Back when I saw U2 in 1981, going out at night in Belfast was a risky thing to do. It wasn’t uncommon for loyalists to grab anyone they thought was a Taig, kill them and dump them in an alley. I got a couple of kickings on the way home, one of which resulted in me attending a conference of British radical youth the following week with a black eye and stitched head. 

Anyway, I’m lucky. There could be an alternative reality where Bono introduces a song about “Liam. He loved rock and roll. He loved U2. He loved tax efficiency and the Israeli army.” 

The day after the show I bought a signed copy of Boy, the first U2 LP. In my defence, you never know what you are going to discover about people. The first LP I ever bought was Gary Glitter Live at the Rainbow. Boy sat untouched in an LP box for the subsequent decades because it’s not very good, but I appreciated that a signed copy of the first Irish pressing probably made it desirable to someone somewhere. 

Bono, or Mr Bongo as Frank Zappa thought he was called, is a man who divides opinion. There are some who think of him as a sanctimonious performing monkey who grovels to the rich and powerful, but others argue that he’s a sanctimonious  tax dodging, Free State, IDF loving *****. The truth probably lies somewhere between.  

It struck me that there was money to be made out of Bono and I was advised to send the LP off to be valued by an auction house. They told me that it was worth in the region of at least £600. It seems things like this become worth a lot more when the artist kicks the bucket, but ever since he did that “this is not a rebel song” thing I have greeted the death of every half decent musician with “and yet Bono is still alive.” I’d reached the limits of my patience.  

For all his performative handwringing about peace, Bono and his band use a company which is involved in the eradication of Gaza. An Irish paper citing Forbes reported that “when U2 live-streamed parts of its North American tour via a trendy new app, that the firm behind the innovation was Israeli company Meerkat, who also supply the Israeli military machine.” He is profiting from the dispossession and slaughter of Palestinians. 

£600 turned out to be a very conservative estimate for the sale of an artefact which is tainted with Palestinian blood. I’m dividing the money between Medical Aid for Palestinians, Palestine Action,  Just Stop Oil and a couple of other beneficiaries who don’t need to be named. It is a Christmas gift from Mr Bongo.  

If you click on the link for the U2 Belfast set list you will see that they played in the McMordie Hall. It was named after a Belfast industrialist whom James Connolly singled out as an exploitative employer. Bongo’s kind of guy. My minor contribution to Belfast history is that I proposed the motion at the students’ union to get it changed to the Mandela Hall. If Bongo had been born a white South African, he would probably have considered Mandela a terrorist.