Has Christmas come down to this?

24 years ago, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote a song called 'Do they Know it's Christmas'. They got together a whole crowd of friends (calling themselves collectively Band Aid) from the British pop scene to make a record and a video to raise money for famine in Ethiopia.

It succeeded, it was a massive hit, lots of money was raised and the project went on to inspire many more charity events and music releases.

This year, some thoughtless idiot at the BBC has taken the song and used it for the trailer for a comedy show. It has made me furious every time the trailer has been shown for the last two weeks.

I have no idea if the royalties are still going to charity, I hope so, because the use of the music in this way is just totally tasteless and inappropriate.

There is only one bright tiny spark and that is that anyone else who remembers what that music originally signified just might stop and think that all these years afterwards, we still have people starving in Africa. We still have wars and we still have poverty on our own doorsteps. We should be ashamed.

Charities always suffer in a recession, but if someone shakes a charity tin at you while you are out doing your last minute shopping, please, please don't turn the other way. Your few pennies might make all the difference to some good cause this Christmas.

And, please, if you hear 'Do They know it's Christmas' on your radio or in a store, don't just sing or hum along mindlessly, spare a thought for what it meant then and still means now. Maybe in another 24 years we really will have made a difference.