Geldof and Barroso solve it all over a pint

BOB GELDOF took time off from campaigning for Africa to bring the president of the European Commission for a St Patrick’s Day pint.

The two men were discussing the UN’s millennium development goals in Brussels when the former Boomtown Rats singer invited Jose Manuel Barroso to wet the shamrock.

They nipped across the street to Kitty O’Shea’s Irish pub with a small posse of security men and assistants and ordered two pints of Guinness.

While the pub, festooned with giant green shamrocks, began to fill up with the usual lunchtime crowd, the pair held up the bar for a time.

They sipped their pints and answered some questions from a small group of onlookers, before heading back across the street to the commission’s headquarters, leaving two half-finished pints behind.

Mr Geldof is looking for a commitment from the EU member states to put reaching the Millennium Development goals on the agenda for the G20 summit next month.

Mr Barroso praised Mr Geldof’s work and said that it was critically important that at a time of economic crisis the world not forget the poorer countries. “We must keep development in the third world at the centre of our policies,” he said.

As they left, a session of traditional music started and a slightly overcome barman was happy to find that an onlooker offered to pick up the tab for the two pints.