Biggest concert since Live Aid as tsunami toll reaches 250,000

For once the words of "You'll Never Walk Alone" echoing round a sports stadium had some resonance beyond the merely feel-good.

For once the words of "You'll Never Walk Alone" echoing round a sports stadium had some resonance beyond the merely feel-good.

Sung by 70,000 voices in the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, yesterday at the start of a huge Live Aid-style concert for survivors of the Christmas tsunami, they carried through the cold night air the message that £1m would be raised.

Every penny will be needed. The numbers of those who perishedwill exceed 250,000, it was learnt yesterday, making this one of the eight deadliest disasters in history. It was the scale of this horror that inspired 3,000 people working behind the scenes to assemble in weeks a concert that would normally take months.

It opened with Katherine Jenkins, who was followed by Eric Clapton, Jools Holland, and Lulu. The £1.2m raised will add to the £200m already given by the British public ­ an unprecedented response reflected in the joint Independent and Independent on Sunday Appeal, which has so far collected nearly £3m.