A video is going viral or resurfacing on social media where a person is claiming to be Irish singer-songwriter and political activist ‘Bob Geldof’ and is predicting the advent of internet and smartphones and information slowly going viral across social media platforms.
Social media users are also claiming that 23 years ago when BBC interviewed him, all the scenarios that he predicted have now proven to be true.
A user on Twitter writes, “23 years ago *Bob Geldof* (Pop singer) was interviewed by BBC Newsnight, in 1999. At that time it was assumed he was high while giving this interview, but listen to the predictions he made at that time.”
Source: Twitter
Fact Check:
To investigate the claim, the DFRAC team first tried to find out if the person is really Bob Geldof and found that no resemblance other than the shoulder-length tresses in both persons.
Then the team ran a keyword search on BBC about any such interview but no such interview of Bob Geldof was available.
Further, we did a reverse image search via different frames of the video and found the same video on the official Twitter account of the British Writer and Comedian, Michael Spicer. Spicer uploaded the same video on January 3, 2022, captioning it as: “David Bowie Predicts the Impact of the Internet on Newsnight (1999).”
Source: Twitter
Going through the account we found that the British comedian makes lot of satirical videos.
After this we searched for the original interview of David Bowie which has been uploaded on YouTube.
Conclusion:
From the investigation of the DFRAC team, it is clear that the viral video is not an interview of singer-songwriter Bob Geldof on BBC’s Newsnight show, but it is merely a spoof of a David Bowie interview. Hence, the claim by social media users is misleading.
