Live Aid at 40: The story of a punk, a prime minister and a Britain now vanished (Part 2)

LIVE AID AT 40

The extraordinary story of the Greatest Show on Earth recalls a very different Britain, one which came together to help a faraway African nation. It is difficult to imagine the same thing happening today.

Words: David Rea

27 December, 2025

Photo: Roger Bamber / Alamy

Davidwr

Photo: Bob Geldof onstage in the final moments of Live Aid

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Over the period Live Aid took its place amongst the headlines, Margaret Thatcher looked on inscrutably. She declined an invitation to give a video address at the concert and refused the wishes of a group of MPs to exempt the single ‘Do They Know It's Christmas' from VAT charges. At the 1985 Daily Star Gold Star Award’s in London Bob Geldof confronted the Prime Minister on the issue, surrounded by cameras.

Bob Geldof: ‘Well we had a bit of a problem with the VAT on the record.’

Margaret Thatcher: ‘I know, but you know, don't forget, we've used some of your VAT to give back and to plough back….’

There followed a lively disagreement about the European butter mountain before Geldof got to the heart of the matter, stopping Thatcher in her tracks.

Bob Geldof: ‘…Prime Minister, there are millions dying and that's a terrible thing.’

Margaret Thatcher: ‘Indeed.’

‘Difficult to tell who was lecturing who,’ BBC News reporter Michael Buerk commented afterwards. It was a rare moment of vulnerability for Thatcher. By 1985 her economic policies had reshaped Britain.

Journalist and author Andy McSmith has noted that Live Aid’s outpouring of public generosity took place in a decade characterised by greed. It is perhaps easy to conclude that Bob Geldof's brainchild ‘Do They Know It's Christmas?’ and the spinoff Live Aid concert, provided a conscientious counterweight to Thatcher’s project to dismantle society. But you could equally argue Band-Aid and Live Aid were very much phenomena of the 1980s. The famine in Ethiopia didn't result in aggrieved Britons flooding the streets hoisting banners in protest, as the Vietnam War had in the 1960s. Michael Buerk’s news report of the famine undoubtedly moved people but the idea to do something about it came from the iron will of an individual rockstar in Geldof. And to generate money for those in need, he had to provide lavish, star-studded entertainment in a football stadium.

“Live Aid drew on the idea that music can influence social change. It was something the world had felt in Bob Dylan and Joan Baez's participation in the Civil Rights Movement, and in the songs written in protest against the Vietnam War.”

Indeed, at a certain point during that day, Britain was enjoying the entertainment so much Geldof became worried everyone was forgetting to make substantial donations; it fell to him to remind them what it was all for. Watching Queen’s performance, Geldof made his way to the BBC box in the gantry. Sitting on the sofa with comedian Billy Connolly, he made an impassioned rant, with the demeanour of a man who hadn't socialised with human beings for several years. ‘You've got to get on the phone and take the money out of your pockets,’ he said directly to camera, ‘there are people dying now….’ ‘Here's the address,’ the presenter said to viewers in anticipation of it appearing on the screen. ‘Fuck the address,’ Geldof blurted out. ‘Go to the phone number!’ It was 1985 and people didn't swear on television, let alone use the f word. In combination with Channel 4’s chaotic live television shows such as Loose Talk, the BBC's Live Aid broadcast modelled the kind of edgy, fizzling energy of live TV which would characterise much of late-night viewing later in the decade and into the 1990s, on programmes like Channel 4’s The Word and Don’t Forget your Toothbrush.

Back on stage David Bowie was cutting short his set to show a film which expressed better than Geldof ever could what Live Aid was really for. In a heartrending blend of music and film, the crowd at Wembley and across the world watched scenes of the victims of the famine in Ethiopia, set to The Cars’ song ‘Drive’. As the weary strains of the melody resounded, people watched a young child with a distended belly trying to stand on thin legs, and another with a tear-stained face, squatting on the dusty ground and laying their head in their hands.

Live Aid drew on the idea that music can influence social change. It was something the world had felt in Bob Dylan and Joan Baez's participation in the Civil Rights Movement, and in the songs written in protest against the Vietnam War. The concert would never have created such a mass of emotion with any other form of entertainment: a day of poetry readings, theatrical plays or stand-up comedy. When Elvis Costello covered the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’ that afternoon it couldn't have felt more fitting.

“‘I think you know the next song,’ Bob Geldof said looking pale and exhausted, and somewhat bashful at what he had achieved, ‘if you're going to cock it up, it might as well be in front of 2 billion people watching you.”

As it approached 10 o'clock in the evening, Paul McCartney came on stage to perform the day’s penultimate song. ‘Let It Be’ was almost wrecked by technical issues. When, after 2 minutes, the glitch was fixed and the stadium was filled with his piano and voice, it was greeted with one of the warmest cheers of the day. David Bowie, Pete Townshend, Alison Moyet and Bob Geldof came on and joined in. And then everybody else arrived to perform what had been the number 1 single in Britain the previous Christmas. ‘I think you know the next song,’ Bob Geldof said looking pale and exhausted, and somewhat bashful at what he had achieved, ‘…if you're going to cock it up, it might as well be in front of 2 billion people watching you.’

Many have said the emotional high point of Live Aid was 72,000 people doing the double handclaps during Queen's ‘Radio Ga Ga’. But the most emblematic moment was the anthemic chorus of ‘Do they Know it's Christmas?’. With his back to the crowd Geldof raised his arms like a conductor and led the stars he had cajoled into participating through the rousing refrain, their voices amplified by everyone in the crowd.

Live Aid's most recent analogue had been the Rock Against Racism concert at Victoria Park in 1978. But that concert was tied to Britain's racial tensions. However galvanising, spirited and idealistic its aims, those tensions have somehow tainted the memory of that day. Not so with Live Aid. This was not a concert to sort out the knot of troubles of our rainy island. It was to sort out those of a faraway place, under a clear blue African sky — a problem which, for many in Britain at the time, appeared morally straightforward: There was a famine. Innocent people were starving. And music and people’s generosity could save them. It was an intoxicatingly romantic idea. The truth of course was more complex. Live Aid eventually raised tens of millions of pounds, an amount far in excess of expectations. But in reality, it was a drop in the ocean. As McSmith has pointed out, not long after Live Aid the British government secured an arms deal with Saudi Arabia worth £43 billion. The name Geldof had given his supergroup, Band-Aid, described the temporary, sticking-plaster solution Live Aid ultimately provided.

Live Aid has lasted longer in the national memory than the famine in Ethiopia: The slightly fuzzy 1980s television images of the sun-bleached stadium, the almost baffling stream of world-famous stars. Freddie Mercury’s arm hoisted aloft, Simon Le Bon producing a squeaky bum note during Duran Duran’s set. It all seems to have come through the intervening years, leaving much of what the concert was for behind. It is still mostly remembered as a utopian day of sunshine, when the majority of people in Britain came together in common empathy. It might have taken a little vulgar prompting from a punk graduate, but in the end they gave generously to a crisis Margaret Thatcher largely ignored. Despite Thatcher’s claims to the contrary, perhaps there was such a thing as society, after all.