'Get real, Bob - buying guns might have been better than buying food': After Geldof's angry outburst, an expert on Africa hits back Bob Geldof has never been a man to mince his words. But even by his own colourful standards he went absolutely ballistic last week over claims that some of the money he raised through Live Aid in the Eighties might have been diverted to buy guns. What made his vitriolic outburst even more remarkable was that it was aimed at the BBC, which famously alerted to the crisis, inspired Geldof to rage against the world's failure to act and backed his unprecedented effort to save millions from starvation in Ethiopia. And which continued its uncritical support right up to his more controversial Live8 concert in 2005. Now he has launched a bitter, personal attack on Martin Plaut, the BBC World Service's Africa Editor, who reported that some of the Live Aid cash had been used to buy weapons, rather than food. Furious: Bob Geldof has hit out at claims that Live Aid money was used for military purposes The subterfuge, he said, was carried out by rebel forces in Tigray without the knowledge of the aid agencies. Geldof scornfully replied that not a shred of evidence had been produced to show that any Band Aid or Live Aid money had been diverted. He has threatened to sue over the report which, he said, was proof that the BBC World Service had become rotten. 'I am as bereft