Irishman wrote some of the greatest love poems in history – many inspired by a long-unrequited pining for militant nationalist Maud Gonne – yet Yeats's disastrous track record with women suggested that perhaps he really did not understand them, or love, at all.
However, at least he looked the part.
"One of his mates said 'look, Willy, if you're going to be a poet, you've gotta announce it'," explains Geldof.
"'The French, the symbolists, they're all wearing these big floppy ties.' So out come the big floppy ties and the black frock coat.
"He had fantastic hair, almost Brian Ferry-like in the way it kind of just flopped down in the front, and he'd casually sweep it back while quoting poetry to girls.
"There's lots of stuff about his effect on women, but he didn't seduce them – he was a virgin until he was 31.
"In fact, there were lots of limericks written back in Dublin about how s*** he was at getting shags."
Geldof also argues that "the open, pluralistic and tolerant" Ireland Yeats wanted to coax into being was effectively shut down by the "Catholic, clerical coup d' tat" of the Free State and only began to re-emerge 50 years after the poet's death with the election of Ireland's first female president, human rights lawyer Mary Robinson, and the crumbling of the Church's influence.
Indeed, after 40 years away, this particular 'fanatic heart' may even be open to a return home to 'Yeats country':
"I got out because of the narrowness, y'know?," he tells me.
"I just couldn't function there, I couldn't kick off like I needed to. I've always loved being among the Irish, because I am Irish, but the country itself is a different thing.
"But now Ireland's grown up and stopped being so pathetically childish, it's become this very elegant country.
"I always felt I was home there – but now I feel AT home there."
:: Bob Geldof on WB Yeats: A Fanatic Heart, Monday May 30, BBC One NI, 10.20pm.