Do you like facts? Well it just so happens that we have one that will not only enlighten your day, but that of your friends and family.

Take Bono’s name and remove the b, n and one of the o’s. With the singular o add a G in front of it and the letter d after the o. What does this give you? A complicated sentence and the word God.

You see this is what Bono is, God. He is able to do anything. From releasing crap record after crap record to saving the world, Bono does it all! After whoring out U2 to Apple and the iPod campaign, he has now turned to bloody Blackberry.

There are a few errors in this clip. Let us point them out:

1 – There isn’t a choir of African children singing the chorus to the song in the advert in their native tongue. You’d think they’d be thankful for the U2-branded iPod’s and Irish-grown potatoes.

2 – Those circular balls of light should be replaced with bullets, let’s see him dodge those. That’s just to prove he’s superhuman.

3 – It isn’t possible for a gathering of that size for people to see U2. Yes, we know morons congregate in numbers, but there can’t be that amount of people who like U2. From the advert, you’d assume every Irish person had to attend a gig as part of national service.

With Bono dragging the band into more advertising, we’d like to propose our plans for a U2-based advert. Using our new and exciting mobile phone, we aim to launch the product ’shit for brains telecommunication device’. Here, we have launched something so simple that even a pensioner could navigate the handset with ease.

The campaign is simple. We need a celebrity to munch on a plate of poo, replacing their human brains for poo. We should bloody go into advertising. Bono, can you help us out?

In news which people who like music are describing as “Oh God, really? That’s just awful, is there any way we can stop this? A petition or something? Anything?”, U2 have announced the details of their upcoming tour, during which they are expected to play U2 music while singing U2 lyrics. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then we can only assume you like drinking tea made from poison ivy leaves, with skunk sperm instead of milk and cat dander instead of sugar.

U2 are terrible, is what we’re saying.

Made your summer holiday plans yet? If not, you might want to wait a day or two, because U2 are about to give advance warning of where they will be, and when, over the next eighteen months. And if there’s one thing worse than being in a city full of French people, it’s being in that city while knowing that at any moment Bono’s limousine might go speeding past, and that if the windows aren’t tinted enough you may catch a glimpse of his wizened face looking at you with undisguised disgust, as though you were punching a kitten.

Believe us, we’ve been there. And we had to take our eyeballs out and boil them in bleach for an hour to get rid of the image.

It’s been a funny start to the year for U2 news, with the leaking of their new album, their involvement in a musical about Spiderman and their decision to make a reggae album. We suspect they may be going a little bit crazy, actually; there can be no other explanation for this bucketload of horsewank from The Edge, as told to MSNBC:

“There’s such a special thing that goes on between the band and the audience at a U2 show, and we never get tired of that. It’s like a kind of semireligious experience for the band, and I think for the audience, too.”

Yes, U2 believe that watching some middle-aged pubrockers jump out of a giant lemon and then nonce around on stage for a couple of hours is on a par with being overcome by the awesome majesty and supreme love of God. We would disagree, and suggest that it is in fact on the same level as having a cheese grater rubbed across your brain while the Miami Dolphins punting team holds a practice session with your testicles.

But The Edge goes on:

“For a lot of people it’s the soundtrack of their lives.”

There are people for whom U2 is their life’s soundtrack? If that were us, we’d be sticking little twigs down our ears, trying to pull our eardrums out. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

Although if we were on a sinking boat and were told that, oddly, the only way to stop ourselves from drowning was to invite U2 on board, we’d be slashing the lifejackets with a stanley knife, grabbing hold of anything heavier than water and leaping over the side.

U2 are rubbish, do you see?

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If you’re in the second group, start digging your bunker now. It’s been reported that U2 aren’t content to limit their experimentalism to simply releasing grammatically-incorrect concept albums about footwear – they’re bringing out a reggae album soon, too.

A terrible idea, we know, but it’ll be worth it when U2 tour. You don’t see 50-year-old Irish midgets follow up impassioned IRA songs by saying “This next song’s called Demma Bad Bwoi Duppy Man Ting (Irie Pussyclot Ting),” too often, do you?

Look, we started this short-hair Bono thing for a bit of fun – we said that when Bono’s got long hair U2 release best-selling anthems about the enduring hope at the core of the human condition, but when he’s got short hair they release crap that sounds like it was stolen from an EMF B-side – but it’s becoming clear that the whole thing’s got beyond a joke now.

