Bob Geldof yesterday announced the “worst kept secret in the world” – the reconvening of Band Aid with acts such as One Direction, Sam Smith and Chris Martin.

Do They Know It’s Christmas? will be rerecorded with a new generation of acts and some veteran stars to raise funds in the fight against the “filthy” and “inhuman” virus Ebola in West Africa.

The Boomtown Rats frontman said that he had been inspired to rerecord the song because of the “phenomenal bravery of the doctors and nurses who volunteered to go out there”.

It will be the fourth time the song – first released 30 years ago – has been recorded, with the most recent effort released a decade ago.

At a press conference in London alongside Midge Ure he said it was not about nostalgia.

“I don’t like doing this stuff. It’s boring organising it,” he said. “It’s embarrassing calling artists you don’t know.”

Listing some of the singers on board so far, Sir Bob said that “giants of the past” as well as “our own contemporaries said that they will come along to the party”.

He called on people to pay for the physical single instead of downloading it, or watching it on You Tube for free. The single will not be available for streaming on Spotify until January.

Sir Bob said that he had written to David Bowie to ask him to “reintroduce the video like he did 30 years ago”.

The original version, a response to the famine which was causing a huge death toll in Ethiopia, was released in 1984 and went on to sell 3.7 million copies and raise £8 million.

The new version will be recorded this Saturday and should be available for download on Monday morning.

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