The head of yesterday's march.
Photograph: Neil McIntosh
With a global audience somewhere north of 3.5 billion of the world's population (depending who you ask), this Sunday's splashes were never in doubt since the moment Bob Geldof first announced his revival of the Live Aid concept on June 1.
"The greatest comeback gig ever seen," declared the Sunday Times, ignoring the other papers' predelictions for shots of Bob, Madonna or the Hyde Park crowd for a shot of a young concert-goer with her arms aloft.
For AA Gill, the paper's chief colour writer, the music itself seemed to reflect the difference between the naive certainties of 20 years ago and the more nuanced approach of this year's eight conscience-raising concerts: "The atmosphere ebbed and surged – a reminder that a lot of modern pop music is introverted and uncertain, frankly a bit depressed. In 20 years the huge hand-clapping anthems have changed into being quieter, finger-wagging, with more questions than answers."
Not just that, but multinational corporations – in the form of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates – have gone from being "the well of the problem to the source of the answers", according to the flagship Murdoch title.
The Independent on Sunday – long used to devoting its front pages to Africa – takes its cue from U2's opener in Hyde Park, describing July 2 as "A Beautiful Day". But proclaiming himself "the heretic", music journalist and Blair-baiter John Harris asks if the Live 8 London gig, with its giant screens and Hyde Park setting doesn't put readers in mind of that other "watershed event", the funeral of Diana, princess of Wales. Expanding on this seemingly blasphemous point, Harris says Make Poverty History has been inflated to "such a huge, consensual, supposedly historical proportions" that the "Diana syndrome" has kicked in – before admitting to being what Coldplay's Chris Martin called a "knob head" for being so cynical.
Turning to the inside pages, away from yesterday's celebration and to the summit itself, the Independent on Sunday hosts a first-person piece by one of the least expected voices on the G8 climate change agenda: the Californian governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. "The Terminator" tells his British readers that his state "had long been a leader in environmental protection". Seemingly on a collision course with his own president, a fellow Republican, he calls on governments everywhere to heed the words of John Muir, "an immigrant from your country who launched America's conservation movement here in California, who once said: 'When one tugs at a single thing in nature he finds it attached to the rest of the world.'"
The tabloids have no time for such navel-gazing, focusing on London and Edinburgh as they lap up and revel in yesterday's worldwide solidarity for Africa. "Just Gr8" proclaims the Mail on Sunday in its souvenir edition. TV critic Craig Brown casts his eye over the day as it appeared on the BBC, where, despite the "bizarre and unsettling juxtapositions – videos of dying children as backdrops for top 10 hits and multimillionaire rock stars delivering lectures on poverty … but for all this, at the heart of the event was something undeniably powerful." The Sunday Express just introduces its 19 pages of coverage (plus free poster) with the words "Job done Sir Bob."
The Scottish press are understandably torn between splashing on the Hyde Park and Live 8 gigs around the world and their own contribution in Edinburgh.
Unfortunately, despite the turnout of 225,000 in the Scottish capital wearing white to encircle the castle on their march, no aerial photograph seems to have captured the 3pm moment when the human white band formed itself.
Instead the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday settle for colourful pictures of placard-carrying activists, with the former staking a claim to the moral high ground by a bold masthead declaring that 50p from the sale of each copy of the Herald – half its £1 cover price – will go to help ease suffering in Africa.
The SoS, as it is known, turns to the counter-protest by a "70-strong group of foreign anarchists" who were hemmed in by Edinburgh riot police and photographed after a coach window was smashed and "smash the system" graffiti sprayed on another bus." Anarchists riot, but peace wins the day" concludes the paper. In the end, yesterday's near quarter-million people march in Edinburgh resulted in just one arrest – for a drugs offence.
The international press mostly relies on an Associated Press report of the Make Poverty History event. But Los Angeles Times's report on yesterday's Edinburgh march quotes Kenyan healthcare worker Chege Wanjihia: "We want fair trade — no more subsidies for American and European farmers ... We don't want handouts. We're tired of handouts."
Reporting from the Canada Live 8 concert , the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno praises the sincerity of Live 8's performers and attendees. But noting that there were "unforgivably few African performers on any of the lineups", she quotes Mighty Popo, from Burundi, a member of the group African Guitar Summit: "Think of the nations that have helped make Africa poor ... now we look to these nations for help."
The Chicago Sun-Times praises One, a US campaign similar to Make Poverty History. Celebrities have given a crucial lift to the profile of the campaign, writes Mike Thomas, adding: "Really, who wouldn't rather heed Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks than the friendly neighborhood meter maid?"
That view of celebrity-endorsed charitable works is not shared by all in the African press. "A pity Cinderella wasn't invited to the party," reads the headline of Edwin Naidu's coruscating review of the Johannesburg Live 8 in South Africa's Independent Online. "The concert conjured up the begging-bowl image of Africa with a lacklustre line-up," he writes. Reflecting on the legacy of the 1985 Live Aid concerts, he says: "The major beneficiaries of Live Aid were not the starving in Ethiopia but the fat-cat rock stars who got fatter ... It is hard to take the likes of Bono seriously when his luxurious lifestyle is so far removed from the suffering of millions of Africans he and others claim to care about."
