Excuse the paraphrasing of the bard, but this is an interesting article.....

http://archive.worcesternews.co.uk/2006/9/19/428891.html

From the Worcester News, first published Tuesday 19th Sep 2006.

RIGHT, let's get the jokes out of the way first. Monday is not a good day for this feature. Why? Because Garrick Roberts used to be in the Boomtown Rats and they didn't like Mondays, did they?

Not according to their biggest hit record, although since I Don't Like Mondays has been a nice little earner over the years, no doubt most of the band have taken the view the day has a certain merit.

However, Garrick, who was one of the group's founder members - before even the garrulous Geldof - can't stand it now. Fed up with hearing it might be a more accurate statement, although that hasn't prevented him and the other Rats suing Sir Bob for royalties the song and others have accrued and they claim they haven't seen.

At least that's according to internet websites, which say the action covers payments dating back to the 1970s.

Garrick sees things rather differently.

"Suing isn't strictly correct," he said. "Pursuing might be a better way of putting it. Obviously I can't say much, but we are taking legal advice. This has been an on-going thing for years."

Inevitably, it has affected his relationship with the volatile Geldof. "It must be two years since I last spoke to him," Garrick added. "I wish it was different, but while this matter remains unresolved I guess that's how it will be."

Today the lean, mean guitar machine that drilled out riffs on a host of Boomtown Rats singles and albums cuts an altogether more cosy figure, as befits his new station in life.

Because Garrick Roberts is a heating engineer in Bromyard.

His appearance in our front office for an interview no longer sent ladies of a certain age weak at the knees, as it would have done 25 years ago, but at least it was reassuring he could bleed the radiator. A skill more useful than a screaming treble solo on a chilly autumn morning.

When the spotlight faded and the band broke up, not long after the ground-breaking, Geldof-organised Live Aid concert in 1985, Garrick drifted out of the music business altogether.

For a while he worked as a sound engineer with acts like Simply Red and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and then sold life insurance for 15 years. But hidden inside this rock guitarist was a central heating engineer waiting to get out.

"I appreciate this is going to have rather limited appeal," he said - and compared with the life of a rock star he wasn't kidding - "but I love nice-looking pipework.

"When other people in the trade see work I've done I want them to think, he's made a nice job of that.' And if it looks right, it usually works right too".

All of which would have been music to the ears of the headmaster in his Dublin high school, who called Garrick's parents in one day to suggest they move their son to a boarding school, "where someone can keep a closer eye on him".

His enforced move to a Quaker-run boarding school just outside Waterford proved a great success, but not for the reasons anyone anticipated.

For it was there the teenage Garrick began his musical career.

His father, Rex Roberts, played bass with one of Ireland's top dance bands and when Garrick clapped eyes and ears on the school rock group, he knew that was what he wanted to do.

"I was already listening to the Pretty Things, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and John Mayall and this was it."

His early efforts with his dad's acoustic guitar were cut short when it was lost in a school fire, but dad stumped up the cash for an electric replacement and soon Garrick and his mate Johnnie Fingers were regular fixtures at parties. Johnny on piano and Garrick on guitar.

Eventually, in the direction these things go, they decided to form a group and assembled a few more friends and relations It was Garrick who approached Bob Geldof to be their manager.

"I'd known Bob for ages," he said. "He only lived up the road. He knew a lot about music and had an astute business brain."

However, Bob arrived for a band rehearsal in Garrick's kitchen carrying a harmonica and a Dr Feelgood album. It wasn't long before he was the singer.

"Up until then I had taken the lead vocals," Garrick explained, "but I wasn't happy with it. Bob looked good and had the presence and so we decided he should take it on."

The rest is history.

Throughout the late 70s and early 80s, the Boomtown Rats were one of the biggest names around.

"I was sitting in a hotel foyer in Dublin chatting to Phil Lynott and some of the other Thin Lizzy lads when the news came over the radio Rat Trap had gone to number one," he recalled. "We were told we had to be on a plane to London the next day to record Top of the Pops.

"I thought yeah', but that was about it. Everything seemed to be happening at once.

"I never really knew why the Rats broke up and I'm still not sure."

The only certainties were that Geldof was now a name on his own own and a new band recording contract was never signed, although the singer wasn't particularly to blame for that.

Either way, Garrick Roberts had upped sticks from London and moved to the Worcestershire-Herefordshire borders, where, as an Irish student, he had spent three autumns picking hops for Guinness in the late 60s.

"I loved the rolling landscape," he said. "It reminded me of County Wexford near where I was born."

In 2004, Garrick decided to get serious about central heating.

On the advice of a friend, Richard Leveson, he contacted Business Link and completed a business start-up course. He went on to train as a Corgi-registered heating engineer and formed his own company Heatec West.