Three-quarters of boys born to professional fathers in the 1950s ended up in the same kinds of jobs, meaning they had as much inertia as manual workers in the early 20th century.
Unless you fancy using three different machines to run Word, Excel and PowerPoint, give credit to the fathers of Eniac, the first reprogrammable computer: John Mauchly, Presper Eckert and John von Neumann.
Mr Geldof, who has said in the past "I love my three children more than anything in the world, " launched a campaign for the rights of divorced fathers in 1996.