We couldn’t do Live Aid in today’s world, says Geldof

HE WAS hailed and knighted for organising one of the world’s largest fundraising concerts in 1985.

But Sir Bob Geldof says Live Aid would never happen in today’s internet age because we are not proactive enough.

The 68-year-old musician, pictured below, said: ‘Something like Live Aid can’t happen now, but that doesn’t stop you raging against the dying of the light.

‘That doesn’t stop you acknowledging that all generations fail and some fail more spectacularly than others – mine. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be Greta Thunberg and stand in front of your school silently and just say no.’

The Boomtown Rats frontman urged Britons to move away from the internet and instead ‘lobby’ and ‘talk to the politicians’ in person to bring about change.

Speaking to CBS Radio on Sirius XM, he said: ‘To change economics, you must engage with the agents of change which, like it or not, means you’ve got to talk to the politicians. We had a huge lobby: 1.2 billion people, 95 per cent of the television sets on Earth watched that concert.

‘Politics is just numbers. They can’t ignore it.

‘It took 20 years of trawling around the chancelleries of the world, and as that

Live Aid generation came to power – Clinton, Blair, Brown, Schröder, Cameron, Osborne – the doors opened and they caved. So things do change, but that instrument of change is no longer plausible. Rock and roll was the central spine of our culture for 50 years.’

Sir Bob said the internet had ‘broken down’ the world into ‘individualism’, making it easier for ‘authoritarians to use’.

‘The logic of the World Wide Web, this synaptic membrane that wraps itself around the planet, presupposes a hive society,’ he said.

‘We thought it would animate an economy. In fact, it sped it up beyond our understanding so the whole thing collapses with greed, puts millions out of work, puts thousands into suicide, wars erupt as a result, millions are on the move to find new work or to escape war and we throw up our walls and our barriers.’ Reflecting on fame, Sir Bob said: ‘You embrace it hugely and use the platform that fame gives you to talk about things that prompt you in the first place. Stardom is uncomfortable, celebrity is a nothing. I was never interested in stardom, as you can see. I am a c**p star, if anyone considers me a star. I’m just

not good at that stuff.’