CHRIS MARTIN: LIVE 8 WAS BETTER THAN MINDER

Chris Martin has just popped up on Today, talking about Live8, and he was incredibly prickly when it was suggested to him that people might feel a bit pissed off that this was meant to be the year for Africa, and everyone let the G8 off the hook in the end. In fact, he compared the frustrations that people might be feeling that Geldof and Bono allowed the goodwill of the Live8 audience to be bought off with a couple of scraps, condemning millions to continue to live in poverty or die early, to the feeling you get if you're number three or number two in the charts and the Crazy Frog is ahead of you.

Yes, that's exactly the same thing, Chris.

He was also bristly when asked about Jonathan Ross saying last week that the bill was a mistake. Again, Chris doesn't really seem to understand why people were angry, this time choosing to suggest that complaining that a concert designed to raise awareness of the lives of Africans offered only one image of Africa and absolutely nothing (aside from a hastily bunged on N'Dour) to represent the creative and positive side of the continent was like complaining that the backstage catering wasn't up to scratch.

What was amusing was Martin insisted he didn't have an opinion on the bill at all, shortly before defending it with this shruggy "doing the best we could" style evasion and concluding that if Live8 hadn't happened, we could have just spent the day watching Minder re-runs instead.

The thing is: I'm not convinced that if we had spent the day doing that, the pisspoor G8 settlement would have been any weaker, Chris.

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