So I fired up the 48-inch plasma telly the other night, sat back in the black leather LazyBoy recliner with a large glass of 10-year-old malt Rifkind, and was immediately assailed by a nightmare vision.

There, on screen, was a wild-haired, mad-eyed Tinker ranting and caterwauling away like a chip shop owner during the Potato Famine. I thought I'd stumbled upon film of the motivational speaker at a we've-got-a-bit-of-tarmac-left-over conference. Or an evangelical clothes peg salesman.

It turned out to be the Right Honourable Lord Sir Bob Geldof CBE, ceremoniously re-launching the careers of dozens of faded pop stars with another Live Aid doodah, only 20 years on. Quite why, I'm not sure.

Now we all know that there are starving people in Africa. That's why I religiously take my old painting jumpers down to Oxfam once a year so they can ship them out to Swaziland (average temperature: 100 degrees Fahrenheit). I sent £100 to Comic Relief (on condition that they stopped showing videos of snotty-nosed waifs grubbing around for food on council tips � in Liverpool) and I buy a new poppy every year, whether I need one or not.

Furthermore, the Beelzebub household (admittedly in the guise of Mrs B) is the proud charitable sponsor of a donkey in Devon, a seahorse in Bristol, and a goat that was sent out on a free holiday to the Gambia (Did it call? Did it write? Did it buggery â?¦)

So I don't need reminding that those of us who live in the lap of comparative luxury need to do our bit for those who have to get up at 5am and walk 50 miles to the nearest fag machine, or whatever it is that they do in deepest Africa.

But this is where I get confused. Dame Geldof's five-city worldwide extravaganza before an audience of a million daft middle-class Lefties and a billion TV viewers isn't intended to raise money. It's intended to make a point. Yes, "make a point". There's a meeting of the world's leaders in Edinburgh and Bolshy Bob is determined that they're going to get some grief while they're here.

(You may question where the £1.50-a-time fee - plus usual service charges - for text message ticket applications is going. I understand that the money raised will pay for the staging of the various concerts. And at least while your 12-year-old is texting the letter "C" to 84599, they're not downloading the Crazy Frog ringtone.)

I need some more brackets here. Bear with me. (Think about this. A couple of punts at £1.50 a time could easily get you a couple of tickets for Hyde Park. That's £3 spent. Now just imagine what you could get for those on E-Bay. £100? £200? £500? It's money for old rope. And don't worry. I won't tell any starving Africans what you've done.)

So I think this Live 8 thing has got something to do with Third World debt, and the theory that Western countries shouldn't have the temerity to ask African countries to pay us back all the money we've loaned them. Which isn't exactly good business when you think about it.

If it becomes widely known, for instance, that the nation of Chad has defaulted on the $637 million it owes to the Federal Bank of Gross Obesity, Alabama, who on earth is going to lend them money the next time the kids need new shoes?

Trust me, you don't want to mess around with your credit status that way. I got two weeks behind in paying the milkman and the next thing I knew the bailiffs had come round to repossess the Jacuzzi. And I had to slink away from the tills at IKEA after my attempt to buy a Plonka cheese-grater met with derision when the machine spat out my bank card.

And, without being hard-hearted, who's to blame for them getting themselves into this mess in the first place? On the wall of my study at Beelzebub Mansions, I have a map of the world showing the British Empire dated 1924. The globe is mostly pink and, frankly, was a much better place for it.

But oh no, the early Guardianistas whined, in between mouthfuls of General Strike muesli. We must give these people their independence. It's not fair that we should rule over indigenous races. And off they went to spread resentment and revolt. And cycling. And beards.

So the once-pink nations got their independence and we ended up owning the Isle of Man and a rock 300 miles south east of Argentina. Not much of an empire, is it?

But we left behind a generous legacy. We left behind gold mines, diamond mines, copper mines and oil. We left behind railways, telephones, kedgeree and gin. We left behind industry and infrastructure. And what did they do, these indigenous peoples? They cocked it up, that's what they did.

Never mind the horrors of Ethiopia that spawned the original Live Aid publicity-fest. Only recently that nice Mr Mugabe from Zimbabwe sent in his feral troops to drive white farmers off their land so that it could be returned the "the people" (and all, no doubt, to approving nods from the lentil-eating classes back in Islington). But what's happened now? An apocalyptic famine, that's what. They just can't handle it.

