More Band Aid allegations - this morning, from Band Aid

Bob Geldof's furious attack on the quality of BBC journalism following the reports about how some Ethiopian famine relief might have found its way into the hands of civil war fighters gets a sharp slapdown from an unexpected source this morning. the Daily Mail must have decided they dislike Geldof even more than they hate the BBC:

Today, for the first time, the Band Aid man on the ground in Ethiopia speaks out exclusively to The Daily Mail, saying he believes it is possible that up to 20 per cent of donor's money went to fund the rebels.

Furthermore, he told me that he personally sympathised with the rebel cause he calls 'a liberating force', and travelled in convoys he suspected were transporting arms to them.

John James was Band Aid Field Director in Ethiopia from 1985-91 and was awarded an MBE for his charity work. He says: 'I would be surprised if it were any less than 10-20 per cent of funds were diverted to the rebels.

'Did I sympathise with the rebels? Yes. We would not have tolerated any direct assistance in the purchase of arms or condoned it, but just remember it was a highly complex situation.'

James, a farmer who is now 85 and living in Devon, adds: 'I think it is ridiculous for anybody to claim that not one penny of aid money was diverted.

'You couldn't help the hungry in the rebel-held areas without helping the rebels. You have to be realistic about that. It is probable that some money was diverted to buy arms. I believe a just use was made of the money. I think it fulfilled the interests of the donors.'

It's looking increasingly like Geldof's fixation on the one quote in the World Service programme that 95% of aid was misdirected in Tigray is the classic approach of finding one thing wrong, in an attempt to discredit the whole. The sort of tactic that people who don't believe in global warming use.

Do They Know What The Money's For At All?

The BBC World Service has claimed that millions of dollars intended for Ethiopian famine relief in the mid 80s was siphoned off to keep the popular civil war in weapons:

One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) - from Western governments and charities including Band Aid - was channelled into the rebel fight.

The CIA, in a 1985 assessment entitled Ethiopia: Political and Security Impact of the Drought, also alleged aid money was being misused.

Its report concluded: "Some funds that insurgent organisations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes."

Bob Geldof has denied it:

Mr Geldof told BBC One's Andrew Marr show he would personally sue the Ethiopian government and spend the money on aid if any evidence was produced.

He said: "Produce me one shred of evidence and I promise you I will professionally investigate it, I will professionally report it, and if there is any money missing I will sue the Ethiopian government for that money back and I will spend it on aid.

"There is not a single shred of evidence that Band Aid or Live Aid money was diverted in any sense, it could not have been."

Apparently the 1985 CIA assessment doesn't, for these purposes, count as "one shred of evidence".

Various charities are preparing to take complaints about the report to the BBC Trust and Ofcom.

Talking to The Independent, Geldof describes the report as "a Ross/Brand moment for me" - an interesting way of describing it, as that was a disproportionate fuss over a silly misjudgement. Is Bob saying that he's kicking up a stink that isn't warranted, or that the BBC was a little bit rubbish?

The Independent report ends with this, erm, "support" for the aid agencies:

A former British ambassador to Ethiopia, Myles Wickstead, added weight to the aid agencies' condemnation last night. "I'd give no credibility whatsoever to the idea that 95 per cent of aid to Tigray was diverted," he concluded.

"It was too highly monitored, most particularly that of Live Aid. Some money may well have gone astray in Ethiopia in 1985. But nowhere nearly on the scale which the BBC has alleged."

I'm not sure that saying "ooh, nowhere near as much as 95% was diverted" is quite the same as the agencies insistence that everything was accounted for.

Given the terrible state the country was in at the time, you'd have been surprised if some of the aid didn't go awry, no matter how well-intentioned the agencies distributing it were; no matter how well-considered their systems were. Personally, I'm more worried by Bob and the charities insisting that nothing was misplaced than I am by the BBC claims of massive amounts vanishing. Even Wal-Mart can't stop shrinkage to theft, and Wal-Mart are evil.

