Kneecap at Glastonbury: BBC won't stream Irish group's set live but agree to upload it later tonight
It comes after one of the band's members, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, 27, was charged with allegedly displaying a flag in support of UK-proscribed terrorist organisation, Hezbollah, while saying 'up Hamas, up Hezbollah' at a gig in November last year.
Last week the rapper, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was cheered by many hundreds of supporters as he arrived with bandmates Naoise O Caireallain and JJ O Dochartaigh at Westminster Magistrates' Court in Free Mo Chara T-shirts.
A BBC spokesperson today said: 'Whilst the BBC doesn't ban artists, our plans ensure that our programming meets our editorial guidelines.
'We don't always live-stream every act from the main stages and look to make an on-demand version of Kneecap's performance available on our digital platforms, alongside more than 90 other sets.'
It is understood the BBC needs to consider the performance before making a final decision.
The band said on Instagram: 'The propaganda wing of the regime has just contacted us….
'They WILL put our set from Glastonbury today on the I-player later this evening for your viewing pleasure.'
He was released on unconditional bail until the next hearing at the same court on August 20.
Last week Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said it would not be 'appropriate' for them to perform in the slot, which is due to go ahead on the Somerset festival's West Holts Stage at 4pm on Saturday.
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Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch also said the BBC 'should not be showing' the trio's set in a post on social media last week.
Badenoch said in an X post, which was accompanied by an article from The Times which said the BBC had not banned the group: 'The BBC should not be showing Kneecap propaganda.
'One Kneecap band member is currently on bail, charged under the Terrorism Act.
'As a publicly funded platform, the BBC should not be rewarding extremism.'
Kneecap are not listed as one of the acts being shown live by the broadcaster. Michael Eavis, creator of the Glastonbury Festival said, in an apparent backing of Kneecap, that if people didn't like the politics of the festival, they could 'go somewhere else'.
Ahead of the group's set, an Avon and Somerset Police spokesperson told the PA news agency: 'Ticket-holders can once again expect to see uniformed officers on site at Glastonbury Festival 24/7 throughout the festival as part of our extensive policing operation ensuring it is safe for everyone attending, as well as those who live nearby.'
Neil Young, best known for songs such as Rockin' In The Free World, Like A Hurricane and Cinnamon Girl, will headline the festival's Pyramid Stage on Saturday night with his band the Chrome Hearts.
The BBC confirmed that Young's set will be broadcast live after it initially agreed not to show the concert 'at the artist's request'.
Another act expected to draw a big crowd is Brat star Charli XCX, who will headline the Other Stage around the same time Young and Grammy Award-winning rapper Doechii will also perform.
The 1975 headlined the festival's Pyramid Stage on Friday night, with the performance seeing singer Matty Healy joke he was his generation's 'best songwriter'.
After performing Part Of The Band he sat on a stool while smoking and sipping his drink, Healy said: 'What this moment is making me realise is that I probably am the best songwriter of my generation.
'The best what they say, a poet, ladies and gentlemen, is what I am.
'Generational words and I just wanted to remind you, over the next couple of minutes, these lyrics are poetry, I believe.'
The band then launched into Chocolate from their 2013 self-titled debut, before Healy remarked 'I was only joking about being a poet' at its conclusion.
Made up of four school friends, the group comprised of singer Healy, bassist Ross MacDonald, guitarist Adam Hann and drummer George Daniel were headlining the festival for the first time.
Friday also saw a performance from Scottish music star Lewis Capaldi who told the Glastonbury crowds 'I'm back baby' as he played a surprise set, two years after a performance at the festival during which he struggled to manage his Tourette syndrome symptoms.
The musician, who announced a break from touring shortly after his performance at the festival in 2023, has just released a new song called Survive.
He told fans: 'It's so good to be back. I'm not going to say much up here today, because if I do, I think I will probably start crying.'
He ended his performance with Somebody You Loved, the track that Glastonbury crowds helped him to sing when he struggled with the condition which can cause physical and verbal tics in 2023.
Earlier on Friday, alternative pop star Lorde surprised fans with a secret set at Worthy Farm, performing her latest album Virgin, which was released on Friday, in full.
Scottish indie rockers Franz Ferdinand brought out former Doctor Who actor Peter Capaldi during their Other Stage set while they were playing Take Me Out, one of their best-known songs.
