X-Factor judge Louis Walsh says of fellow Irishman Bono, the world poverty expert:

[Joe Chi Minh]

'What is the difference between God and Bono? God doesn't wander down Grafton Street (Dublin's fashionable boulevard) thinking he's Bono.'

From Ephraim Hardcastle's column in the Daily Mail, the other day.

But imagine if, while Bono was sauntering down Grafton Street, he chanced upon Tony Blair sauntering towards him from the other direction. Would not the resultant reaction be an awesome, cosmic mystery, a kind of CERN experiment with a human face.

[mod mom]

1. Do I detect a little snark in your post, KCabotDullesMarxIII?

:hi:

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Assuredly, mod mom. Bono's joining the board of Forbes was more than I could

take. So my latent snarkiness could no longer be contained.

[TomInTib]

2. That's hilarious. I once saw Bono backstage at the Austin Music Hall

Wearing nothing but a derby hat, smoking a huge cigar, walking around surrounded by four women in bikinis who were all carrying full-length mirrors.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. That's hilarious, Tom. It seems like he's one of those larger than life

characters you can't dislike. I hate so-called "heavy metal" music(?)with a vengeance, but some of those old-style rockers - from what I've heard of them - really were great characters, because you could see that for all their wildness they were really grounded in a good sort of way.

I don't follow the daily fortunes of Ozzie Osborne and his family, but I remember seeing what I think what was probably the very first programme made about them in the US (or anywhere), and being struck by his wonderful-seeming character - endless expletives, notwithstanding. So, when the American people generally took him to their hearts I can't say I was all that surprised. But certainly pleased.

Appearances can be so deceptive. I remember laughing hysterically as this Aussie squaddie in our regiment in Malaysia recounting to me the episode in the Old Testament in which Daniel described to Nebuchadnezzar the composition of the gigantic statue he saw in his dream. The thing was that every other word Hubert (he had a Dutch surname) spoke was an expletive...! To the innocent, all things are innocent. Even now I chuckle at the thought of it. His father was very religious, and he and his brothers and sisters had to read a passage from the Bible, in turns, at every meal. Yet the bizarre thinking is that, in spite of that, now I flinch if I even just close the pages of the Bible too roughly! "Man considers appearances, but God looks at the heart." But I think we often do that, too. Christ often spoke kind of brutally, but "his own" saw through it, could even read him like a book, it seems, sometimes. "I know my sheep, and they know me."

The people we pass daily in the street are like ice-bergs. We see next to nothing of who they really are, but you only have to see or read about our troops in the Middle East for it to dawn on you that the part hidden beneath the surface must often be heroic in its goodness beyond our imagining. Apparently, it's a commomplace that most of them don't fight for themselves, but for their mates, and apparently that is normal among troops in all wars.

[TomInTib]

5. Goodness, that was certainly a journey.

From Ozzie to that incredible last paragraph.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Well, I do digress a fraction from time to time, I suppose.....