Live 8

Live 8 Ian Jones at Off The Telly maybe offers the final word.

"Those bands which did play longer than their allotted time couldn't help but come over on TV as being more than a little selfish. Indeed there seemed to be a hell of a lot less professional stagecraft on display than 20 years ago. A few basic rules appeared to have been forgotten. On these sorts of occasions we don't want to hear "a new song" (The Scissor Sisters) or see an undignified display of shirt-ripping (Razorlight again) or "a very special guest" who turns out to be crap (Elton John with Pete Docherty) or nameless acoustic noodlings (The Stereophonics). Just give us the hits, don't over-run, and leave the polemics to those who seem to know what they're talking about, like, yes, Bob Geldof, or Kofi Annan."

Can you believe this was only a week and a bit ago? It feels like two decades.