No Rock And Roll Fun

JUST GIVE US YER MONEY: Did the discovery of bootleg DVDs lead to the decision to release Live Aid officially, or was the decision the stimulus to pursue the bootleggers? We might never know, but it's got to be a good idea to make the performances properly available, thereby allowing U2 fans to sleep again at night without the fear of 'what if my VHS breaks' gnawing away at their insides like the effects of arsenic poisoning? We expect, though, that the finalised version will lack a little of the atmosphere of the genuine, taped off BBC2 and then BBC1 when they had to yield BBC2 to the Open University tapes. We're betting, for example, they'll leave out Frank Partridge's inexplicable 3pm news summary, and probably all of the rubbish bits from elsewhere on the planet. If they include the "Live Aid... from London... around the world" Radio One jingle as an extra feature, though, we'll be happy.