Abbey Aid

As the name suggests, Abbey Aid was originally designed as a fundraising project to help see Cambridge United F.C.

through a tough economic situation that had existed for many years, but came to a head in the summer of 2005, when debts escalated to an unmanageable level forcing the Club into administration.

Due to the club's precarious financial state preparations for the concert progressed at an extraordinarily fast rate considering the total lack of experience of the organisers in this field; logistics were arranged, local acts booked and a headline act found in the shape of pop artist Natasha Bedingfield.

However, just when the concerts seemed to be heading in the right direction, the unlikely stumbling block of world poverty halted progress.

With the G8 summit at Gleneagles scheduled for the week following the concerts, the nation's media had focussed on the growing campaign to focus these talks on ending world poverty, and taking this lead Bob Geldof et al. had organised a series of concerts around the world under the banner of Live 8 for the same weekend as Abbey Aid.