THE greatest show in earth began with a little nagging guilt among well connected friends. It’s a guilt that has lasted 20 years.

When Richard Curtis, the comedy writer, watched Live Aid in 1985, he was with a group of friends in the garden of his cottage in Oxfordshire.

They all agreed that they should chip in £50 each to satisfy Bob Geldof’s famous demand to “give us your f****** money”. One friend wrote a cheque for £50 and sent it off.

However, like many people caught up in the euphoria, the others never quite got round to it and let the pledge slide. The memory has lingered with Curtis, author of movie hits such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, ever since.

After visiting Africa and being deeply involved in organising Comic Relief, he saw first hand the depths of poverty. Over the years, flashes of that concern surfaced even in his light-hearted work.

His romantic comedy Notting Hill, for example, opened with the main character, played by Hugh Grant, talking to his flatmate.

“Could you help me with an incredibly important decision?” asks the flatmate.

Grant replies ironically: “This is important in comparison to, let’s say, whether they should cancel Third World debt?” So when the 20th anniversary of Live Aid was approaching, Curtis was intent on doing something more concrete — and through films, friendships and charity work he had all the connections necessary.

He decided to take a year off to work for charity. Last November he was sitting in his £4m Notting Hill home with Bono, the U2 singer, discussing how they could drum up publicity for the new Make Poverty History campaign with which they had both become involved.

Bono mentioned the success of Live Aid, where bands such as Queen brought the music and the message alive, and Curtis seized upon it. There was, however, one big obstacle: the man who had inspired Live Aid, Bob Geldof.

As they discussed how to approach Geldof, the original concert had not had such a high profile for years. A newly released film of Live Aid was at the top of the music DVD charts.

To mark the 20th anniversary of Band Aid, a new version of the song Do They Know It’s Christmas? had been recorded by some of the original stars along with newer additions. But Geldof had decided against another concert — partly because he thought that all the work would fall on him.

It was not that Geldof did not still care passionately about Ethiopia. He had even telephoned Tony Blair while the prime minister was at a G8 summit in Evian, France, in June 2003, to press him to take action.

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