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Wednesday 29 Oct 2014

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When Harvey Met Bob – synopsis

Set between the winter of 1984 and the summer of 1985, When Harvey Met Bob focuses on the extraordinary relationship of Bob Geldof and Harvey Goldsmith as they create the historic Live Aid concert to feed the world.

In October 1984, Geldof's career as a rock star is at a low point. Returning home one evening, Bob and his partner, Paula Yates, watch Michael Buerk's legendary ´óÏó´«Ã½ broadcast from the feeding camps in Eritrea province.

Deeply affected, Bob moves into action. First he persuades a host of rock stars to give their name and talent free to the Band Aid record – "Do They Know It's Christmas?" – which becomes the biggest selling single of all time.

Persuaded to go to Ethiopia to see the famine for himself, Bob realises that he needs to raise much more money to fulfil his promise that "every penny" of the £6 million from the record will go to Africa.

It is at this moment he conceives the idea of a televised global music event – two continents, one concert – to feed the world.

Enter Harvey Goldsmith, the famous and highly respected concert promoter. The sparks fly as two powerful and totally different personalities are forced to collaborate for 10 crazy, impossible weeks, trying to pull off something that no one has even attempted before.

Under normal circumstances they'd have walked away – but Bob and Harvey are held together by stubbornness, by sheer dogged determination and by a shared belief that no one in the late twentieth century should be allowed to die unnecessarily.

The story of those weeks is sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply moving, as Harvey and Bob go from madcap idea and a list of unconfirmed acts, to that Saturday in July 1985 when one-and-a-half billion people watch the biggest televised international charity event in history.

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