Since appearing in the Make Trade Fair Live concert in September 2004, R.E.M. have really got behind the campaign for a reform of global trade.

Michael Stipe obligingly let us drench him in milk for one of Oxfam’s celebrity dumping pics - all the more impressive considering he’s lactose intolerant.

“I smelled like a weird baby for days,” Michael said of the experience. “But the taste wasn’t as sour as that left by world trade rules, which allow the richest countries in the world to milk the poorest farmers in the world dry.”

Michael’s picture appeared on the front cover of The Observer alongside those of the other celebrity participants which helped to double the amount of traffic to the Make Trade Fair website.

Campaigning on the Dutch leg of the REM world tour.

Since then, R.E.M. have generously allowed Oxfam to campaign at all of the gigs on their 2005 world tour, which has helped us get loads of new signatures for the Big Noise petition.

So far we’ve got over 11,000 people to sign up to the campaign at the gigs.

It’s also meant that concert-goers interested about what fair trade means, or how Oxfam is working to improve global trade rules, can talk to our staff and volunteers.

Michael Stipe at the Women on Farms project in South Africa.

On the South Africa leg of their world tour in March, R.E.M. took time out from their schedule to see one of Oxfam’s poverty relief programmes in action. They visited the Women on Farms project in the Western Cape, an initiative addressing the poverty of women in rural South Africa. These women are particularly prone to poverty, as they are often employed on a temporary basis and denied a decent wage and safe working conditions. When they do find work, they are often paid as little as £2.50 a day.