Were You Still Up For Hey Jude?

Although I watched more of Live 8 than I had planned to, I didn't quite last the distance. I went to bed as Pink Floyd started performing to a backing track that sounded remarkably like the theme tune to Are You Being Served? I half expected Mrs Slocombe to walk on and tell us she'd put a Live 8 wristband round her pussy.

Much earlier in the day, and a full eight hours before the watershed, a band member, possibly from U2, told an interviewer they had travelled to the original Live Aid in Noel Edmonds' helicopter. He'd been worried that if it crashed the headlines would say they went down on Noel's chopper. A very Carry On or Are You Being Served? thing to say. And disappointingly un-rock-n-roll. Where's John Lydon when you need him?

One of the first acts was the inappropriately named REM, whose lead singer hardly blinks at all. I'm sure the lead singer of REM is a very nice man who loves his mother and is kind to animals. But to me he's one of the scariest-looking men on the planet. And one of the most repulsive. Dressed in a dark suit, as he was for Live 8, he looked even more like an employee of the Kray Brothers, the last leering face you'd see before you were propping up a motorway bridge, but not before he'd had some fun with a soldering iron on your genitals. Maybe he was the reason that AOL's webcast carried a prominent warning about content and said 'viewer discretion is advised'.

Graham Norton - ousted from prime time coverage of the Philadelphia concert because the London one kept to the schedule as punctiliously as Virgin Trains - has said in the past that Mariah Carey is the prima donna from hell and that she employs people to put a drinking straw in her mouth when thirsty. But one didn't expect her to demonstate this in front of a global audience of billions.
However, a woman was summoned from the wings to place the straw from a bottle of water in her mouth in the middle of her set. This woman appeared to be clutching a variety of ointments and Carey told us she was her masseuse. We prayed that a massage was not about to follow, with Carey prostrate on the stage and this woman's knee in her capacious buttocks, as happened with young Andrew Murray at Wimbledon. Incidentally, although women's legs rarely impinge on my consciousness, Carey's short, tight black dress did reveal that she has thighs like Wayne Rooney.
Later, Carey shouted to the wings for a microphone stand. "I know I said I didn't want one but now I've changed my mind." I bet the over-stretched stage crew loved her for that. The not-so-subtle mesage of all this nonsense was 'I'm such a big star that I can't swig water from a bottle like everyone else and I can change my mind mid-performance about what I need for my act.'

Highlight of the day: Jeremy Clarkson telling Jonathan Ross he was in agony with back pain. He said he'd slipped a disc. No, Jeremy. It's the universal law of Karma, a punishment for all the offensive things you say about minorities. And what were you doing there anyway? Surely the whole event reeked of the political correctness that you've made a fortune from sneering at?

The problem with people of my age watching such events is that you find yourself turning into your father and moaning that none of these people can sing. One person you can't say that about is Annie Lennox. But my god, how that woman's voice depresses me. By the time she'd done the same three songs she always does, I'd decided to cheer myself up by playing a Leonard Cohen album. He's a little ray of sunshine in comparison.

Actually, I found nearly all the music totally joyless. Perhaps it was partly that artists chose songs that chimed with the purpose of the event.
The exception was Robbie Williams. More than a ray of sunshine, Robbie was a solar flare of ego, energy, cheesiness and pure joy. Nobody can work a crowd like Robbie. Indeed he was the only one to jump into the crowd, although that was partly because many of the other acts were so old that they'd never have been able to climb back onto the stage.
Nor were the viewers at home forgotten. Show Robbie a television camera and he'll press his face against the lens and start making love to it. The naffness of all this is redeemed by the fact that his tongue is always in his cheek. He's both taking the piss and having a ball. It seemed to me the only time that entertainment triumphed over worthiness and that the atmosphere in Hyde Park came through the television screen.

Robbie was introduced by David Beckham who at one point dried completely but not before he'd said it was an 'historical' day instead of an 'historic' one. But that was a small blip for David and probably the first time he'd chosen a word of four syllables over one of three.

Watching McCartney, The Who and Pink Floyd made me curious about how teenagers feel watching people old enough to be their grandfathers performing rock music. For they are the first generation to have experienced this.
My generation were often exposed to older legends of popular music like Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn but that was a different genre of music. Rock and pop music was something new and mostly disliked by our parents, with a few exceptions like Cliff and baby-faced Paul McCartney. Bands like The Who were certainly regarded with horror. Do young people today see them as elder statesmen of a musical tradition that stretches back 50 years? Or does it seem a bit like watching your father disco-dancing at a family wedding?
Is it perhaps my generation that feel so uncomfortable seeing The Who perform today, if only because we see a mirror image of our own mortality?

Whatever.....whichever.....I do wish Pete Townsend hadn't done that scissor leap into the air on Saturday. And not only because a man of his age could easily have put his back out.
Would Scarey Carey have lent him her personal masseuse? I wouldn't bet on it.