Celebrities who have been spotted at the festival include singer Harry Styles, Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne and Stranger Things star Joseph Quinn.
Friday saw hot dry weather which hardened the Worthy Farm surface after rain in the early hours of the morning, with festival goers expected to see temperatures in the mid-20s on Saturday.
The Met Office's Grahame Madge said: 'We anticipate highs of 26C on Saturday, with high levels of humidity. By Monday temperatures can be anticipated to be over 30C.
'There is always the chance of a light shower, but there is nothing in the forecast that suggests anything heavier for Saturday for Somerset.'
Avon and Somerset Police said there had been 38 crimes reported at the festival and 14 arrests made.
Performing in the coveted Sunday legends slot this year is Sir Rod Stewart, who previously said he will be joined by his former Faces band member Ronnie Wood, as well as other guests.
Sir Rod's performance will come after he postponed a string of concerts in the US, due to take place this month, while he recovered from flu.
The BBC is providing livestreams of the five main stages: Pyramid, Other, West Holts, Woodsies and The Park.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The days of families huddling around the Late Late Show or Glenroe are gone - and that's no bad thing
By the end of the latest season of Doctor Who , it was clear the BBC 's once high-flying franchise was on life support. Ratings had collapsed. Lead actor Ncuti Gatwa was keen to move on to Hollywood. Whatever the television equivalent of urgent medical attention is, the Doctor needed lots of it. The real surprise, though, was that the decline of the Doctor went largely unnoticed. There had been widespread speculation among hard-core Whovians that the BBC and its international partners in the franchise, Disney +, were considering pulling the plug on the Tardis (the eventual twist was far more shocking, with former Doctor's assistant Billie Piper revealed is to be the new custodian of the venerable blue police call box). What was most telling, however, was that, amid all the online chatter, nobody in the real world much cared. The entire saga of the Doctor's rumoured demise and the character's bombshell resurrection in the guise of the former Because We Want To chart-topper passed without comment – in contrast to the widespread anguish that had attended the cancelling of the series for the first time in 1989. Billie Piper in the final episode of Doctor Who. Photograph: James Pardon/Bad Wolf/BBC Studios Such has been the pattern in recent decades – and not just in the context of time-travelling British eccentrics. Contrast the present-day television landscape with that distant time when The Late Late Show on RTÉ ranked as unmissable viewing. Or what about Montrose's perpetually okay-ish soap opera Fair City, which once held the entire nation in its thrall - including when it aired Ireland's first on-screen kiss between two men in 1996. Or in November 2001, when 800,000 viewers tuned in to the soap to see abusive sociopath Billy Meehan beaten to death by the son of his partner, Carol. People were talking about it at the bus stop and in the pub (back when the pub was a place we frequented in numbers). Even if you wanted to, you couldn't get away from bad Billy and his bloody exit. READ MORE Those days are clearly long over. According to RTÉ, some 280,000 people watch Fair City each week (with more tuning in on RTÉ Player). But when last did you hear someone discuss a Fair City plotline – or even acknowledge its existence? It's still out there, and fans still enjoy it, but to the rest of us, it's gone with Billy in the grave. The fracturing of television audiences has long been a source of dismay to those who care about such matters. In 2019, Time Magazine fretted that the end of Game of Thrones would be 'the last water cooler TV show'. That same year, author Simon Reynolds despaired of the great geyser of streaming TV and how it had deprived us of unifying cultural milestones. With so much entertainment jetting into our eyeballs, how is it possible for any of us to hold dear any particular film or show? 'There is,' he wrote in the Guardian, 'always something new to watch… an endless, relentless wave of pleasures lined up in the infinite Netflix queue.' More recently, Stephen Bush wrote in the Financial Times that 'everywhere in the rich world, the era of truly 'popular culture' is over'. This, he posited, 'is bad news for modern states, which are held together to some extent by the sense that we are all part of a collective endeavour ... the decline of shared viewing is eroding shared cultural reference points'. The death of monoculture is generally presented as a negative. Weren't we all better off in the old days, when Biddy and Miley's first kiss in Glenroe held the nation transfixed, and the big reveal as to who shot JR was a global news event that pushed trivialities such as the Cold War off the front pages? But is that such a loss? It's easy to look back with nostalgia, but the age of the monoculture was the era of having everyone else's tastes forced on you. Consider the great cultural tragedy that was Britpop, where lumbering, flag-waving Beatles cover acts became the dominant force in music. Liam Gallagher (left) and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. Photograph: