At each of the 27 concert dates in the US over the last two months, he has made a direct pitch to audiences of more than 50,000 fans to sign up to the US One campaign, telling them: "My first experience of America was watching Neil Armstrong on the moon. America looked like a place where anything could happen. That's what we're asking Bush - to bring mankind back to earth. We have the technology, we have the resources and the knowhow, but do we have the will?"

...The rock star tells his American audience in media appearances from the Oprah Winfrey show to interviews with Bill O'Reilly, the outspoken commentator for Fox News, that the "stupid poverty" in which thousands of Africans die every day from a mosquito bite must be the cause of this generation, just as civil rights was the cause of an earlier generation.

Bono points to a number of breakthroughs in American policy on Africa as signs that his campaigning is paying off. The US signed up to the 100% debt relief package agreed last weekend at the G7 finance ministers' meeting in London. He also cites the fact that aid to Africa has nearly trebled under George Bush and the US in 2003 initiated a $15bn (£8.2bn) five-year programme on Aids.

He was personally credited with the dramatic public U-turn on Aids of Jesse Helms. "Christ only speaks about judgment once and it's not about sex but about how we deal with the poor, and I quoted Matthew, 'I was naked and you clothed me, I was hungry and you fed me.' Jesse got very emotional, and the next day he brought in the reporters and publicly repented about Aids. I explained to him that Aids was like the leprosy of the New Testament."