The first sign was U2’s Get On Your Boots single, in that it sounds like a novelty grunge cover of We Didn’t Start The Fire and that Bono’s look for its promotion seems to be based on Johnny Vegas‘ dad. And then we found out that the U2 Spider-Man musical wasn’t the cruel wind-up that we suspected it to be.

But now? Now we’ve really entered the world of nightmares. Previously the worst of U2’s zany excesses involved emerging onto stages through giant glittery lemons, but now they’ve shot so far past it that it’s unreal – U2 have recorded a reggae album. And, get this, they’re actually going to release it. News Of The World reports:

It’s a Beautiful Day when I can dish out the biggest goss from inside the U2 camp – the boys have secretly recorded a brand new reggae/dub album. The supergroup recorded the album in secret during the sessions for cracking new disc, No Line On The Horizon, and they’ll unleash it onto the world at the start of next year.

You know what this means. It means that U2 have run out of ideas to such an alarming extent that they’ve now been reduced to ripping off Paris Hilton. What an upsetting state of affairs.

But, come on now, let’s not make this news make us too depressed, shall we? Dwell on the thought of Bono poncing around a stage in a dreadlocked wig singing about Babylon and Haile Selassie and correct dutchie-passing etiquette in a borderline racist Desmond’s accent for too long and you’ll probably end up hurling yourself under the nearest train.

Because there are positives to this as well, you know. For instance, since dub reggae isn’t really known for its lyrics, there’s a pretty good chance that the new U2 album won’t feature Bono prattling on about his shimmering cities of uplifting emotions like a weird Gollumy mid-life crisis motivational speaker too much.

And, best of all, once U2 have released this album people can start to go back to not liking them very much again. And thus the world restores its balance.

Read more:

U2’s Secret New Album – News Of The World

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The U2 Spider-Man musical is happening. Despite being the weirdest thing ever been announced, the Spider-Man Broadway musical – with music by U2’s Bono and The Edge – will open in New York next January.

That’s right – the Spider-Man musical is by Bono and The Edge. But don’t worry about the other two – Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr will be debuting their new Condorman musical next February outside the Basingstoke branch of Clinton’s Cards. At 4am. Drunk.

Dear God, this new U2 album is going to be worse than anyone could have possibly imagined. As we’ve already stated, No Line On The Horizon is a short-hair Bono album – which means there are less uplifting songs about shimmering cities and more woeful dirges that sound like We Didn’t Start The Fire but are exclusively about footwear. But this short-hair Bononess goes even deeper.

It also extends to members of U2 writing songs about superheroes. The last time U2 did this, they wrote Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me for that cacky Val Kilmer Batman film and it was horrible. And now they’re at it again, this time putting together an entire Broadway musical based on Spider-Man.

This isn’t news in itself – we reported on the U2 Spider-Man musical back in 2007 – but what is news is that a) the thing actually exists and wasn’t just a cruel prank to drive the weak-minded to the brink of suicide and b) it’s going to open on Broadway in less than a year. Really. Newsday reports:

With new music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge, and direction by Julie Taymor (”The Lion King”), “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” will begin previews Jan. 16. (The subtitle is the name of one of the show’s songs.) Members of the creative team include choreographer Daniel Ezralow, set designer George Tsypin (”The Little Mermaid”) and costume designer Eiko Ishioka (opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics).

Wow, this Spider-Man musical is going to be spectacular. We don’t know about you, but the costumes were the best bit of the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony. Not the million drummers drumming in perfect synchronicity. Not the bit where the man ran around the side of the stadium with a flaming torch. Not the bit with the magical floating dust that formed a giant version of the Olympic rings. The costumes. If we could remember what they looked like, we’re sure they’d be ace.

Anyway, the Spider-Man musical is going to be one of the most expensive in history, so there’s a chance it’ll be a major success and go on to be U2’s enduring legacy, like Mamma Mia is for Abba. Who knows, it might even equal the success of Mamma Mia and get turned into a Mamma Mia-style movie.

After all, if we have to remember Bono at all, we’d like it to be by the way he had a bunch of his hokey songs absolutely massacred by Pierce Brosnan’s foghorn voice. It’d be better than Spider-Man 3, anyway.

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Paul McGuinness, U2’s manager, has been crying angry little tears in recent days, as all his careful planning for his band’s new album’s spolier-free release has been ruined by… well, by whatever kind of deviant it is who would not only spend time and effort trying to obtain pre-release files of a U2 album, but would then want to infect innocent peoples’ ears with it.

Sicko.

