as "a biblical famine in the 20th century" and "the closest thing to hell on Earth". The report featured the nurse Claire Bertschinger, who had to choose which children would receive the limited amount of food at the feeding station and who were too sick to be saved. The reports shocked the UK, motivating the British people to inundate relief agencies, such as Save the Children, with donations. The Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof and his then-partner, the television presenter Paula Yates, watched the broadcast on 23 October and were deeply affected by it. Geldof said about Bertschinger: "In her was vested the power of life and death. She had become godlike, and that is unbearable for anyone." On 2 November, Yates was in the Tyne Tees studio in Newcastle upon Tyne, where she was presenting the weekly live music show The Tube. Among the acts performing were Ultravox, promoting their greatest hits album The Collection. The singer, Midge Ure, was chatting to Yates in the dressing room when Geldof called her. Geldof had worked with Ure at the 1981 charity benefit show The Secret Policeman's Ball. Geldof asked to speak to Ure and told him that he wanted to do something to alleviate the suffering in Ethiopia. He and Ure arranged to discuss ideas over lunch the following Monday, 5 November, and decided to make a charity record. Geldof began recruiting musicians. He called Sting and Simon Le Bon, who agreed to participate along with the rest of Duran Duran, and recruited Spandau Ballet after a chance meeting with the band's guitarist Gary Kemp at an antiques shop in London. Geldof said: "It suddenly it hit me. I thought, 'Christ, we have got the real top boys here', all the big names in pop are suddenly ready and willing to do this... I knew then that we were off, and I just decided to go for all the rest of the faces and started to ring everyone up, asking them to do it." Further phone calls from Geldof also secured promises of everybody involved in the record's making to provide their services free of charge. Other contributors included UK music magazines, which donated advertising space to promote the single; Geldof's record label Phonogram, which released the single; their parent company PolyGram, which distributed it; and the artist Peter Blake, who created the single's sleeve. Composition Geldof and Ure's biggest