Sound track to our lives - 'Just for one day'

As I write this review of the musical 'Just For One Day', I must declare several important things.

Taken together they probably invalidate any opinion I have on the subject of this blog. But bear with me.

Firstly, I'm not keen on the theatre.

Particularly, my tolerance of musical theatre is not great. For example, we walked out of Hamilton at the interval. A musical so successful that it grossed a billion faster than any show on the planet. So there was a distinct possibility that I would title this review "Just For One Half".

Then I need to point out that on the actual day of the live aid concert in 1985, I caught a plane with friends to Crete. To celebrate finishing my medical degree and to escape from Live Aid madness sweeping London.

At the time, even as a white entitled man, I thought Band Aid's Feed The World Xmas single was ill considered when it came out. Then to add insult to injury it shot to number one ahead of Wham's Last Christmas. I was, of course, mildly gutted at the time. Possibly the most uncool admission I've ever made. I have made a few.

To understand this review you do need to be aware of another random embarrassing fact about me. Not long after Live Aid, I found myself in floods of tears during a harrowing episode of Neighbours, when Kerry Bishop died. My bar for tears has been remarkably low ever since then.

But I do clearly remember Michael Buerk's harrowing piece on BBC news from Ethiopia in 1984, that moved me and a nation. The same piece that lead to the Fuckmeister Bob Geldoph telling us to give him our fuckin money. And I was in awe of anyone who could stand up to The Thatch.. Mrs T was in full 'feed yourself at the expense of all others' mode at the time.

Link to YouTube clip

Band Aid was a clever title because they were explicitly stating that this was their sticking plaster only. Any real change to save the world from starving would have to come from politics. I guess we are still waiting.

Fast forward to 1997, and this champagne socialist was skiing courtesy of Mark Warner in Val D'Isere. Right on comrade. We met The Small family. Jake was their three year old lad, the same age as my son Fred and one of their three children. For over a decade the Smalls and the Watts hung out, on holidays and socially we were very close, the kids learned to ski as effortlessly and fast as we learned to drink the dreadful Mark Warner red wine.

Forward to 2025, Jake now grown and married is a successful West End performer. Today he opens in this newly returned Live Aid based musical at The Shaftesbury theatre.

Tonight is the opening night of 'Just for One Day'. On 13th July this year it's exactly forty years since Live Aid. We are at the opening night, not having really given a thought to what it would be like. Or how such a musical could navigate all the negativity that the past four decades of increasingly wokeism has thrown on Bob and Midge's greatest work.

Another caveat. If you ever confused Harvey Weinstein with Harvey Goldsmith please read up before attending. Goldsmith appears to have been a good guy.

Then I do need to add some additional things before I get to my review. Bob Geldof is a brilliant man, but his lyrics with Midge Ure were rapidly written and even at the time they must have soon realised that 'Well, tonight, thank God it's them instead of you' was not their finest choice of words.

In defence of this show, when you write about an event that has suffered criticism over the years, you do probably need a way to tell the story that recognises that criticism. Forty years ago was a very different world.

I was impressed how they dealt with this issue. By staging the show across the intervening forty years, a modern teenager questions the effectiveness of the Live Aid movement, allowing Bob Geldoph to acknowledge that they have neither fed the world nor eradicated war and famine but at least they fuckin' tried. Then finishing with Bob asking the converted Gen Z'er to try her best to pick up the baton and build a better world. All this, in today's weird woke world, was necessary to allow the show to get on with its purpose, to entertain.

(What a shame that an innocent and wonderful trip down memory lane has to justify its existence so much.)

To end this lengthy introduction, I would also add that obviously I have no qualification to write a theatre review.

By now, I hope you are at least vaguely interested in what I thought.

I thought it was fuckin brilliant.

In fact I gave it my highest musical accolade. I stayed to the end. I did cry. I also laughed, a lot.

So, give it your fuckin' money.