Tag Archives: live aid

I’ve had more reminders than I needed about how old I am getting this weekend.

First of all, both brilliant finalists in the men’s singles at Wimbledon were born in the 2000’s. And we won’t dwell for too long on the knowledge that people getting the vote next year will have been born in the year of the 2008 Financial Crash.

And then I spent many hours on Saturday evening watching the re-run of Live Aid. How can it possibly be 40 years since Bob Geldof put together the spectacular transatlantic concert to raise money for aid for those starving due to famine in Ethiopia? I certainly don’t feel 40 years older.

Live Aid was something you wanted to be part of, a collective effort to do something positive to help people who were really suffering. I went along to the Alliance and Leicester in Wick to hand over my pocket money. In those days there was no way of doing this in seconds with online banking on your phone. The very idea that a tiny rectangle could basically contain your entire life was barely even the stuff of science fiction.  The bank clerk had to write things out in longhand to put the donation through.

Neither my sister nor I think that our parents actually let us watch the concert, though I know I certainly, surreptitiously,  disobeyed them for some of it. My husband didn’t see it at all as he didn’t have a television at the time, so we thoroughly enjoyed the re-run on Saturday.  From Madonna rocking the white socks and court shoes look to the iconic Queen, to Phil Collins appearing in both London and Philadelphia, to Kiki Dee and Elton John, to David Bowie giving up his last song to show a devastating video which really brought the cash in and had me in tears again, it was an incredible showcase of the soundtrack of my youth. I knew pretty much every single word of every song they sang. I always swore I would never be one of those people who said that the music of their youth was the best, but of course it was. It has to be. The songs you first fall in love with are the ones that stay with you.

It dawns on me that the people in their teens and twenties who cheered on the bands then are now approaching their sixties and seventies and too many of them are supporting Reform.

What on earth happened?