Over 1.5m apply for British Live 8 tickets

The 'text lottery' for tickets to the London Live 8 concert began this morning. The concert, which is part of an international music bonanza taking place across North America and Europe, is planned to coincide with this summers G8 summit in Edinburgh.

Organised by Bob Geldof, the series of concerts are being held to raise awareness about Africa among young people. This is in contrast to the original Live Aid concerts which were more focused on raising money for Africa.

This evening a spokesperson for Live 8 revealed to the media that by 17:00UTC this afternoon, over 1.5m text entries had been received. Those hoping to win one of the coveted 150,000 tickets, are asked to text the answer to a simple question to 84599. The question is Which city is nearest to the G8 summit in July? A) Berlin, B) Moscow, C) Edinburgh. Texts cost £1.50 each and winners will be randomly selected on the 12th June by a computer. The first £1.6m of proceeds from the competition will be donated to the The Prince's Trust.

The lineup for the London concert is as follows:

U2

The Rolling Stones

Paul McCartney

Coldplay

Madonna

Sting

Robbie Williams

Dido

Elton John

Keane

Annie Lennox Mariah Carey

Muse

Scissor Sisters

Joss Stone

Stereophonics

REM

Velvet Revolver

Bob Geldof

The Killers

The Cure

Snow Patrol