Bob Geldof has branded Elon Musk a “prime w—ker” for disregarding empathy.

The 73-year-old musician and Live Aid pioneer took aim at the billionaire while speaking to the audience after the opening night of Just For One Day: The Live Aid Musical on London’s West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre on Wednesday (local time).

“A couple of weeks ago, that prime w—ker Elon Musk said something seriously wrong. He said, ‘the great weakness of Western civilisation is empathy’,” Geldof said in a video shared by Theatre-News.com.

“The great weakness? … You sociopathic loser. Empathy is the glue of civilisation. Empathy is the glue of humanity.

“It’s how we do things together. It’s how we sit here together and clap because we actually understand that this is the stuff that works.”

Musk insisted during an interview with Joe Rogan in February that while “you should care about other people”, empathy is being “weaponised”.

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilisation is empathy, the empathy exploit,” he said.

The musical – which started at The Old Vic in January 2024 before moving to the US and returning to London – retells the events leading up to the Live Aid benefit concert in 1985, which raised money for the famine in Ethiopia.

Geldof – who also called out US President Donald Trump, his vice president JD Vance, and British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer – used his passionate speech to encourage people to help those in need.

“We need to be helped, we need to help the NHS, we need to re-arm because there’s a thug currently invading our continent, but really?” he said.

“All that intellect, that’s all you can do? Snatch it from those people? It can’t work like that. It doesn’t have to work like that.

“It began working like that in 1985, and we took it all the way 20 years later to Live 8. That really tipped the balance in the favour of those we wanted to help.”

-AAP