Page 7 - Barry Egan News Today

His Satanic Majesty? To paraphrase Monty Python, Mick Jagger wasn’t the devil, he was just a very naughty boy. A very naughty boy who is now 80 years of age. Or as Julie Burchill once described him: “A priapic, black-music-thieving jet-setter who has been a staple of the gossip columns as much as the arts pages for the past half a century.”

U2 have been getting rave reviews after starting their 25-night residency in the newly built, high-tech Sphere venue in Las Vegas, but some fans have criticised the high ticket prices.

Bono once said that Achtung Baby was the sound of U2 chopping down the Joshua Tree. Last night they were back in the desert, this time amid the neon lights of Las Vegas to launch their U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere residency.

There is perhaps a theory that U2 playing a residency Las Vegas – that soulless place where rock music goes to die – was a terrible move.

Today would have been singer Amy Winehouse’s 40th birthday.

Marion Fossett, ringmaster of Fossetts circus and a seventh generation performer, is sitting in her caravan in Tralee after a show. There are sparkly dresses and rhinestone jackets on hangers everywhere. These are definitely themes of Marion’s cosy home-from-home. “My hobby is sticking rhinestones on things. That’s what calms me. I say to my friends, ‘darling, you can do with a bit more bling on that outfit’. I bling it out.”

Feel the fear and do it anyway. Holidays on cruise ships always filled me with dread. I feared I would return twice the man I was from eating four huge, stodgy, carby meals a day – plus snacks, ice creams and cocktails. To say nothing of not burning off any calories by sitting around the pool like a sunburned bloated whale with IBS waiting for my next snack, ice cream or cocktail to arrive.

‘One last thought,” Rex Ryan says after two hours of talking in the Bestseller Café, home of his Glass Mask Theatre on Dawson Street. Around him, the air appears to crackle and hum with energy, with intensity. He has a sense of broodiness, of longing.

“This is for Sinéad.” Noel Gallagher let those four simple words linger for a second last night at Dublin’s Royal Hospital Kilmainham.

Like death and taxes, some things in life are inevitable. One inevitability is that daughters will turn their fathers into glorified taxi drivers. Mid-western indie punk goddess Kim Deal turned hers into her not-so-glorified tour driver.