Hot air for U2

The BBC and U2, eh? Hand in glove, they go. I can’t say I was surprised to find a pretty meaningless article on the BBC frontpage all day which described how the frontman of Talking Heads had bitched a little about U2’s lavishly funded world tour. The article can’t decide if it’s the obscene costs of the tour, or its obscene carbon footprint that’s the problem. But it gives the Edge the chance to say “We’re spending the money on our fans”. Awww. The biscuit, however, is taken by the video that accompanies the article. Though cynical, I was expecting it to show some interview of a sort regarding the criticisms. Not a bit of it; it was instead a more or less promotional music video.

They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In this case, even the title emphasised Bono’s boys as victims rather than culprits: “U2 brand green criticism ‘unfair'”. I’m tempted to call it free publicity on our national broadcaster, but I rather think that it’s a question of backscratching after U2’s “impromtu” concert at BBC headquarters earlier this year. In any case, most irritating.