THE STUPID expression on the face of Peaches Geldof said it all. "Look at me, aren't I clever!" she seemed to be saying, as police had to clear a path for her through the press scrum outside her London flat.

The fact that she's just got married in Las Vegas to a bloke she would appear to hardly know didn't seem to bother her. And neither did the fact that what she's done must - whatever brave face he's put on it for the papers' sake - have come very close to re-breaking her father's heart.

Peaches' apparently obsessive need to be famous at any cost must have sent a chill right through him.

Because Bob Geldof knows more than most the corrosive effect of pursuing notoriety for notoriety's sake.

He's the one who had to sit in the limousine with four little girls, behind the hearse which carried the body of their mother and his late wife, Paula Yates, following her death from an accidental drugs overdose.

He watched Paula change from a brilliant, witty and virtually teetotal mum into a pathetic, sex-obsessed drug-taker, hoovering up any bit of celebrity exposure which came her way and selling her story to whoever would pay the most for it. And he must be worried sick that history could repeat itself.

It's not the fact that Peaches married in 'Vegas that's the issue here - Bob and Paula did the same. It's why they got married.

Bob and Paula followed up the Nevada do with a formal church affair and, until the appearance of drug-addled rock star Michael Hutchence in their lives, enjoyed a life of relative domestic bliss.

Peaches, meanwhile, has a range of clothes to promote and all her usual media gigs to court publicity for.

Last weekend she defended by saying: "Look, I'm a 19-year-old woman. What's my father going to do? Drive all the way from Battersea to lock me in my room?"

No. That's not his style. Like every loving parent, Bob will support his daughter in private as he has in public. He'll celebrate her successes and he'll be there when it falls apart. That's what you do, when you're grown up and a parent. And one day, with any luck, even selfish, stupid, Peaches will understand and do likewise.