Was it any good?  Well, even from the back where there was not so much atmosphere it was enjoyable, but I think the whole thing could have been streamlined a bit. You could have fitted just as much awareness-raising and entertainment into a shorter time span than 10 hours.

There was a lot of dead time. TV viewers may not have noticed, as these were opportunities to switch back to Jonathan Ross for some interviews, but in the field there was a lot of time spent doing nothing. It is only a combination of it all being for a good cause and being free that prevented a lot of restlessness.

The root of it all must have been the need to dismantle equipment and set up for the next act, combined with the number of acts and the shortness of their sets.

In one way the short sets had advantages. It enabled artists to go out and do their best or most popular songs. It was like seeing a whole day of encores in a way. It also meant that if you didn’t like someone you would not have to put up with them for too long.

The disadvantages were that nobody really got a chance to stretch themselves in time slots which were as short as five minutes, and that shorter sets lead to proportionately more time spent on the logistics of getting the next band ready. Just do the maths. If it takes 10 minutes to revolve the stage and be ready for another act, and each act performed for 10 minutes then 50% of the time would be dead time. If, on the other hand acts all played for 20 minutes then only 33% of the time would be dead. Extend it to 30 minutes for each act and the dead time goes down to 25%.

Having fewer artists would have helped. But another idea would be to have a ‘house band’ or a band acting in that capacity. They could do some of their own songs then have guests come on to play with them – like the Freddie Mercury tribute concert or The Last Waltz, or like Coldplay did with Richard Ashcroft. You could leave one band on for an hour and have several guest artists do a song or two in the middle of it.

Singers like Dido, Annie Lennox and Sting could have performed their songs with a house band.

Having a taller stage would have helped a lot too. What is the point of having a stage ‘the height of 5 double decker buses’ if the artists are still performing a couple of metres above the ground level in a flat field?

Apart from the onstage frustrations, the rest of the organisation was very impressive. I saw no police in the enclosure at all, with any enforcement carried out by stewards. The toilets were reasonable (although I only visited them near the beginning).

The range of facilities was not bad, and not particularly over-priced compared to the rest of London. Ice creams and teas were no more than they are outside. Given the nature of the event it might have been better to have more fair trade products instead of a Tetley Tea wagon but I’m sure there were practical reasons for that.

Obviously the choice of artists is personal. You can’t really say that one band is better than another in any objective terms. You could criticise the inclusion of Annie Lennox and Sting as being for sentimental reasons rather than any relevance to today, but then Sting put on a good show that we would have missed if I had been in charge. Likewise UB40, who I think performed well even though I would have left them off. But how anyone can justify bothering to set up the stage for a band to play a single song, as The Killers did, is beyond me.

Overall the mixture worked well. I hope a lot of people were as pleasantly surprised by Snoop Dogg as I was by UB40. I doubt if Velvet Revolver or Mariah Carey won over any new fans – if anything I was put off Velvet Revolver. I had been looking forward to seeing them, but was greatly disappointed.

If anything I think the organisers were far too pre-occupied with making the London show the biggest concert, with the largest audience, widest variety and biggest line-up of stars on paper to think about the practical implications for the average punter in the park.

Thats what you get from having the event organised by idealists, but then if Bob Geldof was not such an idealist it would never have happened in the first place!