Hecklerspray dreams about making the world a better place. Homelessness, for example, solved by inviting everyone with nowhere to sleep to spend the night huddled together in Gordon Ramsay’s facial crags. The pain of poverty eased by allowing each of the world’s poorest people thirty seconds to suckle on Salma Hayek’s titties.

This last one came true recently, and we may be about to score again. Our dream where U2 are forced into penury – and have to scavenge through our dustbins trying to find some scraps for their tea – has taken a step closer to becoming fact. And happily, it’s the people that love them most who are causing the impending catastrophe. Sweet!

U2’s latest album – we would’ve looked for the title, but were afraid that just reading it might cause our eyeballs to jump out of their sockets and run away screaming – has found its way onto filesharing websites and has, in news we can only describe as ‘making us weep for the human race’, been downloaded 100,000 times.

This despite unprecedented high security which included: moving the mastertapes around in armoured cars, allowing any single journalist to listen to just three notes from each track then sealing up their earholes with molten lead; and throwing would-be thieves off the scent by employing hundreds of toothless old men to put on fake Irish accents and oversized sunglasses, and wander the country at random.

How could such hardcore security have been breached? The Sydney Morning Herald reveals all:

Full CD-quality copies of every song on U2’s upcoming album, No Line On The Horizon, have been leaked on to the web after Universal Music Australia accidentally put it up for sale on its online music store two weeks early. The album – U2’s 12th – goes on sale on March 3 but it was available to download for a brief period this week on getmusic.com.au, run by Universal Music Australia. Universal Music Australia did not respond to calls asking how the track went up for sale early.

Probably because their executives were chained up in The Edge’s basement while Bono gibbered and shrieked at them like a rabid monkey, and The Drummer and The Bassplayer stood around looking a bit sheepish about the whole thing.

Call us hard-hearted (Really, go ahead. It’s a congenital condition), but we won’t be shedding tears when U2 find themselves penniless through the actions of their own fans. In fact, it would amuse us hugely if Bono was reduced to knocking on front doors in Africa, asking for ‘just a cup of rice. Come on, I gave you that massive sackful in 1985, remember?’

This is only the second time we have ever been amused by U2-related nonsense. Please, be upstanding for Mr Partridge.

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Hey hang on a minute! U2 already are basically a group of old men repeating themselves time after time! Well that’s our opening line buggered up, then. Anyway, if you want to see U2 even more decrepit and creatively strapped than they already are, then you’re in for a treat – U2 are never splitting up. Ever.

It’s true – The Edge said so. And you shouldn’t doubt a man named after a horticultural barrier, because that’d be stupid.

These are testing times for U2. Their new album No Line On The Horizon marks a serious departure for the band, because Bono’s had his hair cut for it. And that’s risky. Honestly.

People knew where they were with long-hair Bono – uplifting lyrics, songs that all sound like much-worse versions of Where The Streets Have No Name and iPod commercials. But short-hair Bono? Jesus, that’s much worse. That’s songs with no melody, giant glittery lemons and – gulp – artistic exploration. We know. It’s horrifying.

But that’s what No Line On The Horizon is – a short-hair Bono album. That’s why new single Get On Your Boots sounds like an unholy mix of We Didn’t Start The Fire, this song and U2 when nobody liked them. And it’s why people have started speculating about when U2 will split up.

Actually, that’s a gigantic lie. Nobody has started speculating about when U2 will split up, but the News Of The World asked The Edge about it anyway, probably because it was trapped in an awkward social situation with him, and asking about U2 splitting up is marginally more polite than blurting out “Why do you always wear a hat, The Edge? Is it because you’re a BLOODY SLAPHEAD?”. Anyway, this is how The Edge replied:

“If Bono was ever going to leave U2 he would have done it years ago. We’ve got too much music left in us anyway.” Afterwards The Edge — real name DAVID EVANS — spoke about their new album, No Line On The Horizon. “We’re so proud of the latest record,” he beamed. “It’s the best music we’ve ever produced — definitely back to U2’s roots this time.”

Of course Bono’s not going to leave U2. That’d be ludicrous – not only would most employers take a dim view if presented with a CV that included ‘Going “doo doo doo” on an advert for an MP3 player’ and ‘Having a made-up name’ but also, in The Edge and The Other Two, Bono has chanced upon the only three people in the world who don’t feeling like punching him square in the face after a spending a couple of seconds in his company.