Simon Emmett/Fear PR/PA Those bands never really went away, and some of them are back in force this summer – asking you to pay an arm-and-a-leg for the privilege of a ringside seat (or, indeed, a seat miles away). The difference is that today, you have the option of not participating. Instead of going to Oasis in Croke Park, I'll be in London watching the K-pop band Blackpink. Thanks to streaming and the general fracturing of popular culture, I can, moreover, essentially put my fingers in my ears and pretend Oasis doesn't exist. Thirty years ago, that option was not available. They were everywhere – in the summer of 1996, it felt as if Wonderwall was stalking us. But because mass entertainment has splintered, you no longer have to feel as if you are being followed around by Liam Gallagher every time you leave the house. It is also important to remember that the monoculture is still occasionally capable of making its presence felt. Let's go back to The Late Late Show, which, according to the latest statistics, is watched by about 400,000 people. That may be a long way off the annual Toy Show spectacular, which in 2024 drew 1.6 million viewers, but it remains a national talking point – every bit as much as Billy Meehan getting his just deserts. Adolescence. (L to R) Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller, Owen Cooper as Jamie Miller, in Adolescence. Photograph: Netflix © 2024 The same effect can be seen in streaming. Granted, the extraordinary response to the Stephen Graham drama Adolescence , which streamed on Netflix earlier this year, was in some ways a product of a moral panic more than an epoch-defining cultural moment. But while the show had some astute points about misogyny in our schools, its depiction of what it's like to be a 13-year-old boy was painfully wide of the mark. Still, it did capture the public imagination. And maybe there will be a similar response to series three of Squid Game, which was released on Netflix this weekend. So it isn't as if we aren't capable of bonding over our favourite TV shows any more. It's just that such instances are far rarer than they used to be. But is that a bad thing? Nowadays, we are free to follow our own interests, rather than having someone else's forced on us. And when we do come together, that moment of shared excitement feels all the more precious. The water cooler is dead; long live the water cooler.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
An Irish woman's life in the circus: ‘It's six months of living, eating, working, crying and laughing together'
'Pie and mash today,' calls the cook behind the ad-hoc kitchen that has been set up in a car park in Hereford. It's 4pm, dinner time for the performers of NoFit State , who will be going on stage in the small English cathedral city at 7.30pm. Gracie Marshall, the only Irish member of the circus company, has been given a bag of Tayto crisps – useful extra carbohydrates – by Adam Fitzsimons, who has come over from Galway International Arts Festival to see what technical aspects of tonight's performance might need to be tweaked for NoFit State's headline run in the city next month: it's bringing the show, Sabotage, plus the company's distinctive mushroom-shaped tent, to Nimmo's Pier, in the centre of the city. I'm sitting at a picnic table with Tom Rack, who is artistic director of NoFit State, and has a long, full beard. He was one of the five people who started the company in 1986. 'We were juggling and roaming around in the summers, and then in the winter we came together to make shows for schools, so we could avoid getting proper jobs,' he says. 'We fell in with a chap with a big top, back in the day of local-authority festivals and events, and he realised if he hired the five of us we'd drive the lorry, and do the workshops, and do the shows, and work the bar, and that was our introduction to the big top.' READ MORE Where did the name of the company come from? Rack laughs. 'It was the 1980s, and there was a Moscow State Circus, and the Chinese State Circus, and we were just a bunch of long-haired reprobates. NoFit State was a joke, but it stuck.' Rack is the sole remaining member of the quintet still working in circus, and roaming the land. Their circus, like most these days, is animal-free. They have an office base in Cardiff, rehearse in March and April, and then tour during the summer. How would he describe their type of performance? 'It's so far removed from traditional circus,' he says. 'It has traditional skills and tricks and excitement, but instead of being a traditional succession of acts it's a completely theatrical experience: a rollercoaster of a show. It's called Sabotage, but who are saboteurs, really? The misfits, the outcasts, the asylum seekers, the drag queens, the gender fluid. In Sabotage they are telling their stories. And we don't have a big top, because we're not a traditional circus.' The NoFit State big top It may not look like a traditional big top from the outside, with its muted ecru canvas, but it looks a lot like one inside. It's perfectly round, with circular seating all in jolly pink, as is the interior of the tent, where someone is tuning a violin. 