Editor's letter

It might have felt odd watching Bono at the Labour Party conference, lecturing on debt relief and calling Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the Lennon and McCartney of the global development stage. It's easy to forget that rock'n'roll is a relatively young medium, and in the Sixties and Seventies anyone with any kind of political agenda was very firmly on the outside, looking in. All that changed with Live Aid, when Bob Geldof and the artists he rallied to the cause really did rock the world. In this issue of OMM, we celebrate that moment, 20 years on. Geldof says Blair and Brown both watched the Live Aid concert on TV, as did Bill Clinton and the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. George W Bush is also believed to have tuned in for a few hours.

It is a scandal that Africa remains such a stricken continent. When the official Live Aid DVD (at last) goes on sale on 8 November, buy a copy and help raise money once more for those who are still so terribly in need. Everyone can make a difference.