Bono, wee world-renown rockstar, sunglasses devotee and poverty campaigner, has upset the neighbours in Dublin it seems with radical plans for his Clarence hotel, which he co owns with U2 guitarist the Edge.
Bearing in mind this is a man who went on tour in the late 1990s with a 40ft tall mirrorball lemon as part of the stage set, Kitchen Rat suspects restraint has never probably been high up the singer’s agenda for transforming the Clarence.
Still even by Bono’s high standards of eccentricity plans to create "Europe's most spectacular hotel" with a spaceship shaped glass dome at the summit of an atrium enveloping the presently modest Georgian façade of the Clarence hasn't, shall we say, ticked all the boxes for traditionalists.
In fact the Independent reports An Taisce, Ireland's equivalent of the National Trust, is none to pleased with the proposed attack on the Clarence and surrounding buildings’ handsome architecture, which will be headed up by award winning architect Norman Foster.
Although “bastardisation” has been banded about by opponents of the plan, a particularly choice phrase to describe the redesign is “a Fosteresque 21st century rock star bubble”. Indeed.
Whether this will lead to war between the two sides in keeping with U2’s 1983 album of the same name remains to be seen but it looks like Bono has plenty of campaigning of an alternative sort ahead of him if he’s going to push this through.
Less Where The Streets Have No Name and more With Or Without You, perhaps?
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