'There are no bad seats here. It's a democratic space,' says Rack. It's true. Every tier of the 700 seats has essentially the same view of the ring. Marshall, the Tayto recipient, comes to join me on one of the tiers. It's still a couple of hours to showtime, and the company have a little downtime before getting rehearsal notes and warming up. The 30-year-old grew up in west Co Cork, near Rosscarbery. She's in her fourth year with NoFit State, specialising in hoop work and handstands. 'I did a lot of dance classes when I was younger,' she says. 'Then, when I was 16 and in transition year, I wrote to a circus dance company in LA' – Lucent Dossier Experience – 'and asked if I could do an internship with them.' They said yes, and Marshall went out for a month, which must rank among the more unusual transition-year placements. By the time she came home she was convinced this was the career for her. 'I told my mother that I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue with ordinary school; I wanted to go to circus school.' So she moved to London, did some training there and then came back to Cork for more training, at the city's Circus Factory . After that, as for any freelance artist, there was a jigsaw of grants and courses, including money from the Arts Council and training in China, Ukraine and Austria. 'It was really uncommon to leave school at 16,' she says. 'But I was so sure that I was going to do it, that there are other pathways in life.' Gripping: Sabotage. Photograph: Mary Wycherley Has Marshall ever been asked to talk to transition-year students about creating a career in such a singular field? No, she says, but she'd love to. 'I started off as an aerialist, with hoops,' she says. 'I got really injured in a fall; I injured my hip. It wasn't fully dislocated but enough to ground me. So I made up tricks with hoops. I fly a lot.' The circus trucks include two bunk wagons, where the company members and technical staff sleep. 'I feel like it's really community based,' she says. 'It's a supportive environment and everyone takes care of each other and supports each other – six months of really living, eating, working, crying and laughing together.' At 5pm the tour manager, Rebecca Davies, gathers everyone in the centre of the tent for notes and warm-up. Some people are flopped out on a black mattress; one is doing his make-up; a few others are rummaging in a suitcase and reassembling white plastic flowers that get pulled apart during each performance. We're used to the wildlife. Foxes come in at night and steal our costumes Davies runs through the assembled nationalities for me. 'Irish, Welsh, Argentinian, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, English, Scottish.' Everyone gets their notes, most of which are technical. Someone is blocking someone else while up one of the four tent poles. Catch this a different way. Remember to exit at that point. The company also has a live band, and performers in the ring slip in and out of musical roles too. There's no such thing as having only one talent. This is a ensemble company through and through. What are the challenges of running a two-hour show such as Sabotage? 'Weather,' says Davies, who came to work for the company for 10 weeks 10 years ago and is still with them. 'Weather can dictate what we can do on a day-to-day basis.' In Hereford, for instance, 'we know the ground will flood, and we know where those areas are.' Sabotage. Photograph: Mary Wycherley I recall the lattice of planks and walkways laid over puddles as I made my way earlier to the tent entrance. 'It's weatherproof in terms of wind, but a tent is still a temporary structure, and enough wind will still move the tent.' They'd better have stout tent pegs for Nimmo's Pier, in a city where the Atlantic wind can shear in relentlessly at any time of the year. Whatever temperature it is on the ground, it's 10 degrees hotter at the top of the tent, where riggers and performers alike are frequently working, says Davies. She stops talking to attend to an intruder: a seagull has come in, probably looking for any dropped food. Eventually it's escorted outside. 'We're used to the wildlife,' says Davies. 'Foxes come in at night and steal our costumes ... They use them in their dens, for nests. We know it's foxes because we have motion-sensor cameras, and they go off at night. We have to get up and investigate. In Brighton a fox came into the dressingrooms at 3am. We went out and found it running away with one of the girl's bras. Another night a fox ran off with a pair of shoes.' Working for a travelling circus is 'not really a job. It's a lifestyle. You have to live and breathe the whole community. Part of it is that you want to get up at 3am to go and see what's happening in the tent, because the tent is our livelihood and part of our home.' At 7.30pm I take a seat. I wonder about the stress levels of the technicians who rig the four central towers, called king poles, and assorted gantries overhead. For the next two hours performers will climb up and down the poles, swing from them, and be suspended from unseen rigging, most of it without safety nets (although they do have harnesses). To rig the show safely, and in so many new locations, is a huge responsibility. The show starts with a remarkable appearance by Besmir Sula, a performer who uses crutches in his daily life. What he does while on them in Sabotage is worth the admission price alone. His performance is a marvel of speed, skill and grace. I feel agonised watching