BONO STRIKES A CHORD AS NOEL GETS RELIGION; It's Revelation tour as

0 Comments | Sunday Mirror, Oct 7, 2001 | by EAMONN O'HANLON

BONO is being hailed as a miracle worker after managing to turn Oasis bad boy Noel Gallagher on to religion.

Gallagher - who once caused outrage with a foul-mouthed tirade against Jesus Christ - claims the U2 star is the first person ever to help him make sense of religion.

The pair have become firm friends since meeting during Oasis's mid- 1990s heyday when Gallagher controversially claimed the band was more important than God.

But he has changed his tune after a series of earnest discussions with committed Catholic Bono.

Gallagher said: "I said to him: 'Look, you believe in it all. I'm Catholic, same as you. Can you explain it to me?'

"He sat down for two hours and made a lot of sense.

"I was going, 'You drink and all the rest of it and make millions of pounds, tell me how you pray?' He made tons of sense. "

Gallagher, recently divorced from party girl Meg Mathews, opened his heart in a magazine interview to mark the 10th anniversary of Oasis.

He said Bono had followed up their face-to-face talks by sending two inspirational religious books to the London home he shares with girlfriend Sara MacDonald.

"This parcel turned up at my house - a book each for me and Sara," Gallagher said.

"One's called What's So Amazing about Grace? And the other's Searching for My Hidden God, or summat like that.

"And his dad had just died! How difficult must that be? He takes time out from his grief because two people were interested.

"What a guy. I'm going to have a good read of this book."

Gallagher also used the interview to pay tribute to Ireland for equipping him with many of the qualities for stardom.

Although he and brother Liam were both Manchester-born, their beloved mum Peggy hails from Co Mayo.

The boys were regular visitors to the family farm as youngsters and say it was here that they were given their first introduction to music, thanks to family sing-songs and fiddle sessions.

"I'm as English as they come," Gallagher said, "but I feel Irish, too.

When Peggy's mother died last year without leaving a will, Gallagher bought the farm to "keep it in the family".

Bono, who was expelled from Dublin's Cathedral school, St Patrick's, for "throwing dog turds at a teacher", has never made any secret of his faith.

He went to the Vatican for an audience with Pope John Paul II last year and later revealed the Pontiff was the person he admired most on Earth.

Bono, who has been at the helm of the campaign to cancel Third World debt, said he loved the way the Pope kept up his battle to persuade the world that money, possessions and power were not everything.