And what's happened to all the money that we've already sent them in the past 20 years? What's happened to the child's pocket money, the pensioner's nest egg and the government's millions? Why is the situation just as bad now as it was when the ailing Freddie Mercury had to be propped up on drugs and ego to perform at Wembley?

Because while we might be generous to a fault when it comes to sticking our hands in our pockets for those less fortunate than ourselves, we're absolutely crap at making sure that the money goes to those who need it, rather than into the coffers of power-crazed despots.

Remember that blue fiver that Lord Feck of Fecking Fianne bullied you into sending off on that historic day back in 1985? Do you want to know where it ended up? I'll tell you â?? it helped build a new palace for the dictator's latest queen, it helped pay for a flight of fighter planes for a country that has no airborne enemies, and the few bob that was left over was eaten up when the gold-plated presidential Cadillac was sent down to KwikFit on a Saturday morning for a new set of alloys.

Maybe that's the problem. Second-rate dictators. At least with Idi Amin you knew where you stood (up to your knees in a pool full of crocodiles, usually). He was Sandhurst-trained. He knew the score. When he ripped you off, he did it with a refreshing honesty.


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But back to the Baron of Bluster, the Count of Cacophony, Mr Geldof Himself. Not content with inflicting some distinctly nondescript pop bands on our ears, he also now seems to be confusing himself with Martin Luther King or Winston Churchill.

So not only are we to have all these pop concerts pushing Doctor Who off the telly, but the daft sod has also demanded that a million people should march on Edinburgh and â?¦ err â?¦ stand around looking concerned. And, incidentally, disrupt The Queen's summer holiday, the unthinking bastard.

I've done some quick sums. A flight from Brissle to Edinburgh costs between £40 and £80. The cost of travel will be the same from most parts of the country, be it coach, car, train or plane. Add to that the cost of food and drink (and I'm assuming that no hotel cost is involved) then I reckon you're looking at £100 a head just to â?¦ err â?¦ stand around looking concerned. Multiply that by a million and youâ??ve got ONE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS. Call me a cynic, but what could that amount of money achieve in Africa? Never mind, we'll return to this argument later.

Princess Bob also wants a massive fleet of small boats to set sail to France to fetch back any passing European who fancies a few days bobbing about off the mouth of the Forth amidst SAS blokes in dinghies, American nuclear submarines with itchy trigger figures and mine-carrying dolphins while looking â?¦ err â?¦ concerned. (Rightly so, you might think.)

We'll set aside any cheap shots about illegal asylum seekers getting a cheap ride and merely concentrate on the practicalities. Let's assume a thousand assorted vessels respond to the Duke of Geldof's siren call. That's a thousand small boats, loaded to the gunnels with seasick soap-dodgers, bobbing around in the middle of the busiest shipping lane in the world. Is that altogether wise? Should I now start saving up to donate to Scrote Aid after the seemingly-inevitable disaster?


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And as for cheap shots, we cannot ignore the simple fact that if these assorted egomaniacs swapped posturing for positive action, a great many problems could be solved overnight without involving the current publicity-fest.

I seem to recall reading that it costs only £15 to provide an African with copious and clean water for a year. Perhaps the multi-millionaire Mr Geldof might want to have a quick word with the multi-millionaire Sir Elton John, the multi-millionaire Sir Paul McCartney, the multi-millionaire Sir Mr Sting and the multi-millionaire Sir Mr Bono and see what they might achieve simply by putting their own fecking hands in their own fecking pockets.

After all, if George Bush can find £300 million in loose change down the back of the White House sofa (equivalent to Homer Simpson's doughnut bill), and a few pop oligarchs chucked their weekly beer money into the kitty, just imagine how many small countries would have been sorted out already.

Pip, pip!

Barry Beelzebub
Return of the redi Reviewed by Return of the redi on . Live Aid doodah. What's the point? So I fired up the 48-inch plasma telly the other night, sat back in the black leather LazyBoy recliner with a large glass of 10-year-old malt Rifkind, and was immediately assailed by a nightmare vision. There, on screen, was a wild-haired, mad-eyed Tinker ranting and caterwauling away like a chip shop owner during the Potato Famine. I thought I'd stumbled upon film of the motivational speaker at a we've-got-a-bit-of-tarmac-left-over conference. Or an evangelical clothes peg salesman. It Rating: 5