So without a split in the foreseeable future, it looks like we’ll all get to look forward to the day where U2’s stage performance involves Bono hobbling about like Old Man Steptoe and… oh, wait, we’ve confused the future with the present again. We did see The Brits last week, after all.

Read more:

No Split On The Horizon – News Of The World

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It may not have happened yet, but we can’t see it being edgy, cool or vaguely risky. The show goes out at 8pm, leaving today’s young pop stars with an entire hour to swear before the watershed kicks in.

Just over a week ago, we watched the Grammys which quite frankly overshadowed the entire Brits ceremony. Not only did the Grammys have a million categories where nearly everyone can win, but we don’t expect there to be any pre-show scraps like the alleged one between Rihanna and Chris Brown. Unless someone attacks Chris Martin with a pack of streaky bacon.

Hosted by Kylie and the two blokes from Gavin And Stacy, we’ll no doubt see references to their own show multiple times during the Brits. Well, that and Kylie putting on her best fake smile when she doesn’t get all the references towards Cumberland sausage.

Its shame really that M.I.A couldn’t keep her newborn child inside her belly for an extra week. How selfish of how to boost the Grammy ratings with a potential live birth. Poor Fearne Cotton would have been perfect to follow the event live on a special ITV2 show. Imagine her mopping up M.I.A’s broken waters and getting the first interview with the child.

Coldplay, Duffy, Elbow, Radiohead and The Ting Tings have all been nominated for best British album. This strikes us as nothing short of an amazing feat for Radiohead to be nominated. Not because it’s a rubbish record, but their In Rainbows album was released in 2007. It became downloadable in October and physically went on sale in December. Perhaps the organisers didn’t want to nominate Estelle in case she did a wonky dance as an acceptance speech. Or maybe everything else released last year was utter gash.

We’d go through each and every nomination, but to be honest it’ll be a waste of your time. Despite winning the Mercury prize, Elbow will win bugger all, Coldplay will sweep the board and make cheesy acceptance speeches and Take That will have to do with their music being used in supermarket adverts.

But what about the entertainment on the night? Who is going to perform at the ceremony and no doubt see their record sales/downloads rise dramatically the next day. Make sure your socks don’t blow off, because the following people are going to be singing and messing up dance routines. Coldplay, Duffy, Estelle, The Ting Tings, Pet Shop Boys, Girls Aloud, Kings Of Leon, Take That and bloody U2.

Yes, U2 are going to be providing us with a performance with their latest single in an attempt to get more people to like it and get over its strange title. We don’t know if Bono plans to spice it up with some visual imagery of dying children, topped off with a speech about how economically fucked we are.

Each year, the ceremony honours a band/artist who in the eyes of the BPI has contributed outstandingly to music. This year, synth-based techno duo The Pet Shop Boys get the dubious honour. With fifty million sales behind them, we can’t really argue with how successful they are. At least they kept Simply Red out for another year.

Will someone turn up drunk at the ceremony? How many swearwords will be uttered? Who’ll balls up their acceptance speech and fall off the stage? No-one knows! Tune in to ITV from 8pm tonight to see the supposed best of British music being celebrated.

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Great, the day America gets its first black president is also the first day you’ll hear an annoying Irish tit with a Napoleon complex scream “Let me in the sound” again and again. Oh U2, you’re spoiling us. Literally.

U2’s new single is entitled Get On Your Boots – it’s taken from a concept album about things Yoda would say if he worked in a shoeshop. Other songs include Not In A Ten Size These and Interest In A Shoehorn You Sir?

You might not realise it, but U2 haven’t released an album for five years. That’s because U2’s promotional cycle for an album involves releasing the album, touring it solidly for three years, appearing on adverts for iPods going “Doo doo doo” like some sort of self-absorbed milkman, releasing a special deluxe edition of the album with a couple of B-sides and a DVD of the tour on it, going on Entourage, making up a charitable cause and arranging an all-star concert to raise awareness of it, bringing out yet another Greatest Hits collection and then suing someone for the fun of it.

Therefore, although U2 haven’t brought out an album for five years, they’ve only really been away for, ooh, about 12 days. But the good news is that U2 are BACK!

In fact, U2 aren’t just back – they’ve changed direction. Yesterday U2’s new single Get On Your Boots got its first radio play by our old friend Dave Fanning. AP reports:

For decades, U2 has given Irish broadcaster Dave Fanning first dibs to broadcast its singles. Fanning — a friend of Bono since U2’s Dublin rise in the late 1970s — led his morning RTE 2FM show with the song, which he praised as “a big song with lots of layers, but not overproduced.” The “Get On Your Boots” single goes on sale Feb. 13 in Ireland and shortly thereafter worldwide.