an aerial performer suspended by a metal ring through her hair. She does beautiful work, and is all smiles, but I can't help wondering if it hurts. I have no idea how she must train for her routine. The costumes are very Wes Anderson , shuttling between some fantasy, cartoonish world and the 1950s, with a lot of uniforms and hats. Marshall says she wears 15 costumes in the show, so an unseen element of everyone's performance is clearly the ability to change at speed. There are threads of themes through the show: political protests, riot police, huge papier-mache heads of international politicians, arrests, ambulances, casualties. At one point the four king poles take on the appearance of sinister camp checkpoints, guards staring down at inmates. As NoFit State advises, this is a show that children can watch, but it is definitely not a show made for, or aimed at, children. Despite the framing of some scenes with social protest and its effect on society, Sabotage is at its core a brilliantly creative and technical show, featuring hugely talented aerialists. In a world of AI and CGI, it's astonishing to be reminded of what the human body can achieve. Watching Sabotage in Galway, in a tent raised above the rushing waters of the Corrib, and under the mercurial west of Ireland sky, will be a very special experience. Sabotage is at Nimmo's Pier from Friday, July 11th, to Sunday, July 27th, as part of Galway International Arts Festival
Irish Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Tony Blair believes Bob Geldof and Bono saved millions of lives
40 years on from Live Aid, Tony Blair believes Bob Geldof and Bono have saved millions of lives. Over the years, the outspoken rock stars have often been labelled as western do-gooders or as celebrities with white saviour complexes, but a new BBC series sets out their extraordinary behind-the-scenes influence over global leaders since the landmark concert on July 13, 1985. Blair puts it very plainly. 'What Bob and Bono and others have done over the years has resulted in, I don't know, probably millions of people living who otherwise would have died. I don't think there's any type of remote ideological argument that should stand in the way of that.' The final episode of a three-part series gives a glimpse into the machinations of how the Dubliners wangled their way into the Oval Office, had a direct line to Downing Street and got invited to a G8 summit alongside Vladimir Putin. Blair fully credits Geldof with getting him to champion African debt relief, while George W Bush recounts how Bono persuaded him to pledge $15 billion to fight AIDS in Africa following a gift of an Irish bible and an exchange on sins of omission. In the series, Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World, Bush recalls his 2005 meeting with Bono and Geldof ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. "I didn't have a clue who Geldof was. He and Bono came in, and Bono, was at least somewhat presentable, Geldof looked like he crawled out from underneath the ground', he says with a chuckle before adding, 'But he was a good guy. He cared deeply." Blair's former advisor, Justin Forsyth, explains their contrasting styles. 'Bob was effing this and effing that, even with presidents and prime ministers and Bono had this kind of deep empathy with people and knew how to kind of appeal to their inner souls.' Bob puts it in typically blunt fashion: 'He wants to give the world a great big hug, and I want to punch its lights out.' At the beginning of the series, Geldof speaks about the kitchen table conversation with his late wife, Paula Yates, which began Live Aid, recording the Band Aid single, and explaining who Status Quo were to a bemused Prince Charles during the concert. He also admits he was mistaken about not wanting Queen to play at the global concerts, regarding them as an 'overblown operatic' act. 'Subsequently, of course, we all have to admit that we thought the songs were great, so with age, we're allowed to admit it.' Meanwhile, Lionel Richie said he wasn't sure why US superstars like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder didn't perform. For his own part, he said: 'I made a conscious decision at the very last minute to get on the plane and go because I just felt it was necessary to do it.' In the final episode of the series, Geldof reflects on his subsequent campaign to get debt relief in Africa began when he returned to an orphanage in Ethiopia in 2003, nearly two decades after Band Aid. 'I see these children whose parents have died because of no food. It annoys me to tears of frustration. I go ballistic at this point, as ever, and 'Get me Downing Street' Blair, at a G8 summit in Évian-les-Bains at the G8 summit, took the urgent call from an aide. 'I remember shouting, 'it's happening again'', said Geldof. In a subsequent meeting, the British prime minster agreed to head a Commission for Africa after Geldof set out the case for the world's poorest countries had to be freed from crippling debt. 'I wouldn't have reacted that way at anyone, but it was him with his track record, his commitment, his knowledge, his dedication. And therefore, it made sense', said Blair. Blair's aide, Kate Garvey, recalls: 'He was driving the agenda inside government, which was incredible.' When Blair decided to raise debt relief at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, he knew it was critical to persuade Bush. 