Listen to what Geldof had to say (mp3)
Bob Geldof arrives in Edinburgh today. Photograph: Sean Clarke
As is the way of things in Edinburgh this week, the 3.50pm Virgin arrival that brought Bob Geldof to the city was welcomed by a lone bagpiper playing Scotland the Brave and a five-piece Ghanaian drum band. Some would say it was the best music Geldof made a public appearance to.
The Live 8 organiser is here to promote the anti-poverty's final push to the Gleneagles summit. Part of that is another Live 8 concert for 40,000 people in Murrayfield stadium featuring James Brown, the Corrs, Bono and Neneh Cherry.
The Newsblog team - armed with a minidisc recorder and Olympus digital camera - was outranked in the media scrum by the boom mics and television cameras of relative bit-part operations such as Reuters, Sky and the BBC. Our question went unanswered.
We did, however, overhear him describe this week's G8 summit as the first that was really "serious". He said the US and Europeans were squaring up for what could be an "interesting political match" following George Bush and Senator John McCain's offer to do away with their internal subisidies if the EU did away with its.
"Look at George Bush's rhetoric," Geldof began, "where he said he had watched the concert all day, said it was the greatest act of mass advocacy he had ever seen. The following day - and this was after he announced an American doubling of aid - he began talking about trade.
"Its not all about trade - its about debt, it's about aid - but none of those really will work unless you get an end to export subsidies and tariffs."
Geldof was then escorted away from Waverley station's platform 21 by his handlers. He strolled off wearing off-white canvas shoes (see them here) that looked to be marked by red wine stains. The drummers and bagpiper followed on behind.