It’s true – Get On Your Boots marks a dramatic change of direction for U2 after their last two albums. Those albums, of course, ripped off U2 when they were popular and had long hair, and Get On Your Boots rips off U2 when they were less popular and Bono had short hair. Take a listen for yourself…

Actually, you know what? We quite like Get On Your Boots. Not because it’s a good song or anything, but if U2 have started plagiarising Achtung Baby then it means their next album will plagiarise that album where they all started hanging out in big glittery lemons and everyone stopped liking them. And frankly that moment can’t come too soon.

And if that’s not enough, once U2 have got Get On Your Boots’ parent album out of the way, then they can get on with that Spider-Man musical of theirs. Surely nobody will be able to like them after that. Surely.

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Bono and the other members of U2 have been threatening to release No Line On The Horizon for a while now and finally they’ve delivered the bombshell with a March 19 2009 release. Is one new release bad enough? No, Bono has to be an extravagant twat and release it five bloody times.

Of course this isn’t a move designed to fill the bands pockets with enough cash to enjoy a lifetime supply of potatoes and Guinness. No, surely releasing the same product five different times is a celebration of all things U2 and a test to see who’d actually buy the same crap again and again. Think of it as an intelligence test without having to work out which funny shape connects the pattern.

Once people either download it illegally or stump up some cash for the bog-standard CD version, what’s going to be so special about the new album No Line On The Horizon? We have some suggestions of what we’d like to see included with the album. You know, just so Bono and the rest of his merry band of rockers can disappear further up their own arses as they rejoice together for pushing the boundaries of album packaging and superfluous additional extras.

For £20 extra, an interview with the band’s creator Larry Mullen, Jr. It would be nice to hear what he thinks. As we all know, Bono just takes over all conversation and namedrops his mates such as the Pope and Bill Clinton.

For £40 extra, a replica copy of Bono’s magical sunglasses. Maybe we’ll be able to tell if they source his power and make him act like the moron we know and love.

For £100 extra, a used hat from The Edge.

Whilst we know they’d go down stupidly well with the legions of U2 stalker fans, it seems that their record company don’t see things like us. As the NME reports, the additional three versions aren’t anything like ours:

“The digi-pack version offers the full album along with a 36-page booklet, a fold-out poster and a downloadable film by Corbijn, featuring the music of U2. A magazine version of the album comes with a 60-page soft cover magazine-style book, along with the Corbijn film as a download. The most excessive of the five releases is the box set, which features a 60-page hardback book, a second poster and a DVD version of Corbijn’s film.”

Oh wow! A poster! Something that’s printed on paper! For hours on end, we can stare in utter awe at a picture of bloody U2. Who would have thought a band would ever think of releasing pictures of themselves in moody looking poses as they stand against a backdrop of a beach, coffee shop or burning car?

And a U2 magazine? We shudder to think what crap they’ll use to fill 60 pages with. Perhaps loads of photos of their faces with captions like ‘We are brilliant’ ‘Feel the love’ and ‘Don’t eat Irish pork’.

Whatever the case, we at least know of one album that won’t feature in our 2009 best-of list. If we wanted to listen to the older generation babbling on about non-important issues, we’d check into an old folk’s home. At least there they might have cool stories about war and stuff.

Starring himself and a whole host of people who appeared solely to boost their ‘caring profile’, Bono told us that ‘every time I and my mates click their fingers, an African child will die’. There was, of course, a simple solution to this: stop bloody doing it – don’t abuse your weird powers.

Aside from his world-saving duties, Bono likes to occasionally rock out with a little known Irish band called U2. Though named after some awful text speak, critics are saying the band could someday be big, if Bono himself were to shut up telling everyone off all the time and dictating to us, the lowly public, what we should do in life to save the universe.

Thankfully some people want to stop Bono bleating on and have launched a petition to stop him. We’re not sure how they intend to stop him, but hopefully it won’t be by freezing him. This would, of course, leave the possibility open for him to be thawed out in 3000 years. Imagine the unfortunate luck for the poor sods then. And would Bono be able to operate a flying car?

Let’s face it: if God wanted the planet to be saved, he would have enlisted the help of someone by now. That someone would most likely be Captain Planet. Remember that bluey-green git? He probably made an appearance at your school when you were little, though you probably missed him due to being sick from evil smoke fumes. Failing that, you watched him on TV doing battle against smog from Middlesbrough, greenhouses gases and those plastic rings from beer cans that fish stupidly get caught in.

