LIVE Aid. It was the day that rocked the world. It was a day in which the world’s greatest pop stars (and Adam Ant) led the way to a new consciousness of Third World poverty.

This was a global music event being broadcast to 1.9 billion people, reminding us of the disintegration of Ethiopia while decreeing if we did not offer support and money there was a real chance western civilisation itself would collapse.

Bob Geldof and Midge Ure’s concert creation was Herculean. This idea of the global jukebox was heroic.

But July 13, 1985 was also the day of the ego.

How could a show be produced which called upon the services of so many international-class solipsists - the likes of Elton, Bowie, Quo and Mercury all contained in one large tent – without the day becoming about vain gloriousness, self-promotion?

This incredible adventure into charity donation may have been ostensibly about the harnessing of an incredible talent force and presenting it to the world.

But critics and onlookers realised that perhaps the starving children of Africa were further back in the queue of importance than they should have been.

Dozens of tales emerged of the excesses of the stars; their needs, their huffs, their prickly pomposity and some indeed will be true.

Regardless, and all makes for a perfect backdrop for a television send-up. All of this is perfect for the Sky Arts strand Urban Myths, the comedy strand that features bizarre tales from the world of music and arts, fictionalised accounts of “mostly true events.”

The writer charged with capturing the comedic essence of Live Aid backstage is Neil Forsyth, who created the successful Bob Servant series for BBC Scotland, starring Brian Cox.

Forsyth’s upbeat voice immediately suggests he had a whale of a time recreating the day when the likes of Elton and co bumped egos.

“Yes, it was loads of fun to make,” he says. “Live Aid has about ten famous music industry urban myths and when you speak to anyone in the business about the day everyone has their favourite Live Aid backstage story.

“I felt this (film) was a way to compile a number of them and set the tales against what was an incredibly heroic achievement by Geldof. And we have a really funny, ensemble cast who play the likes of Elton John, Bob Geldof, Midge Ure, Status Quo and others.”

Scots actor Martin Compston plays Midge Ure. “I know Martin and I’ve always wanted to work with him,” says Forsyth. “He now lives in Los Angeles but we were fortunate to be able to grab him when he was in London for the National Television Awards. He was just brilliant and very funny. And when you look at the photos of Martin you can see he looks so like a young Midge Ure.”

The writer adds; “It’s well versed that that there were tensions between Midge and Bob Geldof. And I had a lot of fun with that.”

Not half. At one point in the day, Midge Ure discovers his performance time on stage has been cut by his pal, Bob, whose time on stage, coincidentally, has been increased. Ure takes Geldof to task.

“How long is I Don’t Like Mondays?” the Scot demands. “Eighteen minutes?

“It’s about four minutes,” says Geldof, on the back foot.

“It’s three minutes forty seven,” says Ure, angrily. “Are you going to play it four times?”

“We do have other songs,” says Geldof, sheepishly.

And so the pair go to war. And it’s very, very funny. Just as is the running gag featuring Elton. “This is my favourite Live Aid story,” says Forsyth, smiling. “It turns out that Noel Edmonds was ferrying people to Wembley in his helicopter and one of the people he picked up that day was Elton. But Elton was said to be furious because Edmonds had landed too close to Elton’s house. As a result, the day of Live Aid was said to feature Elton’s non-stop complaining about how Noel Edmonds had ‘ruined his bloody begonias’.”

Forsyth uses Elton’s (alleged) whingeing as a great running gag. And the success of the script indicates why it was easy for Sky Televison to commission the Scot to write another for the same strand.

“I’ve got one coming out later in the year featuring Kelly Macdonald who’s playing Princess Margaret and it tells of her decades-long friendship with Mick Jagger, set on the island of Mustique.

“They are fun little films, and they seem to have a good shelf life, getting watched over and over again.”

Neil Forsyth’s writing career has made giant leaps in recent years. Once a football fanzine writer he moved into sports journalism. But the big writing career break came after he began corresponding with spammers asking for money, creating Bob Servant, a cheeseburger van operative, in the process. The former Edinburgh University Politics graduate’s emails came to form a series of magazine columns, which was then developed into a sitcom.

More recently, Forsyth, who lives in West Sussex, wrote Eric, Ernie and Me, the biopic of Morecambe and Wise writer Eddie Braben. “You can get the actors, because actors like to play real people, if the script is decent” he says of the casting process. “You can get them because you are only asking them to jump in for two weeks of their time.”

Forsyth however is being modest. Big names will only attach themselves to a low budget project if the script is very, very good. Eric, Ernie and Me was a huge critical success – it managed to infuse dark, clever humour into what was a tale of a nervous breakdown and Forsyth came up with a script that dragged the viewer into the world of television writing and refused to let them go.

Not surprisingly, it has led to other commissions. “In recent years I’ve made quite a few one-offs but what the Braben script has done is let me move over to that hour-long drama slot. This is great. It doubles the outlets for your ideas. And now I’ve got a big old list of things in development.” He adds, grinning; “Mind you, you never know which is going to go into production. It’s a question of wait and see. But it’s exciting.”

There have been some disappointments along the way. His Sky Playhouse Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon, based on a apocryphal get together between Taylor, Jackson and Brando was pulled after adverse reaction to the casting of Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson.

However, his other Sky Playhouse, Waiting For Andre, featuring the friendship between Samuel Beckett and Andrew The Giant was screened last year to great reviews.

Forsyth cites luck as having played a part in his career. He was “lucky” when he met a bloke in a New York bar who managed to get his Bob Servant book to Brian Cox. He says he was “lucky” again when it came to the writing the Eddie Braben screenplay. “I happened to stumble across the book a couple of Christmases ago. I was reading books by writers and this Amazon link came up one day; ‘You’ve read that . . . now try this.’ And I did. And I read it on the train into London where I was meeting a producer for a general chat. I told him about it. And we agreed it would be a way to tell the Morecambe and Wise story in a very different way.”

The writer adds; “I was very lucky to come across a very funny revelatory autobiography, a brilliant story that hadn’t been told which offered a backdrop to arguably the greatest television comedy in British history.

“I corralled a lot of good stuff, but it all came out really well. The director was fantastic.”

Forsyth is being modest. He was first to realise the content of the book could make a great film. He had the awareness to pitch the idea. He had the talent to turn the reality into a success.

And if confirmation of his talent to combine drama, laughs and pathos needed underlined it can be seen in the form of Live Aid, which features some great lines.

For example, when the forever moaning Elton hears one more time of the saintly Noel Edmonds and his helicopter efforts his rage takes off. “There’s only one big white chopper allowed in my garden and that belongs to a Scandinavian called Horst!” he bellows.

“Yes, there were a lot of tales to use in the creation of this film,” says Forsyth, grinning.

“But I’d like to think it’s an affectionate telling of the story, set amongst these very big egos.”

Jonas Armstrong stars as Bob Geldof, Rufus Jones as Elton John, David Avery as Freddie Mercury and Karla Crome as Sade,

• Backstage at Live Aid, Sky Arts, Thursday at 9pm, and TV streaming service NOW TV. ADD CAST