WHERE THE SONGS HAVE NO PRICE

Somebody offered Bono and U2 twelve and a half million to use Where The Streets Have No Name on a commercial (who, we wonder? Nike? Microsoft?) and the band turned them down, which might have been a honourable and wise thing to do, were it not for Bono deciding to seize this opportunity to tell us all about how honourable and wise he had been:

"We almost did. We sat down. I know from my work in Africa what £12.5 million could buy. It was very hard to walk away from £12.5 million.

"So we thought, `We'll give the money away.' But if we tell people we're giving the money away, it sounds pompous. So we'll just give it away, and take the hit. That's what we agreed. [Although, actually, not having twelve and a half million, and then still not having twelve and a half million is not taking a hit, as you're not losing anything, apart from the opportunity to get that much publicity]

"But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it. So the idea that when we played it, people would go, 'That's the such-and-such commercial,' we couldn't live with it. Had it been a cool thing, or didn't have a bad association, or it was a different song, we might've done it."

This is a really nice piece of mediawork by Mr. Bono - he's getting all the kudos for not giving USD12.5 million to charity. And we all get a little extra chance to look at how pure and good he is.

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