91Èȱ¬

Pop music of the mid 1980s was at the height of its foppish and glossy pomp. Bands like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet epitomised unattainable glamour and dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. But a world away, Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military dictatorship in Ethiopia had exacerbated a catastrophic famine, threatening the lives of millions of his people.

The scale of the humanitarian disaster needed a heavyweight response. Musicians Bob Geldof and Midge Ure hatched a plan to pack as many pop stars as they could into a room to create what would become the best-selling charity single of all time – holding that record until 1997 - Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Kirsty Wark is joined by Sir Bob Geldof and surprise guests to recall how members of Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran arrived at the studio still hungover after partying the night before; how halfway through the day Boy George was woken up in his bed in New York by a telephone call from a testy Bob Geldof who demanded that he get a Concorde flight back to London for the session; and how U2 singer Bono had huge reservations about singing his line.

The song went straight into at number one, outselling every other record in the charts put together, raising tens of millions for famine victims and kick-starting a new trend for pop stars as activists. To date, it has sold nearly four million copies.

Producer: Karen Pirie
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for 91Èȱ¬ Radio 4