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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
Entertainment
Sandra Mallon

Christy Dignam thought Bono was an a**hole when he first met him

In 2019, Christy Dignam revealed he thought U2 frontman Bono was an a**hole when he first met him.

Back in the 80s, Aslan performed for Bono in the hope of getting a break from him.

But Christy said that after the meeting they felt “fooled” by Bono.

READ MORE: Aslan's Christy Dignam praises pal Bono's bravery for revealing he has a secret half brother

And said at the time he felt he “had a great aptitude for saying nothing.”

“Back then, I thought he was an a**hole. We had our run-ins over the years.

“When we were starting off we had a thing called Mother Records.

“Their remit was they were there to help young Irish bands who were after being shafted and fu***d around by other record companies, English record companies. And to give them a leg up and all that.

“We had gone through all of that so we are the epitome of what Mother Records stands for.

“So we were to meet him (Bono) in the dockers. We were to meet him at 12 o'clock.

“Myself and Joe (Jewell) flew into the dockers for 12 o'clock to meet him and we were sitting there.

“One o'clock, they're not there. We're ringing his office. "He'll be there in a minute,"(someone replies). Half one, two o'clock... I'm f***ing fuming by this stage.

“So he walks in there (and says) "do you want a sausage sandwich lads?" I was going to batter him with a sausage sandwich.

“We played him our song This Is which turned out to be our first single.

“We played it for him and he kind of gave us this kind of spiel.

“So I was all buzzing and we left and Joe says to me: ‘What will we tell the band?’

“And I (just) thought ‘he was after bullshitting us there for the last hour, he's after telling us to piss off’.

“But we kind of walked out thinking he was after giving us something.

“In fairness to Bono, I love his music, but he has a great aptitude for for saying nothing.

“‘That's what happened that day. He talked and talked, and got us buzzing but actually said nothing.”

But the pair became friends later in life, with Christy praising Bono – saying people don’t realise that the Dubliner never takes himself too seriously.

“He’s just this guy from Finglas, who grew up and became famous. What I admire as well is first of all, I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves because no matter what he does – and people say he’s this and he’s that – but he does a lot of good and he’s done a lot of stuff that people don’t know about. He put Ireland on the map in the music world.

“To be successful in any shape or form is really hard. To sustain success is almost impossible and you look at them and they are on top of their f****** for 30 odd years, that is an incredible achievement.”

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