Favourite son: Ireland rallies round Bono

With Bono's moon-june/peanut butter-was a nutter Elvis poem about to find a slot on Radio 4, the wackily-eyeclad one's work has come in for a bit of a lashing.

But today is his birthday, and as a special present, The Irish Independent has rallied up some experts to stick up for Bono as a lyricist:

"Bono has written his fair share of bad lyrics, but when he gets it right his words really stand out. Look at some lines from 'Ultra Violet (Light My Way)': 'When I was all messed up/ And I heard opera in my head/ Your love was a light bulb/ Hanging over my bed.' That's so evocative and works as beautiful writing away from the music. It can stand on its own on the page and, of course, it's even more effective when accompanied by the music."

Although given that's the opinion of Scott Calhoun, who is organising an international U2 conference, it's the admission that there's a "fair share" of bad lyrics which really stands out.

Calhoun -- who has to contend with the bemused reaction of his academic peers when he talks about U2 -- is not afraid to criticise Bono's less inspired moments. "I don't think he works on his lyrics in the pain-staking manner of people like Dylan or Lennon. Often, they change at the last moment and sometimes his words can come across as lazy or very silly. I mean a line like 'some days you can't stand the sight of a puppy' from 'Some Days Are Better Than Others' is pretty difficult to defend."

Yes, the Irish Independent did hyphenate painstaking in that curious way - as if the lyric is something on which you would gamble pain, rather than the more usual "something with which you would take pains to get right".

The most interesting part of the story, though, is this:

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail greeted news of Bono's recitation with unbridled hostility. "Why is the BBC so in love with Bono when he's a dreadful old hypocrite?" Thursday's headline screeched. And Mail journalist Christopher Hart offered his own poem: "Bono in your sunglasses, even when it rains/ Bono in your private jet while the rest of us take trains/ Bono with your tax affairs safely overseas/ Bono, oh will you shut up, please." The poem's title? Bono: Irish Twit. Readers of the paper's Irish edition won't have been able to sample Hart's poetic attempts: it was only published in the UK.

Only the Mail could actually be hypocritical about calling someone a hypocrite.