In 1985, two globally televised all-star concerts in Wembley and Philadelphia were watched by 1.5 billion people and raised around $80 million (£45 m) for famine relief in Ethiopia. This has become such an iconic moment in rock history it is hard to imagine a world before Live Aid. These days, pop stars are a de facto branch of the international emergency services, offering a swift response to major natural disasters with charity singles and concerts. By dramatically reconstructing the build-up to Live Aid, When Harvey Met Bob – a one-off drama on BBC Two on Boxing Day – amusingly and movingly demonstrates just how unlikely the whole thing actually was.
The Harvey in the title is concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith, played with a kind of confounded toughness by Ian Hart, reluctantly dragged into the fanciful schemes of Bob Geldof, brilliantly impersonated by Domhnall Gleeson as a bad-tempered force of nature. “If we’re going to work together you have to learn to be a realist,” asserts Goldsmith, with the understated threat of a man used to getting his way. “No I don’t,” retorts Geldof, as he charges on, co-opting superstar headliners, lying to BBC executives and pitting sponsors Coke and Pepsi against one another, sowing havoc in his angry wake for the increasingly weary Goldsmith to sort out. At its heart, this is a buddy movie, an Eighties bromance, in which two ill-matched alpha males bond over a crisis, despite being only able to show affection by being rude to each other.
Actually, Geldof is rude to just about everybody in the film. Which is fair enough, because as anyone who has crossed his path knows, Geldof is indeed extremely rude, or at least so brusque and free of bulls--- that he flattens social convention with breathtaking directness. This is a star-making performance from Gleeson, who looks as though he could be shaping up to rival his father Brendan as Ireland’s greatest living thespian. As with a lot of dramatisations based on pop culture events, the biggest leap required for viewers is accepting an actor whose features don’t quite match an exceedingly famous face, but Gleeson has Geldof’s voice and mannerisms down pat, and adds a kind of surly vitality that just sweeps objections away.
The story opens with a rather too swift condensation of events leading up to Geldof’s conversion from fading pop star to shining campaigner. With barely a change in his perpetually grumpy expression, Geldof switches from haranguing record company executives for failing to sell the latest Boomtown Rats single to challenging Mrs Thatcher for failing to transport the European butter mountain to Ethiopia. The most clunking moment is an attempt to illustrate the exact moment of transition. Watching the news footage of the famine that set him on his quest, director Nick Renton cuts to Geldof’s miserable face as newsman Michael Buerk utters the phrase, “suffering, confused, lost”.
Geldof’s psychological motivation was surely more complex than simply switching his career drive from a selfish to selfless goal. A speech at his old school, Blackrock College in Dublin, comes closer to articulating his rebellious instincts, although it is chiefly memorable for his final line, “Oh s---, did I say f---?” Screenwriter Joe Dunlop’s policy is to mute Geldof’s favoured f-word to less incendiary bloodys but it is still among the most foul-mouthed productions ever to bear the BBC imprimatur.
It is really quite incredible to consider that a famine on the scale of Ethiopia in 1985 would never be allowed to unfold without intervention again, thanks in large part to the belligerent persistence of one man, bullying his way towards greatness. “I’m pushy,” snaps Geldof, when Goldsmith berates him for the umpteenth time. “I push myself.” When it ends with Bowie’s Heroes playing over the credits, you feel like cheering the ordinary heroes behind Live Aid, pushed by this most anti of heroes into achieving things none of them would have dreamed possible on their own.
- When Harvey Met Bob is on BBC Two on Boxing Day at 9.15pm
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