'The relationship was a very close relationship. We were in constant conversation with each other, and I thought there was a chance, because we had formed this commission that Bob (Geldof)had asked us to do.' They also had the backing of Bono, who had already formed an unlikely alliance with the Bush administration when he got access to Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor, who was a 'huge fan' of U2, soon after his election. Although she says in the documentary that Bush's tastes went 'toward country music'. As he's been briefed by his Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Joshua Bolten, Bush smiles as he recalls his aide asking him, 'You do know who Bono is, don't you?' He replied: 'Yeah, he married Cher'. But Bono found common ground when he brought along an 'ancient Irish bible' as a gift to the White House, as he knew Bush was a 'man of faith' 'He surprised me by giving me a Bible. I don't think this was a way to make me like him. I think is the way he really wanted to share with me a part of his being", Bush said. During their religious discussion at the start of the meeting, Bono asked him if there was a hierarchy to sin. 'He gave me the best answer anyone ever gave. He said, 'the sin of omission'', recalled Bono. This was taken as meaning it was wrong not to do anything. Bono wanted the US administration to take action on the AIDS pandemic, which was seeing 6000 Africans a day die of a preventable, treatable HIV disease. 'I'm being informed that there's a pandemic destroying an entire generation of people on the continent of Africa at the time that I'm the president, which I consider the most generous nation in the world, and we're doing nothing about it. It struck my heart', said Bush. Around a year later, in his State of the Union address, Bush pledged an incredible $15 billion over the following five years to 'turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.' 'Bono got George Bush to give $15 billion to black people who don't vote, who have AIDS', said Bobby Shriver, co-founder of DATA, Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa, along with Bono. Bono said PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the largest health intervention in the history of health interventions. 'It has saved 26 million lives'. In the programme, the lack of diversity of the rock acts in the charity concerts is debated with Harvey Goldsmith, the concert promoter behind Live Aid and Live8 concerts: 'There's always a criticism about not being enough black acts. I didn't care whether they were black, brown, green or yellow, if they were a big act and they were great and they wanted to play great', he says. But Bono does think it could have been more inclusive of the African continent. 'We did our best to make it more involving of African acts and failed, we f**ked up', he said, referring to the Live8 gigs. He later says, "Getting this stuff right is really hard because you are essentially raising an alarm." At the start of the G8 summit, a few days after the Live 8 concerts, aides recall how Blair rushed back to London from Scotland when he was told of the July 7th bombings in London. When the exhausted British leader arrived back towards the end of the summit, Blair's advisor, Justin Forsyth, says he had little patience with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was holding up agreement on Africa. 'He went down into the bar with all the leaders there, and their wives. I remember him, not to exaggerate, but he had Schroeder up against the wall, saying, you know, 'we've got to do this deal, aren't we, (Gerhard)?' And at that moment, I think Schroeder gave in, and we got across the line with the Germans.' The G8 leaders agreed to immediately cancel $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest countries, and promised to increase aid to developing nations by $50 billion a year by 2010. Blair remembers it as the 'most extraordinary weekend' during his time as prime minister. 'To be frank, even President Putin played his part in that', he says, adding, 'It was probably one of the last moments of truly global solidarity that I can remember.' He remembers being fed up with criticism from NGOs that it hadn't gone far enough. 'They ask you to do something, you do it, and they still criticise, and Bob and Bono just weren't like that at all.' Kumi Naidoo, one of the critics, had mixed feelings. 'I think there were very many good people with good intentions that were involved both with Live Aid and Live8. 'I think that there was not enough sensitivity to understanding that it's not right for a bunch of predominantly white male folks to get together and say, 'we got to frame a continent like this'.' At the end of the documentary, the U2 frontman fears the 40th anniversary of Live Aid will have a very different resonance for global aid. 'The 20th anniversary was just a convergence of good fortune and good actors on the world stage. But what's happening now in politics means this anniversary could be a funeral for the last 40 years.' Live Aid at 40: When Rock N Roll Took On The World will be shown on Sunday, July 6th, with the first episode starting at 21.00 on BBC Two, and it will also be on BBC iPlayer. The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week
