Editing Live Aid (section)

== Fundraising ==
Throughout the concerts, viewers were urged to donate money to the Live Aid cause. The BBC operated three hundred phone lines so that members of the public could make donations using their credit cards. The phone number and an address to which viewers could send cheques were repeated every twenty minutes.

Nearly seven hours into the concert in London, Bob Geldof enquired how much money had been raised so far; he was told about £1.2&nbsp;million. He is said to have been sorely disappointed by the amount and marched to the BBC commentary position. Pumped up further by a performance by Queen, which he later called "absolutely amazing", Geldof gave an interview in which BBC presenter [[David Hepworth]] had attempted to provide a postal address to which potential donations could be sent; Geldof interrupted him in mid-flow and shouted "fuck the address, let's get the numbers!" Although the phrase "give us your fuckin' money!" has passed into folklore, Geldof has said that it was never uttered.<ref>Geldof, Bob. ''Live Aid'' DVD.</ref> ''[[Private Eye]]'' magazine made great humorous capital out of this outburst, emphasising Geldof's Irish accent, which meant the profanities were heard as "fock" or "focking". After the outburst, donations increased to £300 per second.<ref>Fred Krüger (2015). "Cultures and Disasters: Understanding Cultural Framings in Disaster Risk Reduction". p. 190. Routledge</ref>

Later in the evening, following David Bowie's set, a video shot by the [[Canadian Broadcasting Corporation]] was shown to the audiences in London and Philadelphia, as well as on televisions around the world (though neither US feed showed the film), showing starving and diseased Ethiopian children set to "[[Drive (The Cars song)|Drive]]" by [[the Cars]] (this would also be shown at the London Live 8 concert in 2005).<ref>{{cite web |first=Alexis |last=Petridis |date=4 July 2005 |title=Berated by Madonna, rocked by Robbie, stunned into silence by images of famine |website=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jul/04/live8.popandrock |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305112952/https://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jul/04/live8.popandrock |archive-date=5 March 2016 |url-status=live |access-date=6 September 2020}}</ref> The rate of donations became faster in the aftermath of the video. Geldof had previously refused to allow the video to be shown due to time constraints and had only relented when Bowie offered to drop the song "[[Five Years (David Bowie song)|Five Years]]" from his set as a trade-off.<ref>{{cite book |first=Keith |last=Sharp |date=2014 |title=Music Express: The Rise, Fall & Resurrection of Canada's Music Magazine |publisher=[[Dundurn Press]] |isbn=978-1459721951 |page=131 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CTiSAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA131}}</ref>

Geldof mentioned during the concert that the Republic of Ireland gave the most donations per capita, despite being in the midst of a serious economic recession. The largest donation came from [[Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum]], then the son of the ruler of Dubai, who donated £1m in a phone conversation with Geldof. The next day, news reports stated that between £40 and £50 million had been raised. It is now estimated that around £150 million in total has been raised for famine relief as a direct result of the concerts.