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Bob Geldof received messages “laden with desperation, despair and sorrow” from Sinead O’Connor in the weeks before she died.
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Bob Geldof received messages “laden with desperation, despair and sorrow” from Sinead O’Connor in the weeks before she died.
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The Boomtown Rats singer paid tribute to the ‘Mandinka’ singer – who was found dead at her London home last week – during his performance at Ireland’s Cavan Calling festival, branding his friend a “great woman” who was stricken with a “terrible despair”.
He told fans: “She meant a lot to everybody, she meant a lot to us. Her voice represented her soul and spirit. And whenever we hear that, we will always be with a great woman.
“There’s no other option, as all of you know, than to just keep on. Many, many times Sinead was full of a terrible loneliness and a terrible despair.
“She was a very good friend of mine. We were talking right up to a couple of weeks ago. Some of her texts were laden with desperation and despair and sorrow and some were ecstatically happy. She was like that.”
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Meanwhile, local residents in Bray, County Wicklow, recently spoke of the “protective ring” they surrounded Sinead with when she lived in the town before relocating to London not long before her death.
Town councillor Erika Doyle told the Irish Independent newspaper: “Quite by chance, I met her and we became friendly for a period.
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“One day I was walking along the seafront and saw a paparazzo start to set up in a shelter across from her house. I called her to let her know. She laughed and said three or four locals had already been in touch.”
There have been reports Sinéad paid medical bills for impoverished Bray residents. In the days since she was found dead, locals have been leaving flowers, candles and poems at the front of her former house, which she sold in 2021.
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There have also been calls for a mural or statue of the singer. Tom Dalton, a musician who ran acoustic singing sessions in a Bray pub, didn’t recognise Sinéad at first when she joined an eight-strong group of musicians there one evening in 2019. She wore a hijab and used her Muslim name, Shuhada’ Sadaqat and dropped in after spotting a sign advertising the session. Strumming a guitar, she sang a song solo, then a verse of ‘Amazing Grace’ – with the penny then finally dropping with Tom they had a world-famous musician performing in the bar.
He told The Guardian: “But I treated her the same as everybody else. Nobody asked her for photographs.
“I didn’t upload the video at the time because it was just us, and it was beautiful. And she had retired from music.”
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