Phil Collins brought the Zeppelin down

In a deft piece of "I wouldn't want to say anything bad, but...", Jimmy Page has blamed the failed Led Zep reunion for Live Aid on the drummers:

"I don't want to blame anyone but the two drummers (Phil Collins and Tony Thompson of Chic) hadn't learned their parts.

"You can get away with that in a pop band but not with Led Zeppelin."

And when they came to cart the equipment off the stage, bloody Collins had pissed off in Concorde leaving them to do all the work. Drummers, eh?

Gonna buy some records by the Status Quo

Francis Rossi isn't that impressed by Amy Winehouse:

"Amy is supposed to be great but I can't stick her. I like a couple of records but I'm not sure if people will like her in three years.

"I'm not knocking her for the sake of it. But I have been subjected to so much of Amy and her antics that I just think, 'Fuck off'.

"What message does giving her Woman Of The Year send to young people? There has to be some responsibility somewhere, surely?"

Well, she's been named Woman of the Year in Mojo magazine, so I doubt if any young people will ever notice, but... do carry on:

"Everyone knew what was going on with her. She's not a good role model.

"They should have said to her: 'You're not getting it. You would have done but you're not cutting it anymore.'

"She may be able to sing, but what gets through to the kids in the street is the fact that she is out of her tree, falling over and not being able to keep her hands out of her knickers. She should straighten herself out."

These are fine words, although Status Quo have dined out more than once on their tales of being wasted at Live Aid, which might throw their claims to pick role models for the next generation into some sort of relief.

But Rossi hasn't finished. He then turns his attention to Pete Doherty:

"Doherty, on the other hand, isn't even worth entertaining. At least Amy has serious talent. Pete hasn't got anything. There's no talent there, otherwise he would do something. He doesn't count. He seems quite intelligent but the records are grim."

Pete gets busted, then comes straight out and thinks it's no problem being nicked.

There's no fear of the law or of punishment and young people think, 'If he can do it so can I'. Doherty is still acting like an angry young man and so are Oasis. Get off it. You can't be an angry young man pushing 30 and if you are you're a twat."

Well, certainly you shouldn't be publishing teenage-style diaries at that age.

Radio One More Time: Simultaneous Broadcasts

Now, with NICAM digital stereo and all that, stereo music coming out the TV is as normal as small worm-like larvae coming out of Scottish taps. But it's not always been like that. In the 1980s, stereo was for radios, and TVs were restricted to a single speaker, usually lop-sided on one edge.

So, what to do when transmitting a musical event? There was always the option of pumping the sound through the one wheezy
speaker, but the BBC came up with a more elegant solution: the simultaneous broadcast. As the name implies, the pictures would be on one of the TV networks, the radio carrying the stereo sound, all indicated by a giant "SB" in a circle in Radio Times listings, with instructions that, for best effect, you should position your hi-fi speakers either side of the television.

Normally, the SB blob would pop up in the BBC2 and Radio 3 listings - proms, opera, that sort of thing. But sometimes, Radio One would get to join in. Whistle Test and Radio One In Concert would come together for Sight And Sound In Concert specials, and we suspect it was this experience which led to the same combination being called up for what, surely, is the high-water mark for the SB: Live Aid. So simultaneous was the experience, so cross-media was the event fertilized, that the news summary during the afternoon was done by Newsbeat's Frank Partridge rather than someone from the television news squad. It also explains why there was the slightly clunky "Live Aid... From London... around the world" jingle, which was way too wordy for television, but attempted to deliver the same message to radio listeners as TV's glitzy silver world map.

Radio One also hosted the audio leg of the longest-running SB, when Top of the Pops turned up on the radio at the same time as on the television. It's likely the association would have been longer still, but it couldn't happen until Radio One had a proper FM network, and only lasted until BBC One was broadcasting nationwide in stereo. We're still not sure agreeing to take the audio feed was the best idea that Radio One ever had, but we'll charitably assume they thought all their natural constituency would have been watching the Pops anyway, so saw this as a graceful concession.

