London, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Berlin, 5 concerts, 1 day, 8 men.

A worldwide mission to make poverty history through the medium of pure rock and roll. Macca, the God of all things musical (in my eyes!) opened Hyde Park with Bono and a flock of birds, yet I dont know because I missed it, I was getting ready to go out for my birthday (yays and boos combined, yay its my birthday, boo im one year older!) but one thing is for sure, many a cynic out there was cetainly carried along the vibe of this great concert.

My two best buddies were there and one was delighted to have seen Madonna, though many in the media today have slated her because she swore a bit but hey, so did many, and lets not get caught up in the menial things.

The only thing that matters is that each and every person in the world who cares about one child dying every 3 seconds, every day, something as a regular human being I cannot begin to contemplate, something as a Mum I dont want to imagine, something which can be affected if we create a loud enough voice, at least thats the theory. The thing is, Live 8 is not a fundraiser, its an awareness gig. We're not supposed to empty our pockets and give them our cash this time, we're supposed to give our names to the biggest list ever, to give ourselves and our voice to the cause of making poverty history.

But there are a few problems. Yes, the gig was fantastic, yes it was fun, yes we had a lot of big names come on out and tell us pure tragedy, but when Will Smith was in Philadelphia, doing pretty much the gig of his life and being loads of fun, trouble was when he asked each and every member of the Philly audience to click their fingers every 3 seconds to commemerate the death of another child through poverty, I did not get an ounce of sense that these people knew what they were clicking for. People were screaming and shouting for Will, smiling and laughing, no, thats not respect and thats not awareness for the cause, sorry. And when Brad Pitt and David Beckham turned up on the Hyde Park stage to introduce another act and when Brad gave his talk on when he went to Africa, people again were screaming for him and no-one listened really, they were just excited at seeing Brad Pitt, oh and whaddyaknow, guess who was also introducing an act at one of the other gigs? Angelina Jolie, well there's a surprise. Media hype in the wrong place at completely the wrong time.

Pete Doherty came out and mumbled his way through a mangled T-Rex song, quite a moment in itself because it's the first time in his career he's finished a gig, but then it was only about a minute long, and Elton was doing his bit for the save Pete Doherty from overdose awareness, he gave no where near the set he gave 20 years ago. The only ones who appeared to just totally be there for the reason they should have been was the acts of yester-year, The Macca, Sir Bob, Bono and U2, Annie Lennox who was just beautiful, Coldplay were pretty much the only new act to have wanted to make a stand but then Chris Martin does genuinely give a damn about ending poverty and more fair trade and he doesn't need to work to promote his album because they sell themselves these days. Oh and Travis gave good gig too.

The gig, at the end of it all, was just the fun part, just a point of attraction, the underlying bit of it all was the list, and I hope each and every person who even knew about the gig, whether they cared for it or not, signs the list. The awareness of the list was not made big enough I think, my parents did ask me should they give money, I asked around to see if people had signed the list and should I sign it for them and sadly a few of them did ask me, what list? So, in my role as one of the media folk, i'd like to ask every member of the public who stumbles across this page to pass on to at least, I dunno, 5 other people. Kind of a 'pay it forward' if you will. Send them to the website as linked from this page as always, dont worry about getting my numbers up that doesn't matter, just pass the web address for live8live.com around. Lets get the list numbers up together so when this gig hype is over hopefully everyone in the world can stand together and look at the 8 men in 1 room and ask them to make the difference as our last hope. Ask them to make poverty history. It seems bigger than us but if there are enough of us making enough of a noise, maybe it's a small thing after all.