The night a superstar met my mam

I caught some snippets of Gerry Ryan's funeral this morning via rte.ie.  I was struck by the dignity of the service and the lack of pomp and ceremony that surrounded a man, who I for some reason had in my mind as one of arrogance and smugness.  I now realise I may have reached this assumption based on edited snippets of him on TV I had seen in my teens that coloured my judgement, meaning I never really took to the man.  On reflection, and having heard those close to him and who loved him speak of him in the past few days I was obviously only privy to the bravado and not the loving family man and friend.  However I digress, the point of this post arose when the revered Bono sang via some form of technological link up from New York.  Now maybe it is just me but I thought he over did it a bit, dragging the end of the song out with lots of oooh oooh oooohing in high notes and the like, but he is always a bit of an arse in my mind.  Hearing him sing however brought to mind a funny memory for me.  Where am I going with all of this you are probably saying to yourself, I shall tell you without further ado.

About 10 years ago now, on Christmas Eve, I was sitting at home with my sister.  My eldest sister may have been there too but I only remember there being the two of us in the sitting room.  So there we were in our new Christmas Eve jammies, Mr Boo and her husband (we were both still only courtin' at the time) had been sent off home to wrap our pressies and we were a buzz of excitement at the prospect of Santa's impending visit. 

The phone rang and my sis picked it up.  She always answered it, she's the chatty one and I'm the family mute you see.  On the other end was what seemed to be a manic woman speaking in a hushed whisper.  It was in fact our mam who was at a Christmas Eve party and had excused herself to the bathroom but was in fact in the bedroom making a sneaky phone call.  Friends of my parents were holding the party in question in a salubrious suite in a very nice Dublin hotel.  Whilst people were mingling at the bar or around the Christmas tree, mam and her friend took up residence in the adjoining bedroom to ring her girls to share with them some gossip that just wouldn't wait until she got home.  The following is a rough transcription of the conversation that followed: (I would like to apologise in advance for the bad language and just state that my mam wasn't really one for swearing except the occasional use of the F word)

Loud whisper, "Hello, hello.  Can you hear me?"
Sister, "Yes mam, what's wrong?"
Loud whisper, "I'm in the bedroom so I can't talk too loudly in case anyone hears me"
Sister, "But mam there's a party in the other room, who is gonna hear you?"
Loud whisper, "You can never be too careful with these things.  Are you both there, can you both hear me?"
Sister gestures me over, "Yes mam, we're both here, we can here you".
Me, "Hi mam, are you having a nice time?"
You see, had I not spoken she would have asked for confirmation I was there and that I could in fact hear her, so I thought I'd save her the trouble.
Loud whisper, "You'll never guess who's here?"
Holy sweet mother of Jesus, never play a guessing game with my sister, it could go on for all of eternity if you didn't interrupt her with the correct answer.  She is the type of person that if you start a conversation with "you won't believe what happened to me today", she will continue to interrupt you with various ridiculous scenarios at 5 second intervals.  That's when the guessing began.  Thankfully my mam hadn't time for this so she cut her off fairly quickly.
Loud whisper, "Bono, Bono is here, and the other fella, what's his name?"
In unison, "Bono, seriously?"
Loud whisper, "Yeah, Bono.  And the other fella."
Me, "The Edge?"
Loud Whisper, "Yeah, him."
In unison, "Wow, what are they like? Oh my God, I can't believe we're not there with you!"
Loud whisper, "Well your man Bono is a bit of a w***** really."
In unison, and in complete disbelief at the shocking language that has just left our mothers mouth, "MAM!"
Loud whisper, "What? He is, you wanna see the way he shook my hand, you'd get a better shake off the queen, and the size of him.  No, he's nothing but a w*****.  Thinks he's great he does, swanning around.  The other fella is alright."
Silence at our end at the revelation that our mam was spending Christmas Eve in the presence of half of U2 and that she was branding Bono with the W word.
Loud whisper, "Have to go, someone's coming." Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppp

So there we were, two fine young things (in our minds anyway) sitting at home in our flannelette pyjamas, our mam out partying with rock stars.  We waited up for her and my dad to return home that night and she again confirmed the above and would not be swayed on her opinion of him.  My mam didn't tolerate nonsense in anybody, regardless of wallet size or public standing and it would seem Bono was no exception.  Rightly so in my opinion.  He might sing a nice tune, and he might have raised a few million here and there for charity but if you can't do a decent hand shake and lower yourself to share a few civil words with the mere mortals on Christmas Eve well then you just didn't cut the mustard with my mam and were regarded as nothing but a w*****.

I had the pleasure of meeting them a couple of years later and can confirm she was in fact correct about Mr Bono, but The Edge was completely charming and lovely and I have not since washed my left cheek *faints dramatically at the delicious memory*.