It would seem, however, that the time hasn’t yet arrived for a green haired bloke to save the world from warming up and making sure polar bears don’t fall in to the sea, or get loose on the Lost island.

So why has Bono decided to do Captain Planet’s job for him a bit prematurely? Well the answer is simple: when our young Irish lad was watching Cap’s cartoon, he somehow fell over and bumped his head, which clearly triggered some sort of mental illness, making him take on impossible tasks and annoy thousands upon millions of people. ‘Bonoitis’, possibly.

According to the NME, the catchy sounding petition “Bono – retire from public life and we’ll donate a ton of money to fight AIDS” has been launched on thepoint.com. The aim and objectives of this crusade are as follows:

“To get Bono to retire from public life (so he’ll stop leading misguided counter-productive philanthropy efforts) and, simultaneously to make a huge donation to fight AIDS.”

Ace – that’s a win for everyone then. Bono gets to bugger off and do some crap records, while at the same time bundles of money get thrown to AIDS charities. But is everything that easy? Of course it isn’t. Despite raising a small amount of cash so far, which is sure to grow, the money will only be donated depending on the success of the campaign. We’re presuming that ’success’ is nothing less then actual retirement from the public eye for Bono.

Hmm… if it’s that easy to start online petitions then exciting and crazy thoughts are going through our heads. We’ll donate our weekly lunch money total to anyone who can persuade Chris Morris to come in from the wilderness and make us laugh again. Because lets face it, people like Lenny Henry make us want to cry and burn down Premier Travel Inns.

Sign The Petition If You Want:
Make Bono History

After all, there are so many other things like U2 could be doing, like saving Africa or ending poverty or halting climate change or having a lovely bath or paying someone to mash their food up in a bowl for them or dicking around Dublin in silly hats.

But no. Instead U2 have signed a deal with Live Nation. A 12-year deal. 12 years. 12 more years of U2. 12 cocking years of U bastard 2 flying around the world and being all smug and singing their rubbish songs. Thrilled. Seriously.

Rude bastard, that Bono. Bono was Time's Man Of The Year a while back and he's been given an honorary knighthood. But neither of these were for his music, because any old sod can rhyme 'fly' and 'high' and 'sky' and wear a pair of fancy sunglasses. Instead Bono won these awards for literally being the only man on the planet who ever does any good stuff or helps people or understands the poor. Literally.

So if you were Bono, wouldn't you consider it rude to have to stop literally saving the world from evil and poverty and destruction and badness every few years to get together with U2 to record a bunch of songs that all mostly sound the same and then jet around the world singing them over and over again while the world literally gets noticeably worse because you're not literally holding it together with your fingernails?

Actually, it doesn't matter what you think because thankfully there's only one Bono around, and that's Bono. And Bono obviously doesn't consider it rude to neglect the world while he tits around with U2 because U2 have just signed a 12-year deal with Live Nation. BBC reports:

Irish rockers U2 have signed a 12-year deal with concert promoter Live Nation to handle the band's merchandising, digital and branding rights… U2 will continue to release records through Universal Music. "We've been dating for over 20 years now," said singer Bono. "It's about time we tied the knot." Live Nation has managed U2's tours since 1980.  Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. "U2 are doing their best work right now, on record and in concert," said the band's manager Paul McGuinness. "The opportunity to integrate U2 and Live Nation's vision of the future is a great extension of our established business."

Think of how old you'll be in 12 years. Maybe you'll have children by then. Maybe, if you've got children, they'll have moved out of home. Maybe you'll be promoted, headhunted, demoted, fired or diagnosed with a horrible illness by then. Maybe there'll be a war, or a flood, or an asteroid attack. You'll almost certainly be balder. But at least now you know that there'll be a constant. A tiny Irish constant that wears sunglasses indoors and keeps banging on about Africa and releasing records that sound identical to the last album it released. U2 will be your constant. What a shit constant.

More worrying, though, is the emerging pattern from Live Nation. First it takes Madonna – an artist who everyone thought was on the brink of retirement – and gives her loads of money to keep performing for another decade. And now it's done the same thing with U2 – an act who've already been together for 32 years. Live Nation, we're warning you now – if you so much as think about talking to Bon Jovi, we're going to really be rather upset.

Read more:

U2 sign 12-year Live Nation deal – BBC