Man who did very little to do even less

The entertainment world has been left reeling by the news that the man who did the least in Take That will now do even less.

Best known for standing at the end of a row of men, Jason Orange’s departure from the best-selling boy band came as something of a shock to millions who genuinely hadn’t realised he still existed.

Once famed for being able to spin on his head in the group’s videos in the early 90s, the subsequent years have seen Orange’s usefulness to the band gradually diminish to the point where many simply assumed that Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald had brought onstage a coat stand.

“I thought someone had just hung up a spare jacket next to Gary,” said one such fan. “I honestly had no idea there was an actual living man in there.”

“I thought he’d gone ages ago,” said another. “I swear I bought a Big Issue from him outside Manchester Piccadilly Station last week. The cheeky sod even asked if he could keep the magazine and just have the money as it was his last one, but I wasn’t having any of it.”

It’s not yet clear how Orange plans to use his spare time, but it’s thought that sitting on benches in town centres and laughing at pigeons could figure prominently in future projects.

When approached for a comment, he gave little away, mumbling enigmatically: “You wouldn't happen to have any spare change for a cup of tea, would you?”

The ego has landed

Everyone likes free music, right? I mean, if they didn’t, then why would people bang on about illegal downloads killing the record industry? Yeah, everyone loves a freebie.

Except, it would seem, when that freebie in question is the new U2 album and people are effectively forced to own it, whether they like it or not.

To recap, 500 million iTunes users woke up one morning to find ‘Songs of Innocence’ lingering in their computers, phones and other devices, like a cat turd that’s been festering in the litter tray during a long, sweaty night.

Thoughtful gesture by a band so stupidly rich that they can genuinely afford not to earn any more money? Apparently not.

The thing is, if it was pretty much any other band (and I don’t think that’s too great an exaggeration) then people would either be pretty pleased with this unexpected aural generosity or quietly ignore/delete it with a knowing smile: oh, those guys!

But this is U2. And U2 are fronted by leather-clad uber-twat Bono, a man so self-absorbed that he probably has a life-size sex doll of himself flown out by private jet while on tour.

As soon as Mr Bono Sir enters the equation, there’s suddenly this assumption that 500 million people are going to be grateful that His Royal Highness has deemed them worthy of his band’s latest output. Perhaps people will flock to the streets in a sort of confused euphoria, hugging each other and asking excitedly what this means for the future of mankind. Maybe they’ll erect statues or compose operas in his honour. In 30 years’ time, will people talk in hushed tones about where they were when they first realised they’d been gifted a U2 album?

In reality, it seems that many of those 500 million people took great exception to someone placing files on to their computers without their knowledge or permission. The fact it was a U2 album just served to rub salt into the wound: the musical equivalent of someone pissing through your letterbox. 

Yeah, cheers Bono.

Don’t get me wrong, U2 have produced some fine songs in their time, but let’s be honest, they’ve been artistically bankrupt and culturally redundant for the best part of the last 20 years, haven’t they?

Curiosity got the better of me when they headlined Glastonbury in 2011. It was telling that they barely played anything released after 1994 and, as performances go, it was about as phoned-in as you could get. There was no soul, no emotion, no real connection with the audience – even the extended platform which Sir Bono presumably had built so that he could, y’know, go out and mingle among his subjects went largely unused because the egotistical prick didn’t want to shrink his leather suit in the rain. An a cappella version of ‘Jerusalem’ was just embarrassing, like a drunken elderly relative breaking into song during a funeral, while the frankly bizarre (and most probably pre-recorded) ‘live satellite link-up’ with an astronaut on a space station just felt contrived (a 21^st century update on Bono’s habit of telephoning the likes of Bill Clinton and Salman Rushdie during the band’s 90s gigs?).

What’s perhaps most amusing about this whole sorry iTunes debacle is that Apple quickly released a tool enabling users to delete the offending music. The digital equivalent of a gift receipt, if you like.

So, has it been a complete disaster from a PR point of view? Well, on the one hand, U2 have just spammed 500 million people. On the other hand, if the aim was to get people talking about the band again then it’s worked, even if the words being used are bitter, angry and possibly a little violent.

If ‘Songs of Innocence’ (even the title is pretentious) had been given to me in a physical format, then I might have got some use out of it – for example, I could have melted a record into a fruit bowl, or used the reflective qualities of a CD to signal to people on opposite hillsides.

But, alas, it’s digital, so there’s only one useful thing I can do: delete, delete, DELETE.