Bono is just one letter off from having the same name as America's favorite clown. He once said: "It costs a fortune to look this trashy." On another occasion, he said: "I could go onstage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out, and people would think it was a statement about something."

Still, how many celebrities have been nominated for a Golden Globe, a Grammy, an Oscar and the Nobel Prize? When Bono founded the Edun (Nude backwards) clothing line, he committed to "socially responsible fashion," and to make sure you understand what that means, he had Rainer Maria Rilke's poems embroidered into the pockets of the line's jeans. Rilke was an early 20th-century German poet; gossips like to say that he slept with Alma Mahler, but she herself would have told you that she slept with anything that walked, whether on two legs or four.

Word is that Bono always wears sunglasses because he has delayed dark adaptation, an ocular maladjustment whose sufferers can not even open a refrigerator door without being blinded by the light. He took his name from a hearing-aid brand, Bono Vox, Latin for Good Voice. He met with W. on October 19, but the evidence is that he did not succeed in talking any sense into him. (By Scott Rose)