Sir Bob Geldof told today how his Dublin bank manager told him to "come back when you're 40" after hearing the then 20-year-old's first business pitch. "I did go back when I was 40, to pick up a f****** big cheque for Live Aid," he said.
Now with more than half a dozen successful business launches under his belt, Sir Bob told a business expo in Windsor that Ireland had changed.
"Back in the 1970s there was no chance for a boy with an idea. Everything was stitched up by the unions.
"We just needed to be let loose and once we were we flew. It is nice to be Irish and not to be laughed at in the City any more. Now we f****** own the City."
He was talking about the experiences that shaped and sharpened his business acumen leading him to set up firms like production company Planet 24 and the Internet flight search service Deckchair.com.
Left to fend for himself after his mother's death when he was very young, he left school with no qualifications at all. It also helped him develop his famously strong opinions, he said.
"With no one around to temper your opinion, if you haven't got your mother or father questioning you, it can make you very dogmatic.
"So I can't work in an office. I've never worked in an office for longer than a month. I'm not allowed to work in the office at any of my businesses."
He was also driven by a desperation to escape the poverty in which he had grown up, he said.
"Not for a second of my life have I thought myself a success. That isn't false modesty. Things force you to be entrepreneurial, which can be translated as desperation really."
That "desperation" led him to a string of jobs including work on the construction of the junction between the M23 and M25, he said.
His first business start-up, a free-ads magazine called Buy and Selland the idea refused by the bank manager, is now a hugely successful publication.
He left the business when the Boomtown Rats, which he joined "because I was bored and needed something to do in the evenings", started to take off.
But business opportunities continued to crop up and his conviction in the value of a good idea got him places he never imagined.
"I get this white light of intense clarity. When I was doing Live Aid — I was a failing pop star at this time — and I'm on the phone wanting to get through to Rupert Murdoch and I do get through to him. I mean, forget it, that doesn't happen except in movies, but it did happen."
He said that small business was the cornerstone of a healthy economy in this country. "What do we do, where is our place? I tell you what it is, it's to educate and to innovate."
"Britain is a tiny island ... but we've got this skill base and this ability to create. I'm glad I pitched up here."
PA