[Part of Radio One More Time]

A Bad Night For Di

Not only did she come third behind Churchill and Brunel in the BBC Greatest Briton poll, but before the final debate kicked off Channel Five attempted to recreate her life through her record collection. You hope a bad wrong has been done to her, you really do.

They got Peter York to present - presumably because he co-wrote that Sloane Ranger's handbook sometime in the 1980's; on this basis, whoever ghost-wrote Adrian Edmondson's How To Be A Complete Bastard should have been doing the voiceovers for The Nazis - A Warning From History. Now, while the basic idea - that you might be able to get the measure of the man from the music he chooses to listen to - is a good one, the show suffered from three basic flaws.

Firstly, it relied on those elements of her record collection that were held in safe keeping by Paul Burrell (You remember, Your Majesty? Butler man. He told you he was looking after them for you. Do you remember?), which obviously strained the format before it began.

Secondly, Diana's musical taste has been picked over so many times, you could tick off the bands before they appeared (Duran Duran)?

Third, rather than use the music to try and imagine where Diana's head might have really been, they drew up ten artists she liked, made a list of what they know about Diana, and then joined up the two lists any old how. So, 'Rocking All Over The World'? Right, well, we know that they played that at Live Aid, and she "boogied" when Status Quo played it, and Prince Charles was wearing earplugs (this is meant to suggest he wasn't listening and was some way out of touch - but nearly all rock acts wear hearing protection, too) so that must show that they'd grown apart by this point as their reactions to Status Quo were different.

Trouble is, this supposes that Diana's reaction was like a young persons - whereas, at the time of Live Aid, dancing in an awkward geography teacher way to Status Quo smacked of middle aged, middle class values. Charles bored look was more in keeping with what the youth were thinking.

The programme was sloppy in other ways - "Most people believe [Lady In Red] was written about Diana" claimed York, which is rubbish - everybody has heard the story about how it was written for DeBurgh's bloody wife about six hundred times; it's like trying to claim that people think the original Candle In The Wind was written for Diana.

But where it scored was in the things it didn't set out to do. Once again it exposed just how dull, smug and self-satisified the old Radio 2 school are. Cliff Richard took the opportunity to moan again that he's not played on the radio, you know, and said "It's been said that 'Some People' [his song, not the Belouis Some track] was Diana's favourite song. She had very good taste" and then proceeded to tell a tale about how Diana, Harry, former Radio One DJ Mike Reid and he sat around jamming after a hard day's skiing.

Apparently, Harry asked for Great Balls of Fire, which Reid and Richard took as a request for them to sing, but we suspect may have been a call for judgement to rain down from God. Leo Sayer told a spectacularly immodest story about being told by Burrell that Diana would lock herself in her room and play one of his songs over and over again. Considering he was meant to be so discrete, Burrell seemed to blab an awful lot, didn't he? Sayer's reaction was to say "Wayne Sleep had already told me that." Nice. Locking yourself in with Leo Sayer is a cry for help if we ever heard one.

To try and provide some sense that she wasn't just a dumb blonde with godawful taste (Uptown Girl?) they tried to suggest she'd been developing an interest in classical music - because she had a Verdi album and went to see Pavarotti. Yeah, my Dad met Meatloaf in a toilet once. It doesn't make him Howlin' Wolf.

Then over to the Greatest Britons, where Lennon looked even more out of place amongst the others than he had when the list was just a list. Even Alan Davies, there supposedly to speak for the dead Beatle, admitted that he thought Shakespeare was better.

The most interesting aspects of the two shows were the copyright messages that snuck in. As the credits rolled for Greatest Britons, we were warned that "Imagine - Sole worldwide copyright of Yoko Ono" (or words to that effect) and during the Di doc, Nothing Compares 2U was doctored so that we never saw a glimpse of Sinead without the acknowledgement that it was Universal's property we were seeing. Self-aggrandising and unneccesary.