U2 played a 50th anniversary gig in the playground of Mount Temple Comprehensive in Dublin on Saturday, the school where they formed in 1976. Bono told the crowd of 400 that the band owed everything to the school and its ethos of looking. By Tuesday, a 1981 yearbook photo had surfaced showing the four members gathered around a biology textbook, staring at a diagram of a labia. A former classmate, Concepta Mulcahy, 64, told RTÉ Radio 1 that the band were asked to leave the class after 20 minutes.
“They were very focused,” she said. “It was the only time I ever saw them all quiet.”
Pillock.
The statement in full
U2 released a statement on Wednesday morning.
“We are aware that a photograph from our school days has caused upset,” it read. “We apologise for any upset caused by our early, sustained and entirely non-academic interest in the female reproductive system. We wish to make clear that we will continue to stare at labia for the foreseeable future. It is part of who we are. It is part of what made us the band we are today.”
The statement was signed by all four members. Larry Mullen Jr added a handwritten note: “I was looking at the diagram. The diagram was looking back.” Twat.
I have run this paper since 1982. In 1982, a man could stare at a thing without issuing a press release about it. He could stare at a diagram, a gasometer, a woman in a lay-by near Didcot, and nobody asked him to explain himself. Now every glance requires a statement, a signature, a legal review and a wing named after it. You, reading this on your telephone, have never stared at anything for more than four seconds. You gobshite.
Dublin City Council debates the naming of a music block
On Tuesday evening, Dublin City Council met to discuss a motion to rename Mount Temple’s music block after the band. Councillor Fergus Bruton, who proposed the motion, said the band had “put Dublin on the map, and also put labia on the map”.
“This is about civic pride,” he said. “And anatomy.”
Total wanker.
Councillor Concepta Whelan opposed, saying the school should not “celebrate a lifetime of staring”.
“I have sat through nine budgets,” she said. “I have never sat through anything like this.”
Pillock.
The motion passed by 11 votes to 9, with one abstention. The abstention, Councillor Dermot Quigley, said he had never liked U2 and did not want to be associated with either side. The new name will be unveiled in November.
There it is. Forty years of pretending to tolerate the band, and the moment there is a plaque to be cut, the council is on its feet. Institutions do not have principles. They have ribbon. You could name a bin after Bono and they would vote it through if the alternative was a meeting that ran past nine.
Where was I. The lay-by. The old car park at Didcot. That is where this country worked out how to look at things. Headlights off, engine running, a laminated leaflet on the dashboard. Now the young do it on an app. There is no car park on an app. There is no dashboard. There is nothing to stare at and nobody to apologise to. Gobshite, the lot of you.
The tour, the model and the wing
U2’s next tour, ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience Revisited’, will open in Dublin in March 2027. The stage set includes a 40-foot anatomical model of a labia, which will be lowered during ‘With or Without You’. A portion of ticket sales will fund a new biology wing at Mount Temple, to be named the Labia Wing.
The school’s principal, Bríd Ní Chatháin, said the wing would “provide state-of-the-art facilities for the study of human reproduction, and a lasting reminder of four boys who never stopped looking”.
“We are a comprehensive,” she said. “We comprehend.”
Twat.
Bono said the band were “honoured” and that the wing would “help young people understand the mystery of the feminine, which we have been trying to do since 1976”.
“We are not stopping,” he said. “We have never stopped.”
Total wanker. I have seen the mystery of the feminine. It was parked off the A34 with its headlights dipped and the radio on. It did not want a wing. It wanted to be left alone.
A statement from the band’s former biology teacher
Eileen Sweeney, 89, who taught biology at Mount Temple from 1974 to 1991, issued a statement through her solicitor.
“I remember the four of them,” she said. “They were not the worst. They were not the best. They were interested in one thing and it was not photosynthesis. I have been retired for 35 years and I have not thought about them once. I would like to be left alone now.”
Asked for her verdict on the band’s apology, she said: “They were always very good at saying sorry. It was the only thing they practised.”
Pillock.
The Labia Wing opens in November, the same month as the plaque. Tickets for the tour go on sale on Friday. I will not be buying one. I will be in the car, headlights off, in the old car park at Didcot, waiting for a country that knows how to look at something and keep its mouth shut.
