The drummer who played both Live Aids in one day

Live Aid ran on two stages an ocean apart, and Phil Collins decided to be on both of them. At Wembley in the mid-afternoon he played Against All Odds and In the Air Tonight at the piano, then joined Sting for a duet. A helicopter took him from the stadium to Heathrow, where Concorde, the supersonic airliner that crossed the Atlantic in about three and a half hours, was waiting. Cher was on the same flight, and it was Collins who told her there was a concert worth turning up to in Philadelphia. She did.

With the five-hour time difference working in his favour, he landed in New York, took another helicopter to JFK Stadium, and walked on stage in Philadelphia in the evening to play the same two songs to about 100,000 people. Then he stayed on to drum for Eric Clapton, and for the first Led Zeppelin performance since John Bonham's death in 1980. That reunion was ragged, under-rehearsed and later disowned by the band, but the fact that it happened at all was down to a drummer who had been in London that morning.

The broadcast had followed the whole journey, cutting between the two stadiums as it went. It was the moment the day's engineering became visible: one concert, two continents, and a musician acting as the physical link between them.