U2 frontman Bono is to edit **GUESS WHICH** newspaper for a day to highlight the issue of Aids in Africa

Stats?

Because Britain is essentially a right-wing country. Also, football and smut.

Right-wing newspaper sales:
The Sun- 3,145,433
Daily Mail- 2,439,142
The Daily Telegraph- 901,123
Daily Express- 827,905

how we envy the US media and its famed liberal bias.

-- Matt DC (runmd...), May 5

older people are concerned about asylum seekers, and, often forget the previous days headline. the daily express, luckily, addresses this problem area, by simply repeating its asylum seekers headline, every day.

in the US the readership of major center-left papers exceeds that of major center-right or right-wing papers (judged by conventional wisdom/endorsements). our problem is that people don't read newspapers.

it's teh titties, no?

Haven't actually read any of it.

There is a story that was in yesterday's, about global warming's effect on Africa.

Newsnight last night filmed their afternoon conference. "Not enough milk in my tea. You're fired hahahahaha only joking I make millions a day."

(Ok yes I hope they raise a ridiculous amount of money)

It is good that they are bringing up G8 matters again, in the form of a snakes and ladders type game.

I was thinking latley that I might as well wear Amnesty and CND t-shirts, because at least I would be making myself useful. I suppose the same applies to Bono. Better a useful twat than a useless twat, which is a fairly stark choice, but there we are. Maybe evwen better a useful twat than a useless non-twat.

He is a twat though.

Yes it is 70p, like the Guardian (which I also bought, for the dickie birds poster).

No one would see the pendant though, apart from a very select group of lovely ladies.

"Very sensitive eyes to light"

RED appears to be a way to carry on as normal, but raise a bit of money. But I still haven't read it properly.

http://www.americanexpressred.co.uk

http://www.redphoneattesco.com

Etc.

http://www.independent.co.uk/

But it's much easier to ask poor people to hand over their cash instead.

I'm a witness to this. What can I do?

Twat twat twat twat twat twat twat twat

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/sections.php?section_link=pseuds_corner&

“Trashing a hotel room is purer art than anything I’ve recorded. Consciously or unconsciously, I am creating art to sell it. But I threw pizza all over a hotel room in Amsterdam last week. No one else saw it. Just me and the cleaner. The fact I paid for it means it’s pure.”
MIKE SKINNER OF THE STREETS

None of you are making a very good argument for Bono being a twat (I haven't read the Independant).

1) He's actually called Paul.

2) He's a multi-millionaire who wants everyone else to put their hands in their pockets while he swims in a Scrooge McDuck-style moneypool.

3) The Joshua Tree

4) "May I say without guile, I am as sick of messianic rock stars as the next man, woman and child. I am also tired of average work being given extra weight because it's attached to something with real gravitas, like the Aids emergency. So I truly try to tread carefully as I walk over the dreams of dignity under my feet in our work for the terrible beauty that is the continent of Africa. I'm used to the custard pies. I've even learnt to like the taste of them. But before you are tempted to let fly with your understandable invective, allow me to contextualise. Not for the sake of my vanity, but for the sake of people who are depending on you - the reader - to respond to the precariousness of their lives."

Supposing ... Bono's too annoying to save the world

Charlie Brooker
Friday May 19, 2006
The Guardian

Faced with a photo of a fly-encrusted child, the natural reaction should be to reach out and help. Instead, I start hearing Bono and Coldplay in my head. It's the most mind-mangling act of branding in history. I agree with what they are saying - I just wish THEY weren't saying it. How can I open my wallet while my fists are curled with rage?
Take Bono's special edition of the Independent. It's incredibly annoying. You're trapped in a windowless room with the usual tedious sods who apparently represent British culture, except suddenly they're wearing halos and pulling earnest expressions at you.

The front cover is by Damien Hirst. He's lobbed some clipart together in the shape of a cross. Across this runs a stark headline: "NO NEWS TODAY". You jerk with astonishment. No news? How can this be? Help us Bono! We don't understand! Then you spot the footnote: "Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease." You nod sadly. But before you can truly contemplate this harrowing injustice, you note that Damien Hirst's name appears on the cover not once, but twice - and suddenly the footnote takes on an even more tragic dimension. Because all those people died, yet Hirst still walks the Earth. You turn the page, weeping.
Inside lurk about 2,000 adverts for the new Motorola RED phone. If you buy one, an Aids charity receives an initial payment of £10, followed by 5% of all further call revenues. This is clearly a good idea. But somehow, it's also annoying. For starters, the phone costs £149, of which £139 goes toward helping Motorola. Second, it's bright red and seems doomed to appeal to arseholes who want to add conspicuous compassion to their list of needless fashion accessories. I'm not just jabbering mindlessly on the phone in your train carriage - I'm saving fuckin' lives, OK?

Page 11: a piece of artwork by renegade graffiti artist Banksy, who has defaced a wall in Chalk Farm with a picture of a hotel maid. It's called Sweeping It Under the Carpet and "can be seen as a metaphor for the west's reluctance to tackle issues such as Aids in Africa" - or another example of Banksy's tireless self-promotion; take your pick. Banksy says the maid in question "cleaned my room in a Los Angeles motel ... she was quite a feisty lady". Presumably his next portrait will depict some poor minimum-wage sod, cleaning graffiti off a wall in Chalk Farm. Provided they're "feisty" enough to appeal to him.

On it goes, with one Bonoriffic chum after another: noted philanthropist Condoleezza Rice picks her top 10 tunes (including one by U2); Stella McCartney interviews Giorgio Armani, who has designed a pair of sunglasses for the RED charity range. These cost around £72 and will make you look like Bono: buy a 10 quid pair from Boots, bung the remaining £62 to an Aids charity and not only will you enjoy a warm philanthropic glow, no one's going to shout "wanker!" at you when you walk down the high street.

In summary: it's a worthy cause, rendered annoying - and that's annoying in itself. Bono genuinely cares, cares enough to risk ridicule, which is more than most people would do, myself included. It's just that, well it's bloody Bono, isn't it?

I think the point of this RED thing is to get money out of people who are not yet "on side", hence the emphasis on very expensive goods and services that have intrinsic twat appeal. To get these people to cough up, it has to be appealing in a way that sticking your hand in your pocket is not. I suppose this is where Bono being a twat becomes quite useful.

Second, it's bright red and seems doomed to appeal to arseholes who want to add conspicuous compassion to their list of needless fashion accessories.

Surely we can see beyond the annoyance to the usefulness of getting £10 off an arsehole? And Brooker's article is just another example of one paper slagging off another, which is of interest only to the papers themselves.

I forgot to read Condi's top ten.

please produce the massive list of multi-millionaires who use their own money to help sort Africa out...tho of course they wouldn't be multi-millionaires anymore if they did do that. the real reason people think Bono is a twat is because he does more than them for these causes whilst having #1 hits (with rubbish songs) at the same time.

I still want him to raise the money though.

xxpost

so who's carrying on this tradition today?

i don't think Bono is humourless. everything else seems correct but still easiest, laziest target ever.

(srsly: how d'you mean, final week?)

Hey it's a Bono thread after all...

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/bono/2006/05/by_bono.html

Wow, that's some seriously expired ReddiWhip he's sucking down.

xpost - did you read the comment where someone attacks him for that?

"I WISH I didn't have to do this. I WANT to return to my rock star life. I want the limos and martinis."