Bob Geldof is getting married.

The Boomtown Rats frontman is set to tie the knot with longterm girlfriend Jeanne Marine after 18 years together. The couple are ''over the moon'' and hope the happy news will give their family something to look forward to following the tragic death of his daughter Peaches last month.

Jeanne's friend Jerry Hall told the Daily Mail newspaper: ''Bob has proposed. She is over the moon.

''Jeanne Marine has been a rock and a tower of strength over this. I'm so excited for her I am bursting to tell someone.

''Bob and Jeanne have been through hell, but they are determined something positive will come out of it.

''After all the sadness, we need something to focus on which will bring joy and light.''

Jerry - who was married to Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger - claims Jeanne revealed the good news to her when the Texan model returned to the UK for Peaches' recent funeral.

She added: ''I've just got back from Texas and accompanied Jeanne to the funeral. It was, of course, terribly sad, but she told me that Bob had asked her to marry him out of the blue.

''I'm so happy for her. It makes you realise we all have to value what we have.''

Bob, 62 met Jeanne at a dinner party, 49, when he fled to Paris in the wake of his divorce from Paula Yates - the mother of his children Fifi, 31, Peaches, and Pixie, 23 - in 1996.

Paula died of a heroin overdose four years later, and the 'I Don't Like Mondays' hitmaker took on the care of her and the late Michael Hutchence's daughter Tiger, now 17.