For some years now I’ve been assiduously preparing for a dotage spent randomly swearing at people on the TV. BBC Four gave me plenty of opportunity to practise over the weekend. They showed a flawed but very interesting documentary on the history of Irish music. Martin Hayes, a man who has recorded some utterly indispensable Cd’s revealed himself as an insightful commentator on the changes in Irish music. This almost allowed you to forgive him a hairstyle that Louis XIV would have thought a bit too flamboyant. There were superb clips of Willie Clancy, the Bothy Band and Planxty. Then it got to 1978 and showed Bob Geldof playing a festival and shouting at the audience “one day I’m going to be really, really rich”. He got that right. He could have gone on to say “and I’m going to be one of those tiresome people who always pontificate on TV clip shows” or “I’m never going to record anything you’ll want to hear twice” or “I’m going to be an all round celebrity millionaire tosser”. He has achieved all these things and much more.
More than Bono he always represented to me that middle class Dublin attitude that pretended to find what was happening in the North some irrational tribal feud. Even his hostility to the Catholic Church managed to make an organisation dedicated to covering up child abuse attractive. Live Aid was nothing but the worst sort of paternalistic, millionaires’ charity. As for all his great campaigning and swearing at Tony Blair what has it achieved other than a knighthood?As for Bono I’ll only refer readers to this piece Not One Red Cent – Bono’s Bullshit by Dave Marsh on the Socialist Democracy site. But to answer my rhetorical question in the title I found myself using more and stronger swear words when Geldof was talking. A funny thing was that Riverdancer Micheal Flatley got me shouting too and I know nothing about him. What does that mean?
Geldof or Bono? Who's the bigger ars*hole?
For some years now I’ve been assiduously preparing for a dotage spent randomly swearing at people on the TV. BBC Four gave me plenty of opportunity to practise over the weekend. They showed a flawed but very interesting documentary on the history of Irish music. Martin Hayes, a man who has recorded some utterly indispensable…
2 responses to “Geldof or Bono? Who's the bigger ars*hole?”
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I suspect even before the Greeks philosophers discussed this kind of problem, and they had a special word for it. One of those faintly interesting things in the abstract, but fantastically difficult in the concrete.We can put a man on the moon, and that kind of stuff, but still are nowhere near a satisfactory answer to this riddle. Perhaps we could call it the “Geldorf/Bono Problem” but unfortunately the arses would think it was some kind of tribute to themselves.
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That fu*king wa*ker Geldof was in Belfast today, opening the new Queen’s University students’ union and he couldn’t help himself mouth off some faux platitudes about the current political situation in the north. Fu*k off! What was worse was that the students endorsed this fu*ker’s mouthing. He just can’t help himself. Wa*ker! Forgive the language but he (and that big-head fu*ker Bono make my blood boil).
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Liam redux 
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