#Zero. Neil McCormick

about whether we were taking part in Softzone’s charity project, like anyone was going to say no to the orphans.

      Saint Bono, Irish superstar, statesman and God’s celebrity representative on Earth, was holding court in a rock-and-roll epicentre, an uberfame vortex into which all other celebrity eddies would eventually and inevitably be consumed. I had met my countryman a few times, bathed in the mega-wattage glare of his touchy-feely compassionate charisma, been given the famous Bono talk about how to steer a true artistic and moral course through the dark terrain of fame, and felt irradiated by the holy spirit of his undivided attention, but I was rather dreading it now. I steered a course towards the safer shores of Amber Smack, the lairy Scottish soul diva, with whom I once got absolutely hammered and sang a karaoke duet of Frank Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ backstage at an LA radio festival. ‘Fuck sake, Zero,’ Amber brayed, air-kissing. ‘Don’t wanna get lipstick on your cheek, know what I mean? Oh my God, are you going to sing on this charity thing? I’ve gotta give out a gong and get the fuck out before they catch me.’

      ‘We can blow the joint together,’ I grinned. ‘I’ve got champagne on ice and a karaoke machine in my suite.’

      ‘I’m a married woman,’ she sniffed, indignantly. ‘But thanks for asking. I hear Baby BooBoo’s gonna give it a go, did you hear that?’ And she sang a sexy, sinuous blast of ‘You make me feel like a motherless child’. ‘It is a chewn, oh God, that is a chewn.’

      ‘So you going to do it then?’ I asked.

      ‘Shit, it’s for the orphans,’ she sighed.

      Oh, Amber, I thought, not you too. And then we were moving again through rounds of introductions and interruptions till I didn’t know who I was talking to and what I was talking about, while beautiful hostesses refilled my champagne glass and I felt myself being sucked into the maw of the beast, until he was there, before me, in blue wraparound shades, giving me a bear hug and rubbing stubble against my cheek. ‘Are you all right?’ the sainted Bono whispered in my ear. ‘You know I am always here for you.’ And I felt a little lurch, like I was in danger of bursting into tears right there, throwing myself bawling at his feet and begging for forgiveness. Maybe because he reminded me of the parish priest who had once led the flock in Kilrock, Father Martin his name was, he had the same gift of empathy, a way of making you feel you were the most important person in a room, the only face he saw in a crowd. And he had come and put his hand on my shoulder once, in the harsh fluorescent light of a hospital room, smoke was hanging in the air, there were tubes and coloured liquids and blinking lights, and he said those exact same words, ‘I am always here for you.’