I am so excited this week that I am able to go dashing down to the shop, forty notes in my sweaty palm and buy the DVD of Live Aid. (Good job my folks have just given me an old DVD player they didn’t want any more – I didn’t own one before.) I am off tomorrow evening, after work, to do just that. I do have Live Aid on video – six three and a quarter hour Betamax videos that my parents kindly fed into my video recorder in July 1985 while I was at the event itself.

Bob Geldoff was a hero of mine long before Band Aid and later Live Aid – in fact, I spent a bit of time in his company a few years before Live Aid, when a band whose singer I was involved with supported the Boomtown Rats on tour. The first time Claire and I encountered him ‘in the flesh’ he was squeezing past us in the corridor backstage at one of the London Universities (I think ULU if my memory serves me right) and telling Claire how wonderful her white rubber tassely jacket was……those were the days!

I remember the press conference announcing Live Aid as though it was yesterday. Bob Geldoff banging the table and shouting about taking responsibility and not leaving it up to someone else. For probably two years he was evangelical in his promotion of the cause. I have admired his tenacity ever since but more than that, I have admired his ability to motivate people and galvanise them into action.

We organised ourselves into groups to buy tickets – I think there was a maximum of four per person and so a group of us worked out how to get the number we needed. We divvied up our efforts between phone and queuing all night and got what we wanted.

There is no doubt it was one of the most incredible days of my life. There were seventy two thousand (I think) people in Wembley Stadium and millions watching the world over. Our group had a ‘base camp’ in one of the stands in the Stadium and we shared the responsibility to look after our stuff while the rest of us went down to the stage to see the bands we liked play.

From the first moment of the gig, when Status Quo started the intro to ‘Rockin all over the world’ I was in tears. I have never been to a gig, before or since, with such an emotionally charged atmosphere. I’ve always hated the Quo – they remind me of the early 70s when every spotty teenage boy would rush onto the dance floor at whatever school hall or church hall the disco was in, clad head to foot in their Brutus denim and shake their dandruff at one another – the original air guitar!!! On that day, though, they felt so right to be the opening act.

I had a scary part to my day. My best buddy Colin got lost. He has a vision problem where he can’t see at all in the dark and the stairwells were extremely dark that day. He and I went off to see Paul Young’s performance and after he’d been onstage I went back to the base camp to discover no sign of Colin. I though ‘oh well, he’ll turn up in a moment’ but he didn’t……not for five hours! In that time, I’d been to the police and described my missing friend as ‘6’4” tall, wearing an orange and green shirt with a snakeskin pattern, dyed red hair with a white fringe and earrings in both ears’ – you’d have thought he would have stood out a mile but no one spotted him!!! He eventually came back, oblivious to my panic, having decided his spot was so good that he’d stay there to watch David Bowie. I cried again but this time with relief.

The gig was amazing. Awesome. I loved every moment.

At 10pm, when they booted us out of Wembley Stadium, Colin and I met up with Ian Jakeman (an old friend) and went to Dingwalls in Camden to see an Indie Live Aid – it started at 11pm and went on until 2am (the latest clubs were allowed to stay open until at the time in the UK). When we got home, we spent the rest of the night watching the footage from the USA on TV. What a day – I’ll never forget it.

They are making a new version of ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ this weekend. Twenty years after the first version was made. Even though it has been played to death, I still get a chill when I hear the opening bars.

I feel privileged to have been there. There was something so generous of spirit about the whole day. Something people could take a bit of note of today. I am still reeling from the shock of being harassed by a virtual stranger (who, I am certain, doesn’t need it) for money earlier this week.

So, get your hands in your pockets and go buy Live Aid. Buy it for all your middle-aged friends like me who go misty eyed as they remember where they were watching it. Why? Well, the money is going to the same good cause – even the Government have waived the VAT on it….but most of all because it’s a brilliant show.

And don’t forget….

‘There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear’

……to quote Sir Bob.