More comic relief for Bono?
As an example of a wealthy celebrity prone to bizarre outbursts, consider Sir Bono.
Perhaps the best-known, and certainly the loudest among them, is U2′s Bono. His efforts have won him an honorary British knighthood, no fewer than three Nobel Prize nominations and the adulation of Tony Blair. Yet one of Bono’s most significant outbursts – rude, heckling and laden with expletives – took place away from the world’s TV cameras at a small conference it [sic] Tanzania recently.
Bono had been enraged by a Ugandan writer called Andrew Mwenda, who was presenting a powerful case that international aid, far from helping lift Africa out of poverty, might in fact be the very cause of its troubles.
Even the suggestion that this might be the case sent ‘Saint’ Bono into a foul-mouthed rant, accusing Mwenda of being a comedian rather than a serious contributor to political debate.
For his own sake, then, one can only hope that the pop star never comes face to face with the author of an incendiary new book. Called Dead Aid, its very title is a bitter mockery of that great institution and celebrity bandwagon, Live Aid.
To find out more about Dead Aid by African economist Dambisa